Archive for January 20, 2020

Element AI announces Access Governor

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 20, 2020 by itnerd

Element AI today announced the general availability of its Access Governor product, the latest addition to the company’s growing portfolio of AI software solutions. Drawing on the end-user’s historical data, Access Governor analyzes, recommends, and manages the most appropriate information and location access rights for large groups of employees, so they can efficiently complete their jobs. The product allows the IT team to quickly authorize or revoke employee access and accounts, creating a safer, more orderly organization. Access Governor is available now through the Element AI sales group.

For years, businesses have struggled with regulating digital access control to data and facilities—especially businesses with high numbers of employees and external contractors.

Element AI has taken its applied research capabilities to create a software that will analyze and manage role-based access control for multiple ‘digital keychains’ with predictive pre-assembly and activation/revocation intelligence that can quickly facilitate access to the critical information and assets of any company.

While role-based access control systems have existed for a long time, rules and protocols had to be configured. This is a slow and inefficient process, with no intuition on the part of the access control layer. Many businesses end up having to manually configure and reconfigure rules each time there is a reorganization of employees or changes in the applications used. Access Governor brings in an additional layer of intelligence built on top of this process that looks at past patterns and current trends to empower any IT team to quickly adapt to employee additions, departures and changing contractor access rights.

For more information about Element AI Access Governor product, or to request a sales demo, contact: elementai.com/contact.

Leave a comment »

TekSavvy Tells Consumers To Pay Less To Connect

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 20, 2020 by itnerd

TekSavvy today urged Canadians to visit paylesstoconnect.ca to voice their support for a historic CRTC decision to lower Internet prices.  Canada’s Big Telcos, such as Bell and Rogers, petitioned the federal cabinet to cancel the decision and hike Internet prices instead. The Big Telcos’ price hike petitions are open for public comment until February 14.

fsdfsdfsa

The CRTC’s decision lowered the wholesale rates Big Telcos charge small ISPs, like TekSavvy. The CRTC found Big Telcos broke its rules and fabricated costs to inflate their rates for competitors, keeping prices high for Canadians. During its 4-year rate-setting process, the CRTC condemned the Big Telcos’ Internet rate-fixing as “very disturbing”, lowered their rates and ordered them to repay overbilled amounts back to March 2016 (estimated at $325 million).

The Government of Canada stood up for telecom consumers by directing the CRTC to promote competition, affordability and consumers’ interests. Following the CRTC’s decision, TekSavvy immediately began passing the benefits on to consumers, lowering Internet bills and upgrading services for hundreds of thousands of customers – until Big Telcos halted the CRTC’s decision in court.  The Big Telcos have since filed numerous appeals to overturn the decision and thwart any benefit to consumers or competition.

Visit Paylesstoconnect.ca to make your voice heard.

Leave a comment »

Opera Seems To Be In The Predatory Loan Business Besides Being A Browser Comany… WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 20, 2020 by itnerd

You might have heard of the Opera web browser. Or perhaps you might not have heard of it because its market share when compared to browsers like Chrome and Firefox is really small. I am guessing that this is affecting it’s revenue because according to Android Police, Opera has a new line of business. Predatory loans:

You may recall that Opera became a public company in mid-2017, shortly after it was purchased by a China-based investor group. Since then, Opera’s market share has continued to fall, due to the increasing dominance of Chrome. As a result, Opera decided to pivot to predatory short-term lending in Africa and Asia across four apps: OKash and OPesa in Kenya, CashBean in India, and OPay in Nigeria.

The apps have apparently remained available in the Play Store (except OPesa, which seems to be gone) by advertising different loan rates in the app description than users actually receive. For example, the listing for OKash stated its loans range from 91-365 days (the page now says 61-365 days), but an email response from the company stated it only offered loans from 15-29 days — significantly lower than the 60-day minimum enforced by Google. All of Opera’s other apps were also found to be in violation to varying extents.

If you think that’s bad, then buckle in! According to Play Store reviews, the OKash and OPesa apps sent text messages or calls to people in the user’s contacts when payments were late, threatening to take legal action or place the borrower on a credit blacklist. A former employee told Hindenburg Research that this practice ended last year “because it was said it was illegal.” That’s probably a good reason to stop doing something, right?

Opera is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I haven’t used Opera in years, and when it first appeared, it was a viable browser option for many. Now it is clear that the company who now owns them is pretty shady. Thus if I were you, I’d dump the Opera browser if you’re still running it because if this company does this sort of stuff, who knows what they are doing with the Opera browser. In the meantime, if you want an alternative to the browsers that are out there, try the Vivaldi browser as the team behind it is made up of Ex-Opera team members who left after the buyout. Or you can simply bite the bullet and try one of the usual suspects meaning Chrome, Firefox, or the new Edge browser. Because anything is better than what Opera is offering up to users.

Leave a comment »

Univar Solutions EMEA Leverages OpenText

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 20, 2020 by itnerd

OpenText today announced Univar Solutions EMEA, a leading distributor of chemical ingredients and services in Europe, is working with OpenText Professional Services to upgrade their deployment of OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP Solutions to further transform its accounts payable operations with new AI, intelligent capture and automation capabilities.

OpenText Vendor Invoice Management for SAP routes invoices automatically to the right person for resolution, approval and payment. New enhancements to the solution will boost Univar Solutions EMEA’s operations by giving the company access to OCR line item recognition, improving invoice training and automating previous manual freight processing and costing.

Powerful optical character recognition combined with machine learning and intelligent automation enables content to be matched against supplier delivery notes. This helps Univar Solutions EMEA continuously identify and remove bottlenecks and automatically correct errors or inefficiencies before they impact customer satisfaction. Advanced analytics and reporting tools give Univar Solutions EMEA greater visibility over its accounts payable processes, helping ensure governance, compliance and clarity.

OpenText is SAP’s largest solution extension partner with more than 20 years of experience helping SAP customers with intelligent integrations for content-intensive business processes and models.

Leave a comment »