Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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As data proliferates along with artificial intelligence models, the need to spot data bias, collaborate, prioritize use cases and tell stories become more important. The problem? Traditional visualization approaches can't keep up.

Speaking on DisrupTV Episode 326, Michael Amori, CEO of Virtualitics, utlined how 3D visualizations and AI can better navigate massive datasets and make recommendations. Virtualitics aims to explore data and visualize massive, interrelated datasets. Its platform integrates across descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics platforms as well as cloud companies storing large datasets.

What intelligent data exploration does? Amori said data is growing at an exponential pace and new approaches are needed to find insights that are unbiased. "We are focused on the data exploration process, which to a lot of people sounds like it's an already solved problem but it actually isn't," said Amori. "In a typical data analytics process, you start out preprocessing the data and then explore the data set to figure out what you want to do with it. Then you come up with predictive models using AI. The problem with the traditional way is that humans approach the data set already with a bias and preconceived hypothesis and what they want to see."

Amori said AI can explore the data and tell the humans what the hypotheses in the data are that ae worth pursuing. "Humans can decide what path to take as opposed to starting with a path in mind that leaves gems in the data," said Amori.

Generated visualizations and explanations. "AI can handle huge amounts of data and we can take advantage of natural language to really explain what's going on with the data," said Amori. "Data visualizations and explanations can really open up for the user what's going on in the data."

Time to intelligent data exploration. Amori said it typically takes one or two months to configure Virtualitics to an enterprise's data sets and training. "Once they are ready, they can load up a new data set and see all the possibilities and areas of interest," said Amori. Virtualitics turns regular data in columns and rows and turns it into a tabular data set that can be turned into a network graph with explanations generated by AI.

• Analytics and Business Intelligence Evolve for Cloud, Embedding, and Generative AI
• Analytics and Business Intelligence Trends in Cloud, Embedding, and Generative AI 
• Constellation ShortList™ Multicloud Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms

Storytelling and collaboration with data. 3D analytics and visualizations from different end points of data help with storytelling, said Amori. One example would be a company that wants to understand market segmentation and data describing customers. A visualization could explore socioeconomic metrics as well as buying patterns. "There are hundreds of metrics for each of these customers and now you have AI look for patterns in the data," said Amori. "It looks like a network representation of communities of customers across quantitative, categorical and unstructured features. AI can come up with recommendations based on 8 different things going on in your data."

Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Generative AI AI Analytics Automation business Marketing SaaS PaaS IaaS Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP finance Healthcare Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Analytics Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Home Depot has transformed customer experiences with multiple technology and productivity projects that touch the supply chain, retail stores and associates working the floor, but few have delivered the quick returns of Sidekick.

At Home Depot's Investor Day, Ann-Marie Campbell, Executive Vice President, U.S. Stores and International Operations, walked through Home Depot's roadmap for its Sidekick app and devices that have transformed customer experiences. Sidekick is just one example of how Home Depot is balancing the art and science of home improvement retail.

Sidekick is an app that enables associates to prioritize sales and restocking tasks via hdPhones, a Zebra device that's used on the store floor. Sidekick, which was rolled out with Home Depot partners, Zebra Technologies, HPE and Aruba, an HPE unit, includes:

• Machine learning and algorithms that determine what tasks are actionable.
• Machine vision to detect and fill out-of-stock products.
• Alerts to specific associates to prioritize tasks.
• A dashboard to show when tasks are completed and how to.
• Integration with other platforms.

At the beginning of 2023, Home Depot said it rolled out more than 99,000 devices. Campbell said the returns have been strong.

"We're continuously investing in new processes, capabilities and technology, and we have a multitude of initiatives we're working on to drive further productivity and sales," said Campbell.

Campbell added that the machine learning behind Sidekick directs associates to bays where on-shelf availability is low or depleted. "The beauty of this machine learning model is that the algorithm is continuously learning as tasks are completed and will continue to get better and better at directing our associates to the right bay at the right time," said Campbell.

Home Depot is trying to narrow the gap between in stock goods and on-shelf availability. The idea is to ensure that a hot product is available to buy right away. If Home Depot improves on-shelf availability (OSA) by about 100 basis points it receives a sales lift of several hundred millions of dollars.

Campbell said Sidekick is the first step in "the journey to achieve the perfect bay for our customers. According to Campbell, the next step is to roll out computer vision in its stores.

She explained:

"Computer Vision will enable technology to do what we previously relied on Associate Eyes to do. To start with, the Associates will take a picture of Bays and Overheads with their hdPhones, which will feed into our system and provide a real time view of inventory, similar to the way our Overhead management system help us easily locate palletized products stored in our Overheads. Computer Vision will give us better visibility into product that is on our shelves and in the space between our shelves and Overhead, which will further improve OSA position and drive sales. We know that our associates are a key differentiator for us, and they are essential in delivering the customer experience we strive for. In order to provide the best customer experience in home improvement, we must focus on cultivating the best Associate experience in retail."

Home Depot's big picture: The art and science of retailing

Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said the company's priorities are to grow its consumer and professional businesses, create differentiated experiences and drive financial performance with productivity and sales gains.

"We will continue to invest in growth and leverage our scale to drive productivity, and extend our low-cost provider position," said Decker. "Our enhanced capabilities across the business position us to pursue opportunities we could not meaningfully address in the past, which provide significant growth opportunities with both DIY and Pro customers."

Also see: 

• Walmart, Target highlight intersection of supply chain, customer experience

The 2023 Home Depot Investor Day had a different feel than previous events. This year's meeting with analysts featured a lot of technology and process improvement opportunities, but IT was woven throughout business units. In previous years, say 2017, Home Depot gave technology operations its own section in presentations. Today, Home Depot is digital with data, process improvement and technology in every part of the business.

One thing is clear: Home Depot's technology investments paid off nicely despite the COVID-19 pandemic, an economy that resembled a roller coaster and shifting consumer behaviors. From 2019 to 2022, Home Depot delivered grew sales by more than $47 billion and grew earnings per share more than 60%.

Billy Bastek, Executive Vice President, Merchandising at Home Depot, referred to the balancing act at as the art and science of retail.

Here's how Bastek outlined the science:

"One of the most significant benefits of this is our ability to localize our products to meet market demands and our ability has never been better. Our enhanced data science capabilities, improved space optimization, and planogram tools help ensure we have the right products in front of our customers every day. This is the science."

The art is having an eye for strong products and merchants who are authorities in their categories. "Our merchants are the customers who advocate for value, and they select the best products and curate the right assortments in our stores and online. This is the art," said Bastek.

Bastek added that Home Depot wants to be a place--digital and physical--where partners can launch new innovative products, save customers time and display powerful brands as well as private-label goods. Sixty percent of Home Depot's customer base shop online and physical channels via an "interconnected experience."

Home Depot has come a long way with its interconnected experience, but Bastek acknowledged gaps including simplifying order communications, differentiated merchandise bundles and visualization tools for large projects.

To focus on improving those customer experiences, Home Depot added an Executive Vice President of Customer Experience, Matt Carey. Carey said the goal is to create a feedback loop between customers, associates, project managers, data scientists and business analysts focused on one thing: Making it easier for customers to shop.

Carey said:

"Customers are no longer accepting friction. They expect the same ease and simplicity that they experience when they shop or engage with their favorite streaming service, rideshare or travel partner. Creating a simple and easy to use experience is really pretty hard, especially against a backdrop that is constantly changing and in a business as complex as home improvement. It is our job to reduce the complexity for our customers."

Orchestration, order management and Home Depot's supply chain

Historically, supply chain was considered separate from customer experience. Today, logistics, delivery and efficiency can make or break a customer's experience. And given Home Depot's biggest growth market is professional contractors, the orchestration of the supply chain and order management is everything.

According to Chip Devine, Senior Vice President of Outside Sales at Home Depot, professional contractors work with more than 10 suppliers to get products for a single job. These suppliers range from lumber suppliers to specialty paint retailers to flooring, HVAC, electrical and kitchen and bath suppliers.

Home Depot's plan is to consolidate those suppliers with its ecosystem. "Over the last several years, we've been building an ecosystem that can deliver a differentiated end-to-end experience. The importance of this ecosystem is that it all works together to deliver a value proposition," said Devine.

Devine noted that Home Depot's systems were built to service immediate needs of a professional, but orchestration of orders is just as important. Devine said: "we're investing in future technology and infrastructure that will help us more easily manage orders in advance, reserve inventory, schedule and build deliveries based on a project schedule which is very different than our current cash and carry model."

To become a one-stop shop for professionals, Home Depot will need to schedule lumber for one day, roofing two weeks later and deliver products to multiple addresses. Trade credits will be another key item so professionals can manage their cash flow.

Enter Home Depot's supply chain scale. Home Depot has been investing in its supply chain for years and set out in 2017 to become the fastest, most efficient and most reliable supply chain in home improvement.

John Deaton, Executive Vice President of Supply Chain and Product Development at Home Depot, highlighted the scale of the retailer. Home Depot's supply chain handles more than 15,000 inbound truckloads, delivers more than 60 million parcels annually and manages more than 10 million big and bulky deliveries a year.

A few supply chain highlights:

• Home Depot has automated its rapid deployment centers to require fewer product touches.
• Bulk distribution centers have been expanded in volume.
• Home Depot has opened more than 100 new facilities with enhanced fulfillment capabilities.
• The retailer has added flatbed delivery centers for professionals.
• Took over appliance delivery from third party networks.

"Many of our nodes of our supply chain network also alleviate fulfillment pressure in our stores which allows our associates to spend more time driving a better customer experience for our customers while also driving productivity," said Deaton.

Going forward, Home Depot's Deaton said downstream supply chain operations will be refined with robotics, better forecasting and enhanced labor management processes. "While we have made a lot of progress, our work to enhance the customer experience is never done," he said.

Select Home Depot vendors

• Google Cloud
• HPE/Aruba
• SAP
• ServiceNow
• UIPath
• Zebra Technologies

Sources:

SeekingAlpha: Home Depot Investor Conference transcript

Home Depot: Investor Conference presentations

The Home Depot launches new in-store application to help associates provide better customer experience

Google Cloud blog: The Home Depot orchestrates self-service cloud solutions with Workflows

How The Home Depot helps doers get more done with SAP and Google Cloud

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Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Adobe's fiscal second quarter revenue showed double-digit growth across its digital media and digital experience units. Adobe has been busy embedding generative AI technologies such as Firefly throughout its products.

The company reported second-quarter net income of $1.3 billion, or $2.82 a share, on revenue of $4.82 billion, up 10% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the second quarter were $3.91 a share.

Wall Street was expecting Adobe to report second quarter non-GAAP earnings of $3.79 a share on revenue of $4.77 billion.

Adobe Firefly heads to enterprises, Adobe Express

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said demand was strong across Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Experience Cloud. In prepared remarks, Narayan said "every disruptive technology has presented exciting opportunities" including cloud and mobile. Generative AI represents another shift for Adobe.

Narayen said:

“Our generative AI strategy focuses on data, models and interfaces. Our rich datasets across creativity, documents and customer experiences enable us to train models on the highest quality assets. We will build foundation models in the categories where we have deep domain expertise, including imaging, vector, video, documents and marketing. We are bringing generative AI to life as a co-pilot across our incredible array of interfaces to deliver magic and productivity gains for a broader set of customers. Since its launch in March, Firefly has captured the imagination of the world with over half a billion generations, and we’re just getting started.”

By business unit:

• Digital Media revenue was $3.51 billion, up 10% from a year ago. Within Digital Media, Creative Cloud revenue was $2.85 billion, up 9%. Document Cloud revenue was $659 million, up 11% from a year ago.
• Digital Experience revenue was $1.22 billion, up 12% from a year ago.

As for the outlook, Adobe projected third quarter revenue between $4.83 billion to $4.87 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $3.95 a share to $4 a share.

For fiscal 2023, Adobe is projecting revenue of $19.25 billion to $19.35 billion. Digital Media revenue is expected to deliver annual revenue of $14.1 billion to $14.15 billion with Digital Experience generating revenue of $4.85 billion to $4.9 billion.

Adobe projected non-GAAP fiscal 2023 earnings of $15.65 a share to $15.75 a share.

Narayen said that Creative Cloud and Document Cloud will end fiscal 2023 above expectations and Digital Experience will be slightly below projections due to "the current enterprise spend environment."

Anil Chakravarthy, President of Digital Experience, said: "While overall demand is strong and win rates remain healthy, as we enter the second half, we are seeing some projects being pushed out in the current enterprise spend environment, which we have reflected in our updated annual targets."

How Adobe will monetize generative AI

David Wadhwani, President of Digital Media at Adobe, said in prepared remarks that generative AI is a seminal moment in the company's history and will provide multiple ways to monetize.

Wadhwani said:

"Our generative AI offerings represent additional customer value as well as multiple new monetization opportunities. First, Firefly will be available both as a standalone freemium offering for consumers as well as an enterprise offering, announced last week. Second, co-pilot generative AI functionality within our flagship applications will drive higher ARPUs and retention. Third, subscription credit packs will be made available for customers who need to generate greater amounts of content. Fourth, we will offer developer communities access to Firefly APIs and allow enterprises the ability to create exclusive custom models with their proprietary content. And finally, the industry partnerships, as well as Firefly, represent exciting new top-of-funnel acquisition opportunities for Express, Creative Cloud and Document Cloud. Our priority for now is to get Firefly broadly adopted, and we will introduce specific pricing later this year."

Liz Miller's take

Here's what Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller had to say about Adobe's results.

"What makes Adobes path so interesting is that while yes, they are advancing everything from GenerativeAI to automation and data...they are applying all of it in service of business growth. All the things that people for a millennia have mocked about marketing...the creativity, the storytelling, the feelings and empathy...is now being super powered with AI, workflows and massive pools of data to be harnessed, enterprise ready and meaningful to customer engagements. And...for Adobe...is delivering consistent double digit growth for investors.

The next phase of Adobe's growth will also be fun to watch as they open new markets like advancing digital product development and management. With new advances in Adobe Express they are inviting a whole new generation of creators into Adobe. The cautionary note will be to ensure that the Digital Engagement Cloud keep innovating and moving forward. Even in difficult markets and headwinds, the "3rd cloud" needs to keep that foot on the gas with investment into evolving marketing, engagement and growth.

And for anyone who has played with the Beta of Adobe Firefly...looking into the future of creativity...it's pretty exciting. (And yes, I've generated an image of what my dog, and Akita, would look like in a chunky knit purple sweater, sunglasses and a gold chain.)

Adobe has been intentional about its investments and how it embraces disruptive technologies. While the market starts to wonder if AI is actually safe and ready for enterprise application, tools like Adobe Firefly are purpose built with those guardrails. And we have seen this mindset and direction replicated in other massive AI rollouts in recent days and months. Most recently, at Salesforce’s AI Day, CEO Marc Benioff stressed the importance of AI the enterprise and consumers could trust. What I expect to see is more of this style of purpose-built innovation that is unafraid of disruption while still mindful of the responsibility being a front-runner in innovation and disruption brings. For Adobe that includes continued investment into ethical AI standards, Content Authenticity and a promise to the creators that their creativity and innovation can continue to grow and advance in this expansive digital world."

Marketing Transformation Next-Generation Customer Experience Data to Decisions Innovation & Product-led Growth Future of Work Tech Optimization Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity adobe B2C CX AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Disruptive Technology Chief Information Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Product Officer

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Informatica plans to acquire Privitar to add data privacy and remediation controls to its Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform.

The UK-based Privitar builds software that manages data access across enterprises while adding collaborative workflows and access controls by role. IDC estimates that the data access management market will reach $952 million by 2027 with a compound annual growth rate of 7%. Data access management is likely to become an important topic as enterprises look to keep corporate information private while training foundational models for generative AI use cases. 

Informatica said:

"Privitar will apply access management to classified data.  If a corporate policy is to classify generative AI created data then of course we can apply policies for access.  While that is a use case, the capability is designed for much broader use than that. Note that our generative AI capabilities are built on our metadata platform. Therefore, our LLM models that access our metadata are designed to aggregate and look for patterns, train models, etc.  The more interesting opportunity is having generative AI automatically apply policies (based on regulatory, corporate, or business level needs) to data to simplify the governance of data access and privacy."

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Informatica has been building out its IDMC platform with generative AI capabilities. Informatica's CLAIRE AI processes more than 54 trillion monthly transactions for customers.

According to Informatica, the Privitar acquisition will speed up its roadmap and cloud data access management capabilities. Privatar provides a data security platform that goes beyond data access policies of traditional data stores. Informatica said Privatar will add the following to IDMC:

• The ability to provide data anonymization and privacy enforcement tools at scale.
• Democratization of trusted data across all business users.
• Self-service access to data.
• Integration of data governance and access controls with Informatica Catalog, Governance and MDM.
• Data access management policies for CLAIRE-generated classification and discovery.
• Policy-compliant tools for customer, employee and master data.
• Consistent enforcement policies across data producers and consumers.

Informatica said the addition of Privitar will enhance existing data access controls and meet customer demand for new use cases for protected data classes. Privitar customers include ABN AMRO, NHS, HSBC and Accor among others.

Related: Constellation ShortList™ Master Data Management | Constellation ShortList™ Metadata Management, Data Cataloging and Data Governance

Privitar, which offers a policy-compliant data exchange, also streamlines workflows for data owners, data guardians and integration tasks.

Informatica added that the Privitar purchase is expected to close in the third quarter.

Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity informatica Big Data Security Zero Trust Chief Information Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Privacy Officer

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Alex Yampolskiy, CEO of SecurityScorecard, said Chief Information Security Officers need to become more proactive and speak in business terms amid boardroom pressure, budget cuts and new threats.

Yampolskiy, speaking on DisrupTV, outlined the new landscape for CISOs. SecurityScorecard provides security ratings across 10 risk factors, provides insights and assessments and quantifies cyber risks. Yampolskiy appearance on DisrupTV came as the 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 24% of all breaches involved ransomware, 83% of breaches involved external actors and 19% involved internal actors.

Here's a look at the key cybersecurity themes from Yampolskiy.

Cybersecurity is a boardroom issue. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed cybersecurity disclosure rules that would require companies to disclose any type of cybersecurity incident within four days. "This disclosure of cyber incidents is much faster than before, so I think it's going to be wake-up call for a lot of boards," said Yampolskiy.

Why KPIs matter. Yampolskiy said KPIs on cybersecurity are critical, but undeveloped. "I think security has always been subjective and that's a problem," said Yampolskiy. "With cybersecurity people think they are safe but aren't. KPIs quantify risk and even if you don't agree with them at least you know you can improve what you can measure."

Cybersecurity has to be proactive. "If a company has to wait for regulations to worry about security they're already in trouble," said Yampolskiy.

• Applied Threat Intelligence: Its Emerging Central Role in Cybersecurity and Zero-Trust Architecture

Compliance doesn't equate to security. Yampolskiy said compliance and cybersecurity practices overlap in areas but aren't equal. "Fully compliant doesn't mean you're fully secure," he said. The intersections of those concentric cybersecurity and compliance circles are where attacks can happen, said Yampolskiy, who added that there should be a continuous improvement approach to cybersecurity.

Advice for CISOs. Yampolskiy is a former CISO and acknowledges that the job is stressful. "CISOs frankly have an awesome amount of responsibility," said Yampolskiy. "It's an incredibly stressful job." His advice for CISOs:

• Speak the language of the boardroom. CISOs have to save budget while trying to secure data that is proliferating by the minute. CISOs need to speak in terms of ROI and financial impact. "The No. 1 thing CISOs need to do is communicate in the language of boards. Don't spend a lot of time on technical terms, but make sure the board knows the risks and the financial impact," said Yampolskiy.
• Position cybersecurity as an enabler of transformation instead of a cost center. "A lot of CISOs say no a lot and have a negative perception as a cost center and do not get a seat at the table," said Yampolskiy. "Position yourself as somebody who enables the board to conduct more business and earn the trust and credibility of your customers and drive more revenue growth."
• Quantify risks. "Have a set of objective KPIs that you can measure and quantify risks," said Yampolskiy. "Then you can show the board your plan, show how your industry is doing and how competitors are doing."

Be proactive not reactive. Yampolskiy said CISOs can't sit around waiting to be attacked. You have to assume that the adversary has already got into the environment.

• CrowdStrike launches Charlotte AI, generative AI to uplevel, democratize cybersecurity analysis

Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity infor Security Zero Trust Chief Information Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Privacy Officer

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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AMD launched its Instinct MI300X processor, generative AI model collaborations and software plans. After all, Nvidia can't have all the generative AI infrastructure fun, right?

CEO Lisa Su, speaking at AMD's Data Center and AI Technology Premiere, outlined the company's roadmap to gain more artificial intelligence and data center workloads.

While Instinct MI300X was the headliner, AMD laid out a broad plan to not only take share from Intel but take on Nvidia in GPUs. Cloud providers and companies are looking to upgrade and consolidate infrastructure as they look to roll out generative AI. "Generative AI and LLMs have changed the landscape," said Su. "At the center of this are GPUs."

• How AI workloads will reshape data center demand | Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti on AI, data, mental models for disruption

Su outlined a family of Instinct processors with chiplets that can be swapped out to optimize workloads led by the MI300X, which is designed for generative AI. AMD launched the MI300A at CES and it is sampling now.

AMD said MI300X has an advantage by running models directly in memory to speed up training. AMD demoed the MI300X running the Falcon LLM in real time. Su said more memory and memory bandwidth means you can run more inference jobs per GPU than before.

The MI300X is based on the next-gen AMD CDNA 3 accelerator architecture and supports up to 192 GB of HBM3 memory.

The MI300X will come with the AMD Instinct Platform, which will include 8 MI300X processors and 1.5 TB in an industry-standard server infrastructure. That last point is key since AMD is making a case that its platform will lower the total cost of ownership for generative AI workloads.

Su said AI workloads are AMD's most promising market. Su made the case that its AI platform has an ecosystem of processors, software and partnerships that can make gains. 

"There's no question that AI will be the key driver for silicon consumption for the foreseeable future," said Su. "We are still early in the life cycle of AI, but when we try and size it, we think the TAM can go from $30 billion this year to $150 billion in 2027."

Victor Peng, AMD President, said the company is growing its software ecosystem and development. "While this is a journey, we've made progress with platforms in deployments today," said Peng, who walked through AI runtimes, libraries and compilers and tools and collaborations with PyTorch and Hugging Face.

• Greystone CIO Niraj Patel on generative AI, creating value, managing vendors
• Accenture's Paul Daugherty: Generative AI today, but watch what's next
• Box CEO Levie on generative AI, productivity and platform neutrality

AMD Momentum with CPUs

Su said EPYC is growing share in the enterprise and among cloud providers and the 4th generation "Genoa" EPYC processor is ramping up in the data center. AMD's Su noted that GPUs are critical to AI workloads, but CPUs including EPYC account for the compute behind training models in many cases.

"Data center workloads are becoming increasingly specialized," said Su. AMD's argument is that data centers will increasingly be optimized for workloads instead of focusing on general-purpose use cases. Optimized workloads will need to combine the chipmaker's CPUs, GPUs, programmable processors and networking.

As generative AI takes root, enterprise customers are likely to use the cloud for some workloads with owned data centers for sensitive data. Citadel Securities outlined how the company has data center capacity leveraging AMD for research and low-latency trading.

AMD outlined Bergamo, a 4th Gen AMD EPYC processor designed for cloud-native workloads with up to 128 Zen 4c cores designed for density and energy efficiency. Bergamo has a 35% smaller footprint with better performance per watt with full software compatibility. Bergamo is shipping in volume to hyperscale providers.

• AMD holds line on data center revenue in Q1
• Oracle’s Data Platform Gets an EPYC™ Boost

The chip giant also launched Genoa-X, new 4th Gen EPYC processors focused on technical computing workloads for simulations and product design. AMD launched the second generation of AMD 3D V-Cache Technology that will be used for Genoa-X. Genoa-X will have four SKUS based on cores with systems from Dell Technologies, Lenovo and HPE on deck.

AMD highlighted the P4 DPU architecture, which optimizes data flows and is programmable so it can simplify management and offload CPU resources. AMD's Pensando P4 DPUs are being used in switches in current workloads as well as new designs. AMD said it will bring the Smart Switch to the enterprise for edge computing applications in retail, telco and smart city.

Hyperscale Cloud Deployments

AMD also featured a bevy of partners during its keynote. Among the highlights:

• AWS will build new EC2 instances with AMD. AWS will use 4th Gen EPYC processors Ec2 M7a instances, which will have 50% better performance than the previous generation. The instances will be in preview today. AWS will roll out more EPYC Ec2 instances over time.
• Oracle announced new E5 instances with 4th generation EPYC. 
• Meta is optimizing EPYC for its infrastructure with plans to optimize its server designs for Genoa and Bergamo, which will be used for generative workloads. Meta is using AMD-based servers for storage, transcoding and scale-out deployments.
• Microsoft Azure will offer high-performance computing instances based on Genoa-X. Instances are available with AMD's 3D-Cache technology.

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Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights Constellation Research

About Larry Dignan: Dignan was most recently Celonis Media’s Editor-in-Chief, where he sat at the intersection of media and marketing. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of ZDNet and has covered the technology industry and transformation trends for more than two decades, publishing articles in CNET, Knowledge@Wharton, Wall Street Week, Interactive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Temple University and a member of the Advisory Board for The Fox Business School's Institute of Business and Information Technology.  Constellation Insights does the following: Cover the buy side and sell side of enterprise tech with news, analysis, profiles, interviews, and event coverage of vendors, as well as Constellation Research's community and…...

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Oracle Cloud launched new instances with the 4th generation AMD EPYC processors code named Genoa.

A day after Oracle reported earnings and strong cloud growth, the company outlined flexible E5 instances powered by AMD. AMD has been gaining share in the data center.

The E5 AMD-powered instances on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are designed for standard, high-performance computing and Dense-IO workloads.

The flavors of OCI Compute E5 instances, which will be available in the second half of 2023, on AMD EPYC include:

• OCI Compute E5 Standard instances are used for multiple use cases including web and application servers, back-end servers for enterprise applications and application development environments. The new instances offer 33% better performance per core and 50% more memory bandwidth, as well as 50 percent more cores on bare metal instances.
• OCI Compute E5 HPC are used mathematical and scientific workloads including model training. The new instances offer 40% better price-performance than prior generation HPC instances, said OCI.
• OCI Compute E5 Dense-IO instances are designed for large databases, big data workloads, and applications that require high-performance local storage. The new instances have 50% higher storage capacity and 63% higher storage performance than prior E4 Dense-IO instances.

OCI Compute E5 instances support Oracle Linux, Windows and Red Hat.

• How AI workloads will reshape data center demand
• AMD holds line on data center revenue in Q1
• Oracle’s Data Platform Gets an EPYC™ Boost

For AMD, the Oracle instances build on recent data center momentum. Speaking at a Bank of America investment conference June 6, Dan McNamara, general manager of AMD's server business unit, said:

"What we see going forward is continued growth in terms of Genoa when we look at what our cloud customers are doing with it. We have Genoa in all of the top cloud providers, datacenters running right now and things are going very, very well.

And then from an enterprise standpoint, here's the other part. Within enterprise, there is tremendous amount of evaluation going on and excitement around the performance and energy efficiency that we're delivering with Genoa. Genoa is the point of the spear with our confidence going forward within the data center."

AMD's McNamara added that the company is following up with Bergamo, a cloud-native optimized device, Genoa-X for technical computing, Sienna and MI 300, which will compete with Nvidia in GPUs.

Data to Decisions Tech Optimization Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Oracle Big Data AR SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service AI GenerativeAI ML Machine Learning LLMs Agentic AI Analytics Automation Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief AI Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Product Officer