Artificial Intelligence

AI making Rapid Strides

With its immense benefits becoming obvious, artificial intelligence (AI) is fast taking over various tasks in businesses across sectors. Typically, it is put to use to carry out functions that need accuracy but are repetitive in nature, like data analysis. At the other end of the spectrum, the technology is being honed and taken to a cutting-edge levels – unlocking its potential to perform cognitive functions of the kind the human mind performs such as perception, reasoning, problem solving, and even anticipating forthcoming situations, such as supply chain choking for instance, and be ready with solutions.
Other than the familiar data analysis, AI is currently used commonly in areas like Speech Recognition, Robotic Process Automation, Natural Language Generation, Bio-metrics et al. Likewise, the applications range from converting human speech into a format that a computer can understand and apply, use algorithms to device machine learning platforms (like the ones Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc. use), and Bio-metrics that recognise, measure and analyse human’s physical features and behaviour.

And while the potential of AI is limitless, businesses by and large are just beginning to harness that basic benefits of the technology. Even so, recent studies suggest that software for machine learning and deep learning segments of AI are expected to rake in a staggering $90 billion in revenue by 2025.
Companies are deploying the tech to achieve new levels of efficiency in data analysis to run functions and boost bottom lines. This in turn is driving research in the domain itself at a furious pace. Tech giants are pouring in enormous rerun sources into exploring the depth and scope of next-gen AI solutions. In fact, data scientists at internet giants as well as start-ups are teaming up with business managers to get machines to do number crunching that enables decision-making a low-risk affair so as to optimise revenue in businesses. Indeed, the next decade is likely to see seminal changes in both – extensive use of AI to run organisations as also the unleashing of the staggering breadth and scope of AI itself.
Top 15 AI technologies in currency today:
— Natural Language Generation
— Speech Recognition
— Machine Learning Platforms
— Virtual Agents
— Decision Managements
— Ai Optimized Hardware
— Deep Learning Platforms
— Robotic Process Automation
— Text Analytics and Natural Alnguage Processing (NLP)
— Bio-metrics
— Cyber Defence
— Content Creation
— Emotion Recognition
— Image Recognition
— Marketing Automation

Selenium

Selenium: Versatile Software Testing automation tool

Selenium is one of the most widely used open-source WebUI (User Interface) Automation Testing suite, originally developed in 2004. It has a portable framework which provides a playback tool for authoring functional tests without the need to learn a test scripting language. The testing tool provides a test domain-specific language to write test cases where the developer can use programming languages, including C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Scala, Groovy.

It’s a suite, not just one tool

Intrinsically, Selenium it is not a single tool, instead it is a product suite consisting of:

-- Selenium WebDriver

-- Selenium RC (Remote Control)

-- Selenium IDE

--Selenium-Grid

The Selenium IDE is the simplest framework in the suite and is the easiest one to learn. It is a Firefox plugin that testers can install on their PCs. However, because of its simplicity, Selenium IDE should only be used as a prototyping tool. For creating more advanced test cases, testers might have to use either Selenium RC or WebDriver.

Selenium can be used to automate functional tests and can be integrated with automation test tools such as Maven, Jenkins and Docker to achieve continuous testing. It can also be integrated with tools such as TestNG and JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports. Selenium-Grid is a feature that allows you to run test cases in different machines across different platforms. The control of triggering the test cases is on the local machine, and when the test cases are triggered, they are automatically executed by the remote machine.

Salient features

-- Ensures transparency, agility and transparency across the cross-functional teams of SDLC process (developers, quality assurance, operations, clients and the management).

-- Avoids waste of tester’s time in writing test scripts for each platform to be tested as it follows the principle of writing one test script and runs on any platform.

-- Fosters delivery integration efforts by automating the test process.

-- Offers great visibility in cases of end-to-end applications testing.

-- Reduces turnaround time by facilitating testing teams to automatically run multiple test cases parallelly on multi-browser platforms. This reduces the turnaround time by ensuring extreme testing quality.

-- Allows integration with other tools and jars like ExtentReports, Sikuli and Appium that extend its own functionalities too.

Why testers prefer it

Testers prefer Selenium over any other tool due to its ease of use, availability and simplicity. With the introduction of Selenium RC, testers can now circumvent the restrictions imposed by Same Origin policy prohibits JavaScript code from accessing elements from a domain that is different from where it was launched. Besides that, Selenium also encourages testers to write a script in one programming language and run (re-use) the same test scripts on multiple browser platforms.

Selenium’s WebDriver is of late becoming standard for all browsers, which in turn will automatically support it. The interesting aspect of WebDriver is it leverages testers in testing UI modules, offers a large set of options to test, compare results and finally check if they are in accordance to the expected application behaviour.

Nutanix @ Attuneww

Nutanix: Leader in Hyperconvergence space

The concept

Nutanix is an Enterprise Cloud OS based on hyperconvergened technology which serves as a building block for private clouds. Its solutions are based on the industry’s most popular hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) technology i.e. a completely software-defined stack that integrates compute, virtualisation, storage, networking and security to run any application at any scale. Nutanix essentially offers a solution to data center complexities, scalability and flexibility issues with its hyperconverged technology and equipment.

The benefits

With Nutanix, client businesses obtain a software or operating system that has the ability to reap the functionality of multiple clouds all at the same time, and consequently produce a management system that is scalable, simple and yet workload-oriented. From the users’ point of view, this technology is tuned to scale up a business easily on a shared-nothing architecture with no single point of failure, and no data and meta-data redundancy. It is built to deliver a software-defined enterprise cloud that can run applications at any scale.

Low cost, high yield:

-- Lower costs: 40-60% reduction in overall CapEx and OpEx.

-- Limitless Scalability: Scale infrastructure predictably and linearly, without limits.

-- Fastest time-to-value: Eight-times faster time-to-value in buying, deploying and managing.

-- Smallest footprint: Up to 90% reduction in power, cooling and space, with a 2U form factor.

-- Spares time for IT innovation: Frees up IT resources to focus on important initiatives and innovation.

How it works

All solutions featured by Nutanix are software defined and hyperconverged, meaning they operate on a virtualized and integrated infrastructure of computing, storage, and networking that are available as a full stack. It delivers a web-scale, hyperconverged infrastructure solution purpose-built for virtualization and cloud environments. This solution brings the scale, resilience, and economic benefits of web-scale architecture to companies through the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform, which combines three product families -- Nutanix Acropolis, Nutanix Prism and Nutanix Calm.

The attributes

As an Enterprise Cloud OS, Nutanix is optimized for storage and compute resources. It employs machine learning to plan for and adapt to changing conditions automatically, and is self-healing to tolerate and adjust to component failures.

Features at a glance:

 -- API-based automation and rich analytics.

 -- Simplified one-click upgrade.

-- Native file services for user and application data.

-- Native backup and disaster recovery solutions.

-- Powerful and feature-rich virtualization.

-- Flexible software-defined networking for visualization, automation, and security.

-- Cloud automation and life cycle management.