Software & Technology by MarketScale

Any business, large or small, has a data center and internal network. These networks require maintenance. Most companies hire service providers responsible for channel alliances, but in fact, there is another way...and it’s cheaper. Enter Reliant Technology.

Our guest today, Mike Steiner, Director of Technical Services with Reliant Technology, broke down this complex system with over 16 years of experience in manufacturing.

OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) have typically been the point of contact for provider partnerships. On today’s podcast we focused on the key differences between Reliant Technology, a third party provider, and OEMs, learning about client stories and case studies that explain why OEMs are not the only way.

Using a “hybrid maintenance strategy,” Steiner explained what sets Reliant Technology apart. He carefully explained the inverse relationship between OEMs and a third party approach.

“The more market share the brand has...the more parts there are on the open market," he said, explaining how the price goes down as demand rises.

“Because we are a third party provider we have all the skill sets that you would expect for the data center work that we do," Steiner said, explaining why Reliant Technology is fully capable of the task at hand. Additionally, Reliant Technology is a smaller organization, allowing for more flexibility and a personal feel and approach.

Steiner divulged where he sees the future of third party providers going, elaborating on why he believes there will be more adoption over time, and why people will be more open to building solutions out of used gear.

Not all wireless display solutions are created equal, especially when it comes to residential versus enterprise needs. On this episode of the Software and Technology Podcast, we sat down with Jay Taylor, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances for ScreenBeam, a leader in wireless display and collaboration solutions.

When Miracast was introduced as the industry standard for wireless connections for devices, it initially launched for consumer use.

"All of this was aimed at the consumer space because everybody was looking for ... consumer entertainment consumption scenarios," Taylor said. "But that is a different animal than what you need in a enterprise environment space."

Whereas a living room can have maybe 12 devices connected to the WiFi, a corporate environment can have hundreds, if not thousands of employees in a dense area accessing a limited number of access points.

"Trying to make wireless work in that environment is much more challenging," Taylor said.

ScreenBeam was first to market with a WiFi certified receiver that found widespread use in offices and classrooms using smartboards. Thanks to the company's co-engineering partnership with Microsoft, it placed them in a unique position to enhance the experience as display technology has progressed.

"We've gone from the days of projectors in the conference room to HD displays and now interactive displays that support touch," Taylor said.

In this episode, Taylor shared how an enterprise solution is critical for modern wireless displays in supporting multi-device environments and various security protocols.

Trillions of pieces of data are going untapped every year, and it's holding businesses back. This data, surprisingly, consists of human speech from call centers, and it's ripe for collection and analysis. On this new episode of the Software & Technology Podcast brought to you by MarketScale, host Sean Heath sat down with Steve Kaiser, CEO of OrecX, a Chicago-based call recording company.

"Human speech is an untapped resource of data," Kaiser said. "If you took the top three call center markets in the world and did some math on the number of words spoken in those call centers, it's in excess of 120 to 150 trillion words every year."

He continued, "Until those words are captured, converted into text, categorized so further meaning and value can be extracted from them, it's not doing much for the company."

That's why it's time for call centers to start analyzing its recorded data, he said. "Digital transformation is the way to use that valuable data in ways to extract value from the interactions you have with your customers."

OrecX provides contact centers and business VoIP providers with full-featured and easy-to-use call recording software, helping them improve their quality assurance and aiding agent training. Taking that a step further is organizing that data, being a part of the emerging technologies that help organize the world's spoken information, he said.

Global society is creating more data than ever before, and with every passing day, more information is created, demanding storage space. So where does it all go? Cloud storage has largely come to the rescue for our data storage needs, but even now the cloud technology is reaching a plateau. So how do we innovate data storage for the demands of the future?

Our guests today on this episode of the MarketScale Software & Technology Podcast are here to answer that question. Scott Shadley, vice president of marketing for NGD Systems, and Andy Lee, director of product & marketing for EchoStreams, join us to discuss the history of cloud storage, the areas for innovation in this technology, and how these changes can transform how we think of storing data.

“Compute, memory and storage,” Shadley said is how we have traditionally compartmentalized the processing of data—as single items paired together. But NGD and EchoStreams are turning this concept on its head with the concept of “computational storage.” This idea adds an engine to cloud storage, processing, and shrinking data using a “lower power envelope.”

The need for an energy-efficient data storage solution is no more apparent than in Amsterdam, where the city has banned the building of future data centers because of its enormous demand for power.

As Shadley said, “the amount of data we are generating today is astronomical,” and we only continue needing more storage. The solution to the issue isn’t in building more storage centers, but by making the way we store data more efficient.

“Stop treating peoples data as just 0’s, and 1’s being stored on a brick, but make that storage device, that brick, be able to do something with those 0’s and 1’s in a more effective and efficient way,” Shadley said.

The global demand for storage makes the issue of efficient storage all the more pressing, and a predictor that this technology has staying power.

Romeo Durscher, Director of Public Safety Integration for DJI, joined Daniel Litwin to discuss some of the big trends he's seeing in the world of drones. 

Durscher explained what he was excited to see at the show, discussed the challenges in collecting and interpreting data using drones, and gave an overview of the current state of public safety standardization. 

"Human beings are fascinating in the way that, if we don't understand something,  we do knee-jerk reactions," Durscher said. "We've seem many countries go full-blown, absolutely no drones allowed, and those are the places that are not benefitting from the growth of this technology."

Keep an eye out for the full interview on MarketScale's Software and Technology industry page.  

On this jobcast, host Daniel Litwin dug into the open role of Customer Support Manager for Greenstone, a Cultura Company, with Client Success Director Tracy Curtis.

"We're looking to grow our support team," Curtis said. "We have tenured folks that we need to have a training program and career paths for new people, as well as improving our metrics for our customers."

Greenstone, located in Alpharetta, Georgia, is a leader in agricultural accounting & management tools, powering the backend agribusiness across the nation. The 8 to 5, Monday through Friday position of Customer Support Manager takes on the responsibility of managing a team of customer service representatives to deliver quality and consistent levels of service.

They'll establish efficient and balanced workflows for them and their team, maximizing efficiency and measuring service metrics to develop standards, improvements, or changes to the process.

Curtis said she's looking for a candidate with a bachelor's degree and 3-5 years experience managing people. For this Customer Support Manager position, up to 10 percent travel may be required, and career path potential exists.

"Ideally I'd like them to move up into my role as Client Success Director or a general manager of one of our companies," Curtis said.

Give this jobcast a listen to hear why Curtis thinks Donkey's (yes, from Shrek) brand of optimism perfectly captures this role. Click here to apply for the position.

Over the last decade digital technology has spread into quick serve restaurants, typically in the form of digital menu boards. But only until recently have those stores been able to use digital technology to collect, analyze, and predict customer behavior. On this episode of the ____ podcast, Côme Billerey, head of product innovation at Acrelec, shares how machine learning has come to your favorite restaurant.

“We are focusing on how can we improve the customer journey and improve operations thanks to AI,” Billerey said.

This means using machine learning to improve the speed of service, and possibly predict orders so restaurant managers know how to allocate resources to optimize efficiency.

The latest smart displays found in stores can collect data in real-time. With AI, the displays can learn the weather and forecast how many people will be in the store and what they’ll order. Billerey explained that these predictive capabilities have been used by websites like Amazon for some time, but only now are they available to brick and mortar stores.

Although the technology will never achieve 100% accurate trend forecasting, “in the past years we have reached, in certain fields, really great predictive capabilities of 95 to 97%," Billerey said.

Billerey divulged that he worked with McDonalds in leveraging machine learning to time cars in a drive-thru lane. First using sensors in the road and then switching to cameras, he was able to predict bottlenecks so that the restaurants could reorganize staff for better service. The experience gave him a greater appreciation for the human eye which, working with the brain, is capable of visual processing and analysis that cameras and computers just can’t do.

“It should amaze people, or at least, it amazes me," Billerey said.

Currently, he’s working with Intel to create more cost and energy effective solutions to process real-time data. And while AI is not hard to deploy at select sites, many startups have trouble doing so across a network. That’s where he says Acrelec is different.

“We know how to scale technology on many, many different locations," Billerey said.

Is it time for extended reality to make it its way into the business world?

On this excerpt from Business Casual, Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern explored the positives and negatives of extended reality being more widely utilized. 

The use cases are obviously exciting for brands and individuals that are enthusiastic about stepping forward into the future. On the downside, there are still too many instances where this technology is simply too expensive to be implemented on a wide scale. 

For more, tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

This year's Consumer Electronics Show might look a little different than it has in previous years. The Consumer Technology Association who puts on CES every year has announced that it's going to be more strict in its enforcement of the dress code. The hope is that this eliminates the use of "booth babes", women hired for their looks to entice more visitors to a particular booth. 

There is an ongoing push to encourage more women to join STEM related fields. Is this a step in the right direction? Daniel Litwin and Tyler Kern discuss the reasons and ramifications of this decision on the August 14th episode of Business Casual. 

Tune in to Business Casual, MarketScale’s live radio broadcast, every Friday at 8 a.m. CST.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones are all the rage, with businesses from Amazon to Domino’s conducting research into using the aircraft to complete deliveries. Utilizing UAVs for these types of serious applications, though, requires precision technology. On today’s Software and Technology Podcast, Daniel Schübeler, founder of Schübeler Technologies, discussed how electronic ducted fans (EDFs) and their blade design provide the propulsion necessary to give enterprise UAVs liftoff.

Unlike an exposed propeller, EDFs feature blades mounted inside a fan. Schübeler explained that the design of the blades is critical in making them efficient enough to carry large payloads for a long time.

“It’s important to get the aerodynamics right,” he said, elaborating that proper aerodynamic design yields high thrust with low power input, generating longer flight times.

While some customers turn to EDFs because they look cool, the efficiency benefits are what motivate their applications and design; Schübeler said that his personal motivation in engineering the technology relates to increased safety and reliability compared to open propellers.

“Our goal is definitely to go to zero failures," he said. Achieving this requires enhanced engineering methods, proper calculations, simulations, predictions, and substantial testing efforts.

Those seeking to deploy drones using EDFs must understand that the off-the-shelf commercial variety has limitations. That’s why customers turn to him for a product with the optimal pitch, blade count, diameter, weight, and balance that best matches their UAV’s airframe.

“We can give people a much higher efficiency," Schübeler said.

Even the smallest error in an aerodynamic system can cause a loss of 30% to 40% efficiency. By designing EDFs that optimize energy use, Schübeler said his company is accelerating green aviation. His goal is to make battery electric flying platforms good enough to fulfill serious enterprise missions.