by Don Basile | Nov 2, 2020 | Tech
In 2016, Frederic Kerrest, COO and co-founder of the identity tech startup Okta, told Inc. that business was only “in the first inning” of cloud computing adoption. It is safe to say that we have moved along to subsequent innings. Snowflake, a Silicon Valley cloud data warehousing company, on September 15, 2020 raised $3.4 billion in what is the largest software IPO ever.
Now just about everyone wants his or her turn at bat (to torture the baseball metaphor a bit more).
Precious few industries have been left unaware of the advantages the cloud can offer. It is estimated, in fact, that 90 percent of companies are now reaping its benefits, and that spending on cloud infrastructure services will increase from $39.5 billion in 2019 to $63 billion by 2021.
Those benefits range from things like increasing accessibility, improving efficiency, and reducing the sheer size of a company’s data center to reducing an enterprise’s carbon footprint.
Of particular interest is the level of security the cloud provides. A 2019 post on Onehub noted that all businesses would be wise to follow the 3-2-1 backup plan, under which data is stored in two places on-site and a third off-site, thus negating the impact of a disaster such as a fire.
That same site shared some grim statistics about cybersecurity. Fully 21 percent of business files go unprotected, and 41 percent of companies leave over 1,000 files vulnerable to attack, including files that contain sensitive personal information. And just about half of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses, while ransomware attacks have skyrocketed by some 350 percent each year.
The cloud obviously offers a much-needed layer of protection. Also pertinent — especially in this day and age, as the coronavirus pandemic rages — is the fact that the cloud offers businesses more flexibility in terms of remote work. No matter where an employee happens to be at any given moment, he or she can access a company’s data and applications. All that’s needed is the proper device and a working internet connection.
Here are four industries that have soared into the cloud:
- Education: With remote learning now a necessity in a great many places, the cloud offers the same flexibility it does to remote workers. Chad Stevens, leader for K-12 Education at Amazon Web Services, told EdTech Magazine that AWS affords students the opportunity to access educational resources, and in the case of the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, was integral to the setup of call centers for tech/remote support.
- Marketing/Advertising: Data is king, and cloud platforms allow those in such fields as marketing to gather information from various sources — and do so in real time. This obviously helps to spot emerging trends and markets, and thus get a leg up on the competition.
- Real Estate: As with other disciplines, agents and brokers in real estate benefit from accessibility while on the go. The cloud gives them the ability to store data, safely and securely — and have peace of mind in the event of, say, a hard drive gone bad.
- Healthcare: Telemedicine has taken on added importance during the pandemic, and is expected to be critical to this sector in the years ahead. That means, once again, that storing data in the cloud is of the utmost importance. In addition, patients have easy access to their own records, and thus a greater say in their own care than ever before.
The cloud looks incredibly promising for many businesses, in a variety of industries, as they look to meet current challenges and anticipate those in the years ahead. It offers accessibility, security and flexibility — and, perhaps most of all, peace of mind.
by Don Basile | Oct 20, 2020 | Tech
While 4G technology made possible high-speed mobile browsing and wearable connectivity, 5G promises that those wearables will become even more prominent, smaller, and more efficient. That goes for ones already in existence, like smartwatches and health trackers, and those still on the drawing board (like, believe it or not, tattooables).
How that happens comes down to 5G’s accessibility to the cloud, its lower latency, and its speed, which can theoretically be 100 times faster than 4G.
Real-time data transfer will now be possible, and some experts believe that in the not-too-distant future, virtually everything we wear (clothing, shoes, contact lenses, even sensors placed under the skin to track health data) will transform us into walking, talking connected devices.
Certainly skeptics remain, but Fortune cites International Data Corporation projections indicating that wearable sales will reach $49.4 billion this year, and soar to $69.8 billion by 2024. Sanyogita Shamsunder, Verizon’s vice president of 5G Labs and Innovation, told Fortune that ‘2024 will in fact serve as an “inflection point,” as that will be the year that medical sensors will become commonplace.
Already available, Fortune notes, are smart glasses, smart earbuds (a.k.a. “hearables”) and yoga pants that make those wearing them aware if their yoga technique leaves something to be desired.
And those tattooables? While still in development, they are expected to be constructed of wafer-thin electric mesh, according to Fortune, which will enable them to store data and do things like deliver drugs.
The reason wearables are expected to shrink in size, according to TechRadar, is that they will no longer need physical space to store data; 5G can simply zip data right to the cloud. Instead, wearables of the near future will consist of ultrathin sensors, and little else.
An increase in sensors and a decrease in size is precisely what will cement wearables as part of the Internet of Things. Until now, we’ve mostly thought of wearables as items such as smartwatches that the user wears on their wrist. But these sensor-packed devices could just as easily be connected to objects rather than people to read and process data in real-time.
Consumers may also be happy to know that relieving some of the processor’s job means that a device’s battery will be more efficient. The ability to charge wirelessly within a wider range — up to 30 cm away — will allow devices to charge without cables or docks, even when in use.
All of this will take time, however. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have all begun rolling out 5G, but it will be years before most of the country, let alone the world, has coverage. Then, manufacturers must create devices that harness the power of 5G.
In addition, there are privacy concerns about sensitive personal data being widely circulated, location data being easily accessible, and even foreign manufacturing threatening national security.
Such matters give one pause, to be sure. But for now, it’s full speed ahead for 5G, at 100 times the pace of the existing technology. While there are potential hurdles, there are also vast possibilities that make 5G’s future look extremely promising.
by Don Basile | Aug 31, 2020 | Tech
The problem with wearable sensors over the years has been one of durability. When repeatedly folded and bent, they developed micro-cracks that curtailed their conductivity.
Nothing a little red wine won’t fix. Or coffee. Or black tea.
The tannic acid present in those liquids was found by a team of scientists at the University of Manchester, England, to be crucial to improving the mechanical properties of wearables.
The team had previously used the same idea to develop artificial hands and capacitive breath sensors. Prior to the discovery of tannic acid as a useful tool in the creation of wearable technology, there had been many failures due to a lack of effective resources.
Tannic acid is the reason it is so difficult to remove red-wine stains from fabric: It firmly adheres to the material on the surface of the fiber. Such adhesion is, team leader Dr. Xuqing Liu, leader told Phys.org, “exactly what we need for durable, wearable, conductive devices.”
While scientists have been purchasing tannins to create these technological items, they tested fabrics by soaking them in coffee and black tea. They found that these liquids had the same effect on the fabrics that red wine did. This assured them that the adhesive properties of black coffee and tea are just as effective.
Using that knowledge, scientists are hopeful that in the near future they will be able to create wearable technology devices that are not only more comfortable but also longer-lasting and more cost-efficient.
Through the use of red wine, black tea and coffee, developers can create devices that, instead of being made of nylon, are made of cotton instead. The technology that is enabled by the use of tannic acid means that a device’s circuits will be attached to the surface of the fabric. This replaces the previous rigid circuit board with one that the wearer of the device isn’t even likely to notice.
While the technology industry is changing in many ways, wearable technology is among this and next year’s largest aspects. It has been predicted that sales of wearable technology around the world are set to reach a monetary value of $27 billion by 2022.
Yesterday’s wearable devices used conductive yarn. However, the coating on this material often peeled off, rendering it useless. Substituting tannic acid eliminates this problem.
Only time will tell what further research on this subject uncovers. But this latest breakthrough represents a quantum leap forward, in that it improves the durability of these widely used sensors. Moreover, it shows what can be accomplished through an outside-the-box approach — how a problem can be solved, if only it is approached from a different angle.
by Don Basile | Aug 17, 2020 | Tech
As detailed by Chris Pedigo of Lacework.com, 2019 saw some dark days for the cloud. While companies storing information in such data centers usually find that method cost-effective and efficient, the exceptions were notable, and troubling.
In April, 540 million Facebook records were exposed via Cultura Colectiva, a Mexican content provider. In May, Instagram saw 49 million records laid bare. July brought the Capital One breach, in which 80,000 bank account numbers (and 140,000 social security numbers) were exposed. And September saw the Autoclerk breach, where travel reservations were hacked, including those of military personnel involved with sensitive operations.
As a result, businesses are increasingly turning to blockchain to secure their cloud storage. An integral part of the larger trend toward Blockchain as a Service (BaaS), the distributed security makes this decentralized ledger far less vulnerable to hackers than the centralized servers preferred by most companies in the past.
The reasons have been well-documented. There are the cryptographic hashes unique to each block, which results in the chain’s immutability — i.e., none of the blocks can be modified without altering the whole chain. There is the peer-to-peer network, to which all data is distributed. Because it is not stored by any single entity but rather a node of users, the information within the chain cannot be changed by an outside actor. That ties into another security measure — the consensus protocol, under which all users need to verify a new block.
Finally, there is proof-of-work (PoW), the algorithm used to verify the transactions that lead to the creation of new blocks in the chain.
Again, such security is one of the great appeals of blockchain, and spending on the technology, which has tripled since 2017, is expected to reach $16 billion by 2023. Healthcare in particular is expected to reap the benefits of this technology, as blockchain spending in that sector is projected to reach $1.4 billion by 2024.
At present, however, healthcare lags behind financial services, manufacturing and energy and utilities in the industries that executives view as being most advanced in blockchain development, per a Business Insider survey. Forty-six percent of those polled believe that financial services have made the greatest strides in that area, compared to 12 percent for manufacturing, 12 percent for energy and utilities and 11 percent for healthcare. (Another eight percent view governmental use as being the most advanced.)
But it is expected that there will be precious few industries that won’t be impacted by this technology in the years to come. One report listed 58 possible areas in which blockchain can be applied, ranging from voting to ride-sharing to advertising.
The conclusion is a simple one: A decentralized storage system like blockchain can do for information what it has been doing for cryptocurrencies, keeping it safe and sound, and accessible only to those on the chain in question. The trend toward blockchain will only continue in the years ahead, and cut across all sectors.
by Don Basile | Aug 12, 2020 | Tech
Where water pollution is concerned, the statistics are staggering.
Each year, eight million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans. There are estimated to be 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in those bodies of water, comprising between 60 and 90 percent of the pollution found there. By 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Plastic kills marine animals — about 100 million of them perish each year from such waste — and it’s killing humans too. The chemicals contained in it, which are ingested by fish and in turn by humans, are known carcinogens. They also affect hormonal function. Not to be forgotten, either, is the fact that we depend on the oceans for drinking water and oxygen; if those bodies of water are compromised, so are we.
It will take various means, not to mention international cooperation, to solve a problem of such colossal proportions. But 3D printing may prove to be a part of the solution, especially since it attacks the problem from the standpoint of both sustainability and recycling.
Consider, for example, the 3D printer known as Ekocycle, which is made by 3D Systems, one of the leaders in the field. It is capable of extruding recycled bottles like those collected by various organizations (and various devices, such as the Ocean Cleanup Array, invented by Dutch teenager Boyan Slat).
The machine, which is not yet available to the public, transforms those bottles into raw materials for new products.
Also gaining traction, especially among manufacturers seeking greater cost-effectiveness, is the concept of sustainability through 3D printing. The Bio-Shelters Project aims to explore recycling in 3D printing using various alternative materials including wood, clay, sugar, cellulose fiber, recycled paper and concrete.
Team members of the Bio-Shelters Project are challenged to build seawalls out of sustainable materials. Both the United States and Europe have thousands of miles of natural coastlines in which about half have been modified with artificial structures including seawalls. These structures provide protection to shorelines and enhancement of fisheries. They also help with water filtering.
But the Bio-Shelters Project takes seawall building to a new, sustainable level. By taking into account the ecological conditions where the seawalls and bio-shelter attachments are to be installed, they can create the structures from materials that are uniquely appropriate for each location. Some of the materials added to a standard concrete mix included crushed oyster shells from Sydney vendors, vermiculite, crushed rock and sand.
The end products from 3D printers for the project are silicone molds of 200 x 200 x 50 mm tiles, which are currently used in the ocean for testing. Researchers want to learn about the structural quality of materials underwater and how they affect marine life.
One of the key issues about 3D printers for ocean use centers around which recycled materials are most suitable for sustainability and performance. The old saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” has renewed meaning in the age of sustainability, as scrap materials and other rejected materials have taken on huge recycling value.
The advent of the 3D printer will play an exciting and crucial role in cleaning up plastic pollution in oceans around the world. It may not be enough to eradicate the tons of plastic debris dumped into our oceans each year, but it is one small and meaningful step in the right direction.
