Blog & Newsroom

What’s the Difference Between AI and Machine Learning?

There’s an awful lot of marketing noise around the ‘machine learning’ and ‘artificial Intelligence’ capabilities of much consumer- and enterprise-facing software. But the interchangeable use of terms that mean different things has led to a lot of confusion. So let’s clear up, once and for all, exactly what machine learning means, and why it’s useful. Machine learning In short, machine learning is akin to a human learning how to perform a task more efficiently (or to result in a better outcome) through a process of trial-and-error.

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Going Beyond (Way Beyond) Entry-Level Workload Automation

The benefits of automating repetitive operational procedures are clear, at least in theory. Workload automation can provide improved process efficiency, better visibility and allow a more agile response to an ever-changing technological landscape. But it’s that ever-changing nature that causes headaches for many automation solutions – adding highly-effective, but single-purpose, tools leads to an unavoidably complex IT landscape spread across on-premises, cloud and hybrid deployments. And this isn’t a situation that’s going to change anytime soon,

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What Augmented Intelligence Means for Your Workforce

We’ve spent some time over the last few months talking about what Artificial Intelligence (AI) means for businesses, looking at where AI intersects with automation, and explaining why the term AI itself can be problematic. That last point is a key one, because without knowing what set capabilities a term like Artificial Intelligence encompasses, expectations can easily become out of line with the reality of certain tools. Rather than focus on the underlying collection of technologies and how they’re defined,

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How Automation Solutions Need to Evolve in 2019

January is a great time to look at the year ahead and sketch out a few ways the automation market needs to evolve in 2019, to the benefit of both vendors and customers. Digital Darwinism, or slowly falling behind competition as you fail to adapt to new technologies, is a real thing. And it’s a fate that has felled many companies. But business as usual isn’t an approach that incorporates the future vision required for evolution.

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Is Automation the Answer to Your Compliance and Governance Headaches?

You don’t have to be a bank or insurance company to know the value of having bulletproof compliance and governance structures in place. In multi-national, multi-platform business, correctly handling and generating the masses of data required between on-premises, private and public cloud deployments around the world is a complex goal. In reality, that complex goal is usually driven by less complicated means – often the completion of a series of relatively mundane and repetitive manual tasks,

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What Does Moore’s Law Mean for Business?

Moore’s Law wasn’t intended to be a law. When Gordon Moore observed, in 1965, that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit was doubling roughly every two years it was exactly that: An observation. Albeit one that held true for half a century and dictated semiconductor development roadmaps. However, more recent discussions have questioned whether Moore’s Law still applies in today’s technological landscape. Intel (two years ago, no less) changed its roadmap to push back new chip models and thus throw Moore’s Law right out of the window.

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How Does AI fit with Automation?

AI, most regularly associated with Artificial Intelligence, has become a bit of a stand-in term for what is really a broad selection of technologies that encompasses machine learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing, object recognition and more. To the uninitiated, it can be a bit confusing, and so everything ends up under the umbrella term ‘AI’. It’s a bit like that family member who refers to all tablets as an ‘iPad’, regardless of the actual device they’re holding or referring to.

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Get the Max from the Cloud

Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Two simple questions, the answers to which determine the future of your business. As the structure of business changes, you must get more from your investments. Changes that don’t deliver real-world value are dangerous distractions. The shift of operations to the cloud can deliver substantial value, if done properly. If you just move lousy practices and processes to the cloud, all you’ll get is a lousy cloud.

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Workload Automation: Stuck in the Middle

Your company probably doesn’t have an IT infrastructure that’s entirely reliant on legacy systems, nor one that has done away with legacy overheads altogether. What’s more likely is that you’re somewhere in the middle, with a landscape that includes multiple public and private clouds, hybrid cloud and those inescapable legacy systems on premises. Figures given in a recent presentation at CloudHealth Connect18 in Boston by Forrester Research’s Dave Bartoletti indicate that 74% of enterprises already have a hybrid cloud environment in place – and that figure rises to 86% if you prefer the figures of Forrester Consulting.

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Automation Isn’t “All or Nothing”: Start with the Workload

Regular readers will not be surprised to hear us say that the key to streamlining essential business functions and operations is efficiency. And that the ‘secret’ to successfully using automation to improve efficiency in no small part lies in its security and visibility benefits. However, putting automation solutions in place doesn’t have to be a proposition that requires full commitment before you feel ready. A solution such as RunMyJobs by Redwood® can be used to improve the operational agility of the IT department,

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The New Paradigm: Automation-as-a-Service

In mathematics, the idea of ‘bounded value’ generally refers to the notion that there’s a limit to the value of ‘x’. Conversely, ‘unbounded value’ means there’s no maximum or minimum value of ‘x’. In automation, a similar notion carries through – there’s no minimum value you can extract by using a tool such as RunMyJobs® on a limited set of processes, but there’s also no maximum value, as it scales efficiently for businesses of all sizes and complexities.

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Blockchain and Automation: a Perfect Match?

Trust is an important part of any business transaction. Trust within an organization is often implicit but it is a more difficult proposition when it comes to the need to share data to third parties, partners and other external organizations. Most often, this is done via a distributed database of some kind, which could take many forms – for example, a cloud-based platform to share documents. This addresses accessibility but not the trust issue. Blockchain, at least in theory,

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5 Steps To Future-Proof Your Job In The Age Of Automation

Automation means a lifetime of relaxation by the pool instead of endless toil at a desk, right? Not exactly – but neither does it have to be bad news. The gradual introduction of autonomous systems and processes isn’t a trend that’s going to go away, so rather than hope for the best, here are five ways you can embrace the trend and try to future-proof your job. 1. Learn new skills The most obvious suggestion,

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The Key to Automation Excellence? Visibility

‘Praemonitus, praemunitus’, or for anyone without a knowledge of Latin proverbs, the more familiar ‘forewarned is forearmed’, originated as an expression used in the military to mean that knowing about problems in advance allows you to better plan for them. It might seem a little obvious to state that having more information to hand is generally a good thing for a business, but it’s essential for efficient automation, regardless of the scale of deployment. Imagine you have a complex billing process running that’s delaying revenue to the company.

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What Happens When You Automate the Finance Department?

With increased pressure to do more with less, almost all business units are now required to work in a more agile way to maximize efficiency – and the same is true of finance. The CFO and finance department should seek to collaborate with the wider business, to find ways to modernize and digitize tasks and processes wherever possible using knowledge from the people who perform the tasks day-in, day-out. Finance is a crucial part of any business,

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Process Automation in the Cloud: Predictability Isn’t Boring, It’s Vital

Supporting the full weight of traditional process automation tools, and the overheads they incur, isn’t something that should be taken lightly. But without modernization, businesses can’t benefit from all that RPA and scheduling tools have to offer. Whether you aim for 100% automation or are simply looking to improve the efficacy of your existing scheduling platforms, the key to true efficiency is an agile, predictable process automation and scheduling dashboard that provides full oversight and control,

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Is 100% Automation Really Feasible – and Do I Want It?

Fewer errors. Repetitive tasks eliminated. Speedier execution of processes. These are among the promises of ‘end-to-end automation’ or ‘100% automation’. But the shift can still be a daunting prospect for a company without prior experience. Concerns around a lack of process oversight and audit requirements, or vulnerability to errors going unnoticed, are entirely avoidable. In some cases, they’re based on interactions with more primitive automation tools. Consider the path to 100% automation as analogous to regular cars evolving into self-driving cars.

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