Most modern chat systems are entirely proprietary: proprietary clients, talking proprietary protocols to proprietary servers. There's no need for this: there are free open standards for one-to-one and one-to-many comms for precisely this sort of system, and some venerable clients are still a lot more capable than you might remember.

But as it is today, if you need to be on more than one chat system at once, the official way is to install their client app, meaning multiple clients or at best, multiple tabs open in your web browsers. Most of these "clients" are JavaScript web apps anyway, running inside Electron an embedded Chromium-based single-site browser. Which is fine, but Chrome is famously memory-hungry.

There is a brute-force way round this: have one app that embeds lots of separate Electron instances in tabs. There are a few of these around first came RamBox, followed by Franz. Both use the "freemium" model: there's a completely functional free client, plus subscriptions for extra features. If you prefer to avoid such things, both services have no-cost forks: Ferdi from Franz and Hamsket from RamBox. A newer rival still is Station.

They're not perfect but these messaging-aggregators are very handy: you get all your messaging apps in a single client, with a single set of notifications, and they're separate from your browsers. You can configure multiple accounts on each service, which can be tricky in a browser if it stores your credentials. The snags are that the UI inside each tab is totally different, and they are very memory-hungry: each tab takes hundreds of megs of RAM, and if you have a lot of tabs, the parent app can easily snarf a couple of gigs. That's the price of building apps in Javascript.

But there is another way. If you were online in the 1990s, you may recall the early days of online chat, with multiple proprietary "instant messengers": AIM, Yahoo, MSN and so on. Most of them have been shut down now, although the oldest of all, ICQ, was spun off by AOL and is still around. Some of the clients could connect to rival services, leading to decidedly hairy hacks to validate that clients were genuine, such as AOL intentionally exploiting a buffer overflow in its own code. This didn't stop third parties creating their own clients, such as the Linux client GAIM.

Back in 1999, a group came together to create a free open standard for person-to-person messaging: Jabber, later renamed the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol or XMPP. For a while, it was widespread, including large corporations such as Facebook and Google, although most have removed support for it now.

The original purpose of GAIM went away, but the app did not. The team added support for other operating systems and protocols and renamed it to Pidgin. It's still very much alive. It runs on Windows as well as Linux, and not only does it work with any XMPP service, such as Cisco's, but also Apple's Bonjour, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr.

There are also plugins available for dozens more Telegram, Facebook Messenger, both personal and business versions of Skype, Discord, Mattermost, QQ, Rocket.chat, Twitter, Slack, Steam, Threema, WeChat, and more. It may not talk to every chat service out there, but it supports most of them.

There is a drawback with multiprotocol clients like this, though, be they tabbed web-apps or true native client-server setups you need to configure all the protocols you will use in each client. A newer protocol hopes to tackle that problem: Matrix. Matrix can do point-to-point conversations, as XMPP does, but also channels and chatrooms and more importantly, it can link to other services via server-side bridges. A Matrix client the reference one is Element can bring multiple messaging services together into a single inbox in a single local app, connected via a single login.

Matrix can be tricky to configure, though, so some companies are offering paid-for messenger-unification services running on top of the Matrix protocol. Beeper is a commercial effort and includes Apple iMessage via a hilarious workaround, whereas the cheaper Element One is basically a hosted version of Matrix. A new mystery contender is Texts, which is closed-source for now although the company says it will open-source its SDK later.

There never was a golden age of any-to-any chat systems, but fifteen years ago, things were a lot better than they are now. There is reason to hope, though. There are signs that things are getting better.

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Friday FOSS fest: Franz, RamBox, Pidgin and more - The Register

As digital transformation continues to accelerate and enterprises modernize with the adoption of cloud-native architectures, the number of interconnected components and microservices is exploding. Logs are a critical ingredient in managing and optimizing these application environments. Dynatrace now unifies log monitoring with its patented PurePath technology for distributed tracing and code-level analysis. Logs are now automatically connected to distributed traces for faster analysis and optimization of cloud-native and hybrid applications.

Customers expect enterprises to deliver increasingly better, faster, and more reliable digital experiences. Cloud-native observability is a prerequisite for companies that need to meet these expectations. Observability enables a holistic approach to automation and BizDevOps collaboration for the optimization of applications and business outcomes.

Logs are a crucial component in the mix that help BizDevOps teams understand the full story of what's happening in a system. Logs include critical information that can't be found elsewhere, like details on transactions, processes, users, and environment changes.

A key element of effectively leveraging observability is analyzing telemetry data in context. Being able to cut through the noise, with all the relevant logs at hand, dramatically reduces the time it takes to get actionable insights into the optimization and troubleshooting of workloads.

Without automation, this contextualization is hardly feasible, especially in large and dynamic environments. Modern heterogeneous stacks consist of countless interconnected and ephemeral components and microservices. Log entries related to individual transactions can be spread across multiple microservices or serverless workloads. Manual and configuration-heavy approaches to putting telemetry data into context and connecting metrics, traces, and logs simply don't scale.

With PurePath distributed tracing and analysis technology at the code level, Dynatrace already provides the deepest possible insights into every transaction. Starting with user interactions, PurePath technology automatically collects all code execution details, executed database statements, critical transaction-based metrics, and topology information end-to-end.

By unifying log analytics with PurePath tracing, Dynatrace is now able to automatically connect monitored logs with PurePath distributed traces. This provides a holistic view, advanced analytics, and AI-powered answers for cloud optimization and troubleshooting.

Automatic contextualization of log data works out-of-the-box for popular languages like Java, .NET, Node.js, Go, and PHP, as well as for NGiNX and Apache Web servers. Unlike other approaches in the market, Dynatrace allows you to apply this new functionality broadly via central activation. This automated approach avoids any manual configuration of tracers or agents and the need to restart processes.

In addition, Dynatrace offers an open-source approach to the contextualization of log entries and distributed traces as well via OpenTelemetry.

You can instantly investigate logs related to individual transactions on the new Logs tab in the PurePath view. This instantly reveals additional context.

The example below includes analysis of a payment issue. It shows that a call to the payment provider was declined because the credit card verification failed. From the call perspective, you can easily see the related entry in the code-level information to understand where in your code this specific log entry was really created.

Dynatrace makes it easy to view the log lines related to individual spans or a broader view that covers transactions end-to-end or even entire workloads.

Uniquely, Dynatrace also provides connections to the processes that handle each call.

In the screenshot above, you can see that a single trace created 64 different log entries. The top entry, marked with status ERROR is critical to the analysis of this issue.

This seamless user journey is also available from the log viewer side. You can easily get from individual log lines to a transaction-centric view for additional context and analysis.

Starting with OneAgent version 1.231, you can activate our OneAgent code modules for Java, .Net, Go, Node.js, PHP, NGiNX, or Apache Web server to automatically enrich logs with trace context without any manual code or configuration change on your workload. Just go to Settings > Server-side service monitoring > Deep Monitoring > New OneAgent features. This ensures that trace IDs are automatically added to log lines for transaction-based analytics.

Structured log entries that are ingested via the Generic log ingestion of Log Monitoring V2 will show up in related PurePath traces starting with Dynatrace version 1.232.

Within the next 90 days, all transaction-related logs will show up in PurePath view after activation of this new functionality.

To find out more, see Dynatrace Log Monitoring documentation and PurePath distributed tracing documentation.

If so, start your free trial today!

Disclaimer

Dynatrace Inc. published this content on 18 November 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 18 November 2021 13:02:03 UTC.

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Business leaders are still worrying about artificial intelligence (AI), but with Facebook pushing hard into the metaverse, augmented reality (AR) has also proven a massive concern for corporate chieftains.

Thats according to analytics firm GlobalData. The company defines a theme as any issue that keeps chief executives awake at night. In a thematic survey published in October 2021, GlobalData gauged the business communitys current sentiment towards emerging technologies that kept executives stirring into the early hours.

The research found that AI was the technology perceived as most disruptive in Q3 2021, regaining its position from AR, which, as Verdict previously reported, held the top spot in the previous quarter.

66% of professionals from over 30 industries stated in the poll that AI would deliver either slight or significant disruption to their industry. This was a sharp increase from the previous quarter when 49% said AI would disrupt their industry. It returns AI to the position that it held in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021.

AR has gone in the opposite direction, and now only 48% see the technology as disruptive, down from 70% in Q2 2021.

The interactive tech, which blends the physical space with digital visualisations, reached wider public knowledge through the Pokmon Go craze in 2016, but also has real business potential. AR tech, for example, is being used for remote collaboration, training, maintenance, customer support and product design.

Its also seeing large uptake in ecommerce as a utility, both for consumers and brands. Various social giants have merged AR and ecommerce into their social media platforms, offering users the ability to try on products virtually.

The buzz around AR has grown recently thanks to Facebook's expansion into the metaverse, a virtual world where users can share experiences and interact in real-time within simulated scenarios. This is made possible through AR applications and virtual reality (VR) headsets.

Facebook is banking on the digital world enough to have renamed itself as Meta in October. The recent name change came alongside the company's pivot to becoming a metaverse company instead of a social media one (and an increasingly toxic social media brand at that).

Name change or not, it seems insiders may have seen through the AR hype, according to GlobalData's polling.

"The greater variation in perceptions of AI and AR noted in Q3 2021 could be because, like cybersecurity and cloud computing, both have a wide range of applications," explains Rupantar Guha, associate project manager of Thematics at GlobalData. "However, unlike cyber and cloud, deployment of AI and AR is at an early stage."

"Regarding the metaverse, AR and VR are key technologies in this developing mega-theme. VR-based metaverses are arriving in the market (e.g., Facebook's Horizon Workrooms) and AR-based metaverses (e.g., Microsoft Mesh) are also in development.

"It is too early to say which technology will outpace the other in the short run, given that both are in nascent stages of development and the metaverse is still largely conceptual. However, AR's accessibility through web browsers, smartphones, and smart glasses (that are less expensive than VR headsets) could give it an edge over VR in the long run."

In the meantime, it is AI which business bosses are banking on as the emerging technology of choice.

Of the emerging technologies included in GlobalDatas polls every quarter, perceptions of AI and AR are the most volatile. In the companys view, this is because confidence in the disruptive potential of the two technologies is fragile and likely to continue to experience variation as more companies implement them.

The majority of the respondent pool said that they felt more positive towards emerging technologies in Q3 2021 than a year ago. At least half of all those polled said they were more positive towards four of the seven technologies that GlobalData enquired about: cybersecurity, AR, AI and 5G.

AR and AI were behind only cybersecurity in positive sentiment change. This indicates that, despite the volatile perceptions of the two technologies regarding the level of disruption they can bring, a majority still felt more favourable than in 2020.

55% of respondents said that AI would live up to all its promises, which is only a small drop from the 57% who said the same in the previous quarter. The continued good performance of AI in this indicator suggests that businesses are hopeful that the technology will ultimately deliver significant benefits.

GlobalData predicts the global AI platform market will be worth $52bn within three years. The burgeoning theme is driven by the obvious business benefits of AI.

The tech allows businesses to accelerate digital innovation and development, resulting in increased efficiency, lower operational costs, higher revenues and improved customer experience.

Enterprise AI projects often share three main objectives. One is the automation of business processes as automating routine day-to-day activities and obligations contributes to more efficient use of labour, with workers able to focus their time and energy on higher-value tasks. AI lets businesses also reduce operating costs and cut out errors that come part and parcel with routine processes and tasks in the workplace.

AI can also provide business insights that make sense of vast amounts of data to predict customer preferences and generate high-quality sales leads. Essentially converting information into knowledge, AI can help with everything from providing personalised product recommendations to identifying credit fraud.

Finally, the tech improves customer engagement. AI-driven customer service capabilities such as virtual assistants and chatbots enable businesses to communicate with high volumes of customers every day, something which proved especially useful in pandemic when face-fronting options werent possible. The pseudo-human face of AI can provide a more personalised experience that drives growth, reduces costs, and improves retention and overall customer satisfaction.

Companies must remember, though, that delivering a successful AI project is not easy, warns GlobalData thematic research director Ed Thomas. It requires meticulous planning, detailed preparation, and complete buy-in from all parts of the business. It also requires an understanding of the problem that needs solving.

AI alone will not cure all ills, but it can successfully address specific business challenges.

Another part of AIs attraction is that the tech is, arguably, a rising tide lifting the profile of various emerging technologies.

Take the example of AR. AI technologies such as machine learning (ML), conversational platforms and AI chips power most of todays AR devices and apps.

AR developers use ML to improve the user experience (UX) by continually analysing user activities. Apples CoreML and Googles TensorFlow Lite ML frameworks support ARKit and ARCore, respectively, and allow developers to run ML models to improve object recognition in photos, convert speech to text and enable gesture recognition. Eye tracking and facial recognition, fast becoming standard functions across all AR devices, use ML to improve UX.

Virtual assistants like Amazons Alexa enable the hands-free operation of AR devices meanwhile. This is critical for some use cases, especially in enterprises: for example, doctors using Vuzixs M400 smart glasses for training and conducting patient rounds remotely during the pandemic. Equipped with hands-free voice support for Skype for Business and Zoom, the glasses help to keep human contact to a minimum with the aid of AI-powered conversation.

"Smart glasses' and headsets' heads-up displays bring visuals into the user's field of view, while voice assistants enable voice-based control of devices and apps," elaborates Guha. "The use of voice in AR devices is limited to specific tasks that add convenience to the user, helping them avoid using hands.

"Voice assistants are used as supporting capabilities such as pulling up apps to view documents and connecting with remote experts in industries such as healthcare, oil & gas, logistics, and manufacturing, among others."

Many organisations are also putting their faith in AI to improve their cybersecurity, with the tech providing cover for the continuing cybersecurity skills gap.

AI offers a more proactive defensive approach to discover and analyse the growing landscape for attacks. As GlobalData reports, the reality is that all software is at risk through human error and inadvertent security holes, which attackers can exploit.

With AI, the target is to have more comprehensive, predictive assessments of breach risk that recognise and prioritise the necessary steps to avoid breaches. The concept is enough to have led UK-US cybersec brand Darktrace to make its name and go public. Its Cyber AI Analyst aims to emulate human thought processes and automate tasks to continuously investigate cyber threats at machine speeds. The proprietary software is said to reduce the average time to investigate threats by 92%.

Darktrace was founded by Cambridge University mathematicians and US-UK government cyber intelligence experts, backed by infamous Autonomy founder Mike Lynch once dubbed Britains Bill Gates, today a wanted man facing extradition proceedings from the US over the sale of Autonomy to HP in 2011. Darktraces original AI tech, the Enterprise Immune System, was supplemented by autonomous response technology, which allowed the system to react to in-progress cyberattacks.

It should be noted though that Darktrace shares recently plunged by 23% over what's seen as a gap "between promise and reality" regarding its products: and the legacy of Lynch and Autonomy hangs over the company. Several executives at Darktrace, including its founder and CEO Poppy Gustafsson, have previously held roles at Autonomy and at Invoke Capital, Lynch's VC fund.

There is also the concept of AIoT, an amalgamation of AI and the Internet of Things (IoT). AIoT involves embedding AI technology into IoT components; combining data collected by connected sensors and actuators with AI allows for reduced latency, increased privacy and real-time intelligence at the edge. It also means that less data needs to be sent to, and stored on, cloud servers.

Apple is one name investing in this nascent field; in January 2020, the tech giant acquired Xnor.ai, which offered AI-enabled image recognition tools capable of functioning on low-power devices.

Being a rising tide lifting all boats and even profit margins, its no wonder AI is such an obsession for the global business community.

GlobalData polls were conducted online between the first week of July and the fourth week of September 2021, and ran on Verdict, GlobalDatas network of B2B websites. In total, the polls received 2,128 responses distributed unequally between each of the polls.

This article is part of a special series by GlobalData Media on artificial intelligence. Other articles in this series include:

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Why is AI an obsession for business insiders? - just-auto.com

Vendor Landscape

The market structure is expected to remain fragmented during the forecast period. Vendors operating in the market are adopting various marketing and growth strategies such as competitive pricing to compete in the market.

Adobe Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Salesforce.com Inc., and SAP SE are some of the key vendors of this market. Vendors are competing to maintain their market position in the market.

Vendors are also trying to expand their market presence and strengthen their product portfolio by entering partnerships and launching new and innovative products.

For instance,In October 2020, Oracle Corplaunched the Oracle Cloud Observability and Management platform, which is a suite of services to enable better visibility and insight across both cloud-native and traditional technologies, whether deployed in multi-cloud or on-premises environments

View moreabout the market's vendor landscape highlights with a comprehensive list of vendors and their offerings.

Key Market Segmentation

Request a FREE Sampleof this report for more highlights into the market segments.

Regional Market Outlook

North America is leading the market with a contribution of 40% to the overall market in 2020 and would increase its contribution to a notable number of the global cloud computing market by 2025.The rising adoption of cloud solutions from various end-user industrieswill facilitate thecloud computing market growth in North America over the forecast period.

Download our FREE sample reportfor more key highlights on the regional market share of most of the above-mentioned countries.

Latest TrendsDriving the Global cloud computing market

SMEs have started opting for public solutions to scale up or scale down the hardware and resources. Apart from CAPEX reduction, cloud computing solutions can facilitate faster storage, processing, and communication lines. Clouds also enable the deployment of applications without the need for provisioning hosting capabilities. Cloud services provide security, facilitate optimum use of resources, and provide the reliability of a normal dedicated server and cloud resources.

The increased inclination for private cloud solutions for enhanced data security is another major factor supporting the cloud computing market share growth. Security and compliance concerns have been among the primary reasons for unwillingness among organizations to adopt a public cloud solution. There are also many regulations, such as the GDPR in Europe, which impose certain restrictions on where the data can be stored.

A private cloud offers cloud storage resources to a single enterprise or organization. The resources such as storage, servers, and network are not accessible from outside the enterprise network, and they only hold data related to a single business entity. Therefore, a private cloud offers a greater degree of security and control than a public cloud platform

Find additional information about various other market drivers & Trends mentioned in our FREE sample report.

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Cloud Computing Market Scope

Report Coverage

Details

Page number

120

Base year

2020

Forecast period

2021-2025

Growth momentum & CAGR

Decelerate at a CAGR of over 17%

Market growth 2021-2025

USD 287.03 billion

Market structure

Fragmented

YoY growth (%)

20.37

Regional analysis

North America, Europe, APAC, South America, and MEA

Performing market contribution

North America at 40%

Key consumer countries

US, China, UK, Germany, and Japan

Competitive landscape

Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope

Companies profiled

Adobe Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Salesforce.com Inc., and SAP SE

Market Dynamics

Parent market analysis, Market growth inducers and obstacles, Fast-growing and slow-growing segment analysis, COVID-19 impact and future consumer dynamics, market condition analysis for the forecast period.

Customization preview

If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio ResearchJesse MaidaMedia & Marketing ExecutiveUS: +1 844 364 1100UK: +44 203 893 3200Email:[emailprotected]Website:www.technavio.com/

SOURCE Technavio

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Cloud Computing Market Research Report Highlights the Key Findings in the Area of Vendor Landscape, Key Market Segments, Regions, Latest Trends &...

Amazon is on track to open a second cloud computing server hub in Canada with a new location planned for Calgary in Alberta.

The hub is being placed in Calgary to provide better coverage for Western Canada since the only other Canadian server hub for Amazon web services (AWS) is in Montreal.

The tech/retail giant plans to open the data centre at some point in late 2023 or early 2024. Amazon also estimates that the construction and operation of the new server hub, combined with the existing jobs in Montreal, will amount to 5,000 jobs and an investment of $17 billion into the local economies around Calgary and Montreal by 2037.

Obviously, these are some giant numbers with minimal context so its hard to grasp how profitable or successful the Amazon hubs will actually be in Calgary. But for developers, websites and tools that take advantage of AWS and are based in Western Canada, this should bring a fairly substantial speed improvement.

Amazon has also invested in other areas of the province. In April, the company even announced that it was planning to build a giant solar farm to generate 195,000 megawatt-hours of power per year.

Source: Amazon

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Amazon plans to build servers to host cloud computing in Calgary - MobileSyrup