The Federal Aviation Administration has begun a research and development pilot aimed at helping the agency detect and react to hackers before they have a chance to attack FAA systems, IBM and the FAA announced Tuesday.
The pilot makes use of recently released IBM software called InfoSphere Streams, which was developed in conjunction with the Department of Defense and can perform realtime analytics on heavy throughput data streams of up to millions of events or messages per second.
FAA security analysts are swamped on a daily basis with a massive volume of security information coming from the FAA's firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and wireless detection systems as well as data feeds from other agencies and commercial security services such as Verisign's iDefense.
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Voxeo's Prophecy, described by company officials as a standards-based platform for speech, IVR, and SIP VoIP applications, is a telephony application platform software offering "enterprise-class features with retail like simplicity."
Also, since its an openly available, single download product with no configuration required - just one download includes speech recognition, speech synthesis, and the company's designer visual development tool.
The product includes functionality needed to create and deploy IVR or VoIP applications, including full VoiceXML and CCXML browsers with high-quality speech recognition and synthesis engines, a built-in SIP soft-phone, and support for hundreds of SIP providers and devices.
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Since its formation in California in 1874, Bank of the West has - in what is undoubtedly one of the truer sentences written - "seen its business undergo many dramatic changes."
Initially, the bank was formed to support farmers in Northern California and today is the third largest commercial bank headquartered in the West. The bank has grown aggressively through 15 acquisitions in a two-decade period, bank officials say, noting that it now has $55.6 billion in assets, more than 700 branch banking locations and commercial offices, and nearly 10,000 employees.
But the bank had issues with standardizing its business processes. Especially given its numerous acquisitions, "consistency throughout the footprint is the key to improving operations, enhancing customer service, creating greater operating efficiency, and increasing sales," they believe.
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A recent white paper from Contactual looks at call centers and "examines the differences between on-premises call centers and hosted alternatives." Tipping its hand a bit, the paper's introduction says it "looks at the reasons why on-premises call centers are becoming obsolete."
Noting that enterprises have traditionally invested millions of dollars into building and maintaining best-in class call centers, the paper says "for decades, this strategy made sense." However, "in today's environment of rapid technological change and economic volatility, an on-premises call center is no longer an asset; in most cases, it is a clear disadvantage."
Highlighting three of the major problems with on-premises call centers, the paper notes that, for one, it requires significant capital expenditure. "Purchasing the hardware and software required to set up a new call center runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars," it finds, adding that given the tremendous complexity and cost, the technology often becomes outdated soon after it is up and running.
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Of course the question on everyone's mind is, "Can I convince my wife that I need an iPad because it'll take the place of my laptop?"
Tony Bradley, author of Unified Connections for Dummies, doesn't have that problem, as a tech writer he can justify getting an endless stream of cool tech toys as "work," much the same way a sportswriter can watch a baseball game while over at the in-laws' and call it "work."
Still, Bradley set out to find the answer - is the iPad your all-in-one biz tool?
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