The revelation that Tibco will have a new CEO once its merger with Citrix is complete came as a surprise to some, but the change in leadership will likely not have a significant impact on the analytics vendor's platform development or its customers.

Tibco, founded in 1997 and based in Palo Alto, Calif., is a subsidiary of Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corp.

In January 2022, Vista and Evergreen reached an agreement to acquire Citrix, a digital workspace technology vendor founded in 1989 and based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., with the acquisition expected to close during the third quarter of this year.

Once completed, Vista and Evergreen plan to merge Citrix and Tibco to create a single company that will join Citrix's digital workspace and application delivery platform with Tibco's analytics and data management capabilities.

On Monday, Vista revealed that rather than appoint Tibco CEO Dan Streetman or Citrix chairman and interim president and CEO Bob Calderoni to lead the combined entity, it will instead bring in Tom Krause as the new CEO.

Krause was promoted to president of semiconductor giant Broadcom in 2020 and helped oversee Broadcom's recent $61 billion acquisition of VMWare. Before that, he was Broadcom's chief financial officer for four years. Streetman and Calderoni will remain in their roles until Tibco and Citrix are combined.

The move to bring in Krause was somewhat surprising but makes sense given the current economic climate, according to Doug Henschen, an analyst at Constellation Research.

He noted that Krause has a financial background, while Streetman was a sales leader before ascending to CEO and Citrix currently has an interim leader. And with the sharp declines in the stock market in 2022 and fears of a recession, the appointment of Krause indicates that Vista is placing an emphasis on the monetary health of Tibco and Citrix.

"We've just had a major shakeout in the financial markets and Vista appears to be more concerned about financial management at this time," Henschen said.

While Streetman won't be Tibco's CEO once the merger with Citrix is complete, the analytics vendor will still have its product and development leaders in place, which suggests stability for current Tibco customers, he added.

Tibco offers three separate analytics platforms, with Spotfire enabling deep data exploration, streaming analytics and data science; WebFocus specializing in scalable reporting that allows thousands of users to view and work with the same data; and JasperSoft designed for developers to enable them to embed BI within applications.

The analytics tools help make up Tibco's "predict" portfolio. In addition, the vendor has a "connect" portfolio that includes its cloud capabilities and a "unify" portfolio that addresses data management.

Meanwhile, despite the pending change at the top, Nelson Petracek remains Tibco's chief technology officer and Matt Quinn is still its chief operating officer. And at the product level, Mark Palmer is its senior vice president of analytics, data science and data products.

"Reports to the CEO at each brand unit can steer software direction," Henschen said.

In fact, the day after it was revealed that Streetman will eventually depart Tibco and Krause will become its new CEO, the vendor released ModelOps, an anticipated tool first unveiled in preview more than a year ago that will enable organizations to quickly deploy data science models at scale.

While Henschen expressed some surprise at the move to appoint a new leader of Tibco once it merges with Citrix, David Menninger, an analyst at Ventana Research, noted that acquisitions often lead to changes in leadership.

And though Tibco wasn't technically acquired in Vista and Evergreen's deal to buy Citrix, its merger with Citrix will result in a changed company. Citrix, meanwhile, is indeed getting a new owner.

"I'm never surprised when a change of ownership results in a change in leadership," Menninger said. "The acquirer usually often believes there is some untapped opportunity in the organization they are acquiring which the existing leadership did not recognize."

I'm not surprised there is a new CEO. It makes sense to drive a new direction for the unified company. This is, after all, not a takeover by one of the other, but more like a real merger. Donald FarmerFounder and principal, TreeHive Strategy

Similarly, Donald Farmer, founder and principal at TreeHive Strategy, said it's not a shock that Vista and Evergreen plan to put a new CEO in place once Tibco and Citrix have been joined, noting that neither Tibco nor Citrix is acquiring the other in the same way Tibco bought IBI in 2020, so it makes sense that neither company's leader will be CEO.

"I'm not surprised there is a new CEO," he said. "It makes sense to drive a new direction for the unified company. This is, after all, not a takeover by one of the other, but more like a real merger."

While a new CEO is set to take over once Tibco and Citrix join forces, it remains to be seen whether the two companies are a good fit.

The vendors' technologies do not have an obvious synergy, though at the time Vista and Evergreen's acquisition of Citrix was first revealed, Tibco's Streetman said the changing nature of the workforce with many more people working from home than just a few years ago served as part of the motivation for the move.

"I don't really see the synergies between Tibco and Citrix," Menninger said. "Obviously, both are software companies, but there is not a lot of overlap between Tibco's data and analytics capabilities and Citrix's digital workspace technology."

At the time the acquisition and resulting merger of Tibco and Citrix was first revealed, Henschen speculated that perhaps the greatest benefit to Tibco will be exposure to Citrix's customer base of more than 400,000.

However, six months later Henschen noted that the reasons for the merger still aren't clear.

"I'm still puzzling over the combination a bit and haven't seen synergistic messaging and positioning," he said. "The Tibco and Citrix sites are still displaying the messaging and positioning that was in place before the acquisition. We'll see if things change quickly in the wake of Krause's appointment."

Farmer, meanwhile, said he is a bit more bullish on the merger given how many more people work remotely than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

By combining Tibco and Citrix, the new company has the potential to deliver enterprise infrastructure capabilities to organizations with remote employees while also providing high-level analytics capabilities.

"This shift [to remote work] represents a challenge to any company delivering enterprise infrastructure," Farmer said. "There should be significant opportunities for the new company to deliver the entire hybrid work experience from the networking experience to the real-time data and analytics experience."

He cautioned, however, that a merger between companies the size of Tibco and Citrix could be complex, and if it proves unwieldy could hurt Tibco's product development pipeline.

"The merger could be complicated, messy and a drag on innovation," Farmer said. "If it plays out that way, this will be an opportunity lost, because the market is moving very quickly toward new working practices and new infrastructure to support it. Tom Krause has his work cut out to make this both effective and efficient."

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New CEO not likely to change Tibco once merged with Citrix - TechTarget

The Miller School of Medicine Department of Radiology is working with the Universitys Institute for Data Science and Computing to design an artificial intelligence tool that could help them diagnose patients in a more individualized way.

Over the years, new technology has helped radiologists diagnose illnesses on a multitude of medical images, but it has also changed their jobs.

While in the past these physicians spent more time speaking with patients, today they spend most of the time in the reading rooma dark space where they scrutinize images alongside a patients electronic medical records and other data sourcesto diagnose an illness.

A radiologists job is often solitary. And it is a trend that University of Miami Miller School of Medicine radiologists Dr. Alex McKinney and Dr. Fernando Collado-Mesa hope to change.

The two physicians have been working with the Universitys Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC) to create an artificial intelligence toolbox that will draw on a massive database of deidentified data and medical images to help doctors diagnose and treat diseases based not only on imaging data but by also considering a patients unique background and circumstances. This would include risk factors, like race and ethnicity, socioeconomic and educational status, and exposure. The physicians say it is a necessary innovation at a time when narrow artificial intelligence in radiology is only able to make a binary decision such as positive or negative for one disease, rather than scanning for a host of disorders.

We believe the next iteration of artificial intelligence should be contextual in nature, which will take in all of a patients risk factors, lab data, past medical data, and will help us follow the patient, said McKinney, who is also the chair of the Department of Radiology. It will become a form of augmented interpretation to help us take care of the patient.

According to Collado-Mesa, this toolbox will not just say yes or no, disease or no disease. It will point to the data around it to consider a variety of issues for each individual patient, to put its findings into a context, including future risk.

Current artificial intelligence tools are also limited to a specific type of medical image, and cannot, for example, analyze both MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and ultrasound at the same time. In addition, the patient data that is used in these diagnosis tools is typically not inclusive of a range of demographic groups, which can lead to a bias in care. Having a tool that draws upon the examples of millions of South Florida patients, while maintaining their privacy, will help radiologists be more efficient and comprehensive, McKinney noted.

Right now, there is just so much data for radiologists to sift through. So, this could help us as our tech-based partner, McKinney added.

All of these factors led Collado-Mesa and McKinney to try and create a better alternative, and they spoke with IDSC director Nick Tsinoremas, also a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Tsinoremas and IDSCs advanced computing team came up with the idea of utilizing an existing toolcalled URIDEa web-based platform that aggregates deidentified patient information for faculty researchand adding in the deidentified images from the Department of Radiology.

They hope to unveil a first version of the toolbox this summer and plan to add new elements as more imaging data is added. It will include millions of CT scans, mammograms, and ultrasound and MRI images, along with radiographs, McKinney pointed out.

We dont want to rush this because we want it to be a high-quality, robust toolbox, said Collado-Mesa, an associate professor of radiology and breast imaging, as well as chief of innovation and artificial intelligence for the Department of Radiology.

Both physicians and Tsinoremas hope that the artificial intelligence tool will help answer vital research questions, like: what risk factors lead to certain brain tumors? Or, what are the most effective treatments for breast cancer in certain demographic groups? It will also use machine learning, a technique that constantly trains computer programs how to utilize a growing database, so it can learn the best ways to diagnose certain conditions.

Creating this resource can help with diagnosis and will allow predictive modeling for certain illnesses, so that if a person has certain image characteristics and clinical information that is similar to other patients from this database, doctors could predict the progression of a disease, the efficacy of their medication, and so on, Tsinoremas said.

To ensure the toolbox will be unbiased, the team is also planning to add more images and data of all population groups in the community, as it is available, as well as to monitor the different elements constantly and systematically within the toolbox to make sure it is performing properly.

The radiologists plan to focus first on illnesses that have a high mortality or prevalence in the local population, like breast cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer, and to add others with time.

The technology could allow them to spend more time with patients and offer more personalized, precision-based care based on the patients genetics, age, and risk factors, according to both physicians.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to advocate for the patients, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine based on screening guidelines, McKinney said. This could help us get away from that, and it would hopefully offer more hope for people with rare diseases.

But as data is added in the future, the researchers hope to expand their work with the tool. And they hope that physicians across the University will use it to conduct medical research, too.

This is a resource that any UM investigator could potentially access, provided that they have the approvals, and it could spark a number of different research inquiries to describe the progression of disease and how patients respond to different treatments in a given time periodthese are just some of the questions we can ask, Tsinoremas said.

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Radiologists hope to use AI to improve readings - University of Miami: News@theU

By Abhijit Dasgupta

Data is the new fuel, this does not only apply to big data companies, but also MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) as they can now take advantage of Data Science.

MSMEs face numerous challenges. Most MSMEs are founded by individual entrepreneurship & vision with little capital. Many of them are engaged in contract manufacturing and/or services. The major problems they face are in the areas of (a) access to long-term and short term capital (b) access to markets and revenue realizations (c) costs management (d) statutory compliances including taxes & duties (e) technologies / machineries used (f) training & development of human resources / staff (g) operations.

A problem seen through many businesses in MSME is that they look forward to making profit as their primary goal, rather than brand building and customer trust building. Its clearly visible that MSME sector is behind the data curve but its still not too late for them to apply these methods in their business. Small businesses may have just limited resources, but the good news is that they dont realise that they too generate humongous amount of data in form of payments, credit sales or even as reminders given to clients. One of the use cases where data science can be effectively used in MSMEs (though applicable for other sectors as well) is use of AI. AI has left a big impact in positively improving the Manufacturing Sector. Data science tools proved to be revolutionary for manufacturing since it helped in improving value chain management and making best use of resources. Apart from this, it also helped to predict the hot selling products, hence serving for better logistics management and not disappointing customer by having a shortage for the product. We will dive deeper as to see how Data Science helps to improve business for small manufacturers and contractors in Manufacturing sector.

A critical aspect for any manufacturing business in MSME sector is their product. Customers trust companies through their products, and this is where Data Science can prove to be a turning point for these businesses. The AI and data management tools see to it that the product is made after a proper strategy that involves modelling to decision making to customer feedback to new idea generation. It also sees the market competition before launching the new product. Hence, it makes it clear to put customers needs and demands as its priority. Once the product is ready, the next step any business does is try to forecast its sales so as to avoid any future problems. Moreover, Data Science tools may help businesses with this challenge as they make sure that data is being used to its full potential. Apart from forecasting sales, they even make use of predictive analysis from an early stage to ensure and prevent any hindrance for future opportunities.

Another area where Data Science can help immensely is in for predicting faults / downtimes and scheduling maintenance. The planned breaks will not slow down the process and at the same time help in avoiding any delays or future failures.

A key part for any product-based business, whether small or big, will be its inventory management. Over here data analytics proves to be more than useful for MSMEs as it assists them in regularly notifying for over-ordering or under-ordering or outstanding inventory records. Hence, it assesses full data and then improves the ongoing methods to create a stronger and more profitable inventory management system. Not only that, but also it uses this historical data to forecast the stock to keep according to the conditions. Like if a storm is predicted, then data analytics can predict to have the most popular thing as majority of stock so as to avoid overstocking and hence again increasing cost savings.

Supply chain and logistics, a field that no business can overlook. Earlier, when there was less consumption, there was less demand and hence the supply chain was manually done by small businesses themselves, but technology has made scalability a thing of past; but MSMEs need to leverage the advantages that eCommerce can provide. Over here big Data Analytics can not only help them to plan and notify backup suppliers by evaluating probabilities of problems that can occur in future, but also provide with real time data analytics that is very crucial to keep up with the ever-updating world. Along with that, these tools also provide with demand forecasting option which reaps multiple benefits like inventory control, restricting storage for pointless products and nonetheless help better enhance the supplier-manufacturer relation and eventually the supply chain process.

Another help Data Science provides to an FMCG-Retail MSMEs is promoting their brand and providing them help to plan their next branches. The world lives on social media today and businesses should definitely take that as leverage to create impactful posts in form of retweets or emoji or comments on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook to create a full proof strategy for boosting their brand recognition. This is usually done through sentiment analysis which is another breakthrough achieved in Data Science field. Along with it, they should also take full advantage of location intelligence, that is use customers location data to increase revenue and cost savings by targeting and informing customers about any updates in the business.

Some of the most beneficial use cases of data science in MSME sector is in price optimization for a product which it decides based on an analysis done keeping all factors in mind and which isnt too expensive for the customer but that the same price is nominal enough to survive in the competitive market. Earlier we saw how it helps with supply chain management, but apart from that it also tends to save time for warehousing process where it automatically suggests how to stock goods, saving time and space, and keep a constant track of items to be re-ordered so there are no stock shortages.

A famous example of where Data science is brilliantly used is in making of Rolls Royce. The prototype is only finalised if it matches the excellence criteria and that is achieved through analysing terabytes of data extensively using the AI and Data Science tools. Similar process is used in manufacture of BMW, where they use data analytics to understand and act on any loopholes or faults they find in prototype, hence saving millions of dollars before releasing anything into market. These experiences can be quickly replicated in manufacturing, contract manufacturing and product engineering in small scale sector.

In India, there are several MSMEs engaged in pharma and chemical business data science can help them in quite a big way in managing quality standards and to ensure that drug efficacy is not compromised. According to an experimental study, just by introducing roughly around 9 parameters, the yield for vaccines has seen to be improved by over 50% it is a great accomplishment in todays time.

With resources being at stretch in this sector, often a question arises in the minds of the owners / managers about costs and risks of such endeavours : the good news is, most of the softwares used in data sciences are free, even computing for a test-drive can be absolutely free (may be at a little cost of a few thousand rupees) by cloud services providers, the possible upside of the work is way larger than the risk/downside of the failures. The only challenge in that case remains in the form of human competence.

To sum it up, Data is the most powerful weapon today if used correctly. So, all businesses, whether it be small local retail store or a medium scale contract manufacturing entity, should seek to imbibe use of technology to build and grow business. The recent experience of Covid and the general lockdown conditions the world experienced gave rise to a very interesting observations: companies those used technology, those companies did exceedingly well and the others who did not suffered losses and got shaken up. The data can be used as companies leverage with developing a correct big data strategy, as not adapting to the big data revolution might leave those businesses at a disadvantage. The AI trend will be high yielding for MSMEs if they have a vision and patience to achieve long-term success.

The author is director, bachelor of data science, SP Jain School of Global Management.

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How can MSMEs benefit from data science in their business? - The Financial Express

THE Technological Institute of the Philippines (T.I.P.) is opening School Year 2022-2023 with a new undergraduate degree offering: Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Analytics (BSDSA).

This comes two years after T.I.P. launched Metro Manilas first-ever Professional Science Masters Degree in Data Science (PSMDS) back in 2020.

The substantial number of enrollees weve had for PSMDS [not only confirms] that the market is informed and keenly aware of the growing need for data scientists; it also affirms the relevance of the program. We therefore deemed it necessary to offer BSDSA. said Dr. Elizabeth Quirino-Lahoz, T.I.P.s president.

BSDSA is a four-year program designed to equip students with theoretical, practical and comprehensive knowledge to manage and analyze complex data. It covers fundamental and advanced computer programming, predictive modeling, machine learning, statistical techniques, algorithms, methodologies, business intelligence, data visualization and its applications across multiple disciplines.

To ensure global competitiveness, T.I.P. said it benchmarked its BSDSA curriculum with top universities abroad.

Data scientists are among the most in-demand professionals in the world today, Dr. Quirino-Lahoz added. With big data having a tremendous impact on [ways] industries make major decisions, we need experts who can analyze and translate these numbers into positive business outcomes.

Application and enrollment for T.I.Ps BSDSA are now ongoing. For more information about the program, visit bit.ly/TIP_BSDSA.

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TIP among pioneers to offer BS Data Science and Analytics - BusinessMirror

Precision environmental health, the totality of our environmental exposures, new funding opportunities related to climate change and health (see sidebar), efforts to combat environmental health disparities, and report back of research results were among the topics discussed at the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council meeting held June 7-8.

NIEHS Director Rick Woychik, Ph.D., shared some scientific areas that have come into focus over the past couple of years. Those include precision environmental health and the exposome; computational biology and data science; climate change and health; environmental justice and health disparities; and mechanistic and translational toxicology.

Studying the exposome the totality of an individuals environmental exposures throughout the life course, and their corresponding biological changes is critical for the advancement of precision environmental health, noted Woychik. The precision environmental health framework aims to prevent disease by shedding light on how individuals vary in their response to exposures based on their unique genetic, epigenetic, and biological makeup.

To expand knowledge in this area, NIEHS is hosting an upcoming workshop series titled Accelerating Precision Environmental Health: Demonstrating the Value of the Exposome, which will cover the following topics.

To learn more about the workshops and to register, click here(https://tools.niehs.nih.gov/conference/exposomics2022/).

Woychik also shared information about the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which is a new entity within the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

ARPA-H will advance breakthroughs in biomedical research by funding cutting-edge scientific studies and approaches. Council members discussed the importance of such funding for NIEHS grantees, especially early-stage investigators.

On May 31, the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) formally established a new Office of Environmental Justice (OEJ) in response to President Bidens Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. OEJ will reside within the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health.

Arsenio Mataka, J.D., a senior advisor to the assistant secretary, informed Council that OEJ will work to directly improve the wellbeing of underserved communities.

OEJ will lead HHS efforts to coordinate implementation of the Justice40 Initiative, which aims to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of federal investments in clean energy, water, transit, housing, workforce development, and pollution remediation to disadvantaged communities. The NIEHS Environmental Career Worker Training Program is participating in the Justice40 Initiative (see related story in this issue).

Eliseo Prez-Stable, M.D., director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), shared his institutes research agenda on environmental health disparities. He outlined important NIMHD and NIEHS collaborations in this area, such as RADx Underserved Populations, an NIH program designed to reduce disparities in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.

There is a lot of overlap, and we have much in common, Prez-Stable noted regarding NIMHD and NIEHS. We both have a strong sense of the importance of community engagement, and were both very interested in addressing issues of unequal care and social injustice in health and health care.

NIEHS Division of Extramural Research and Training Deputy Director Pat Mastin, Ph.D., described the divisions longstanding commitment to addressing environmental health disparities and promoting environmental justice. He discussed recent NIEHS workshops on racism as a public health issue, advancing environmental health equity, and womens health disparities.

NIEHS Partnerships for Environmental Public Health (PEPH) Program coordinator Liam OFallon gave an overview of the programs achievements since its 2009 launch. PEPH includes a diverse network of scientists, community members, educators, health care providers, public health officials, and policymakers. Together, they work to address important health challenges and improve lives by translating research into action.

PEPH has evolved into a community of practice for our grantees, partners, and NIEHS staff, he said. It helps to integrate ideas and practices, encourages learning from one another, and enables individuals to solve common problems.

OFallon also highlighted an effort to promote report back of environmental health research results to study participants. He is working with NIEHS grantees Julia Brody, Ph.D., from the Silent Spring Institute, and Katrina Korfmacher, Ph.D., from the University of Rochester Medical Center, to develop guidelines and best practices that will make it easier for researchers to share findings, thereby empowering individuals to take steps to improve their health. (Check out this months NIEHS Directors Corner column to learn more.)

(Ernie Hood is a contract writer for the NIEHS Office of Communications and Public Liaison.)

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Environmental Factor - July 2022: New initiatives to transform research highlighted at Council meeting - Environmental Factor Newsletter