Evolving Systems, Inc. has announced the signing of an extended multiyear Managed Services contract with Tier 1 mobile operator, EE (now part of BT Global). The contract extension significantly expands Evolving Systems’ collaborative engagement with the mobile operator.

Mergers and acquisitions news also rolled in. Nokia announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Elenion Technologies, a U.S.-based company focusing on silicon photonics technology. NVIDIA announced the completion of its acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., for a transaction value of $7 billion. The acquisition, initially announced on March 11, 2019, combines NVIDIA’s leading computing expertise with Mellanox’s high-performance networking technology for the advancement of next-generation data centers.

A new report from Juniper Research found that total eRetail transaction values will reach $4.8 trillion by 2024, up from $3.3 trillion in 2020. This growth will be driven by emerging markets, with China having 62 percent value growth over the next 4 years. 

AI News

A new report from Juniper Research has found that consumers will interact with voice assistants on over 8.4 billion devices by 2024; overtaking the world’s population and growing 113 percent compared to the 4.2 billion devices expected to be in use by year end 2020. Despite this, monetization of the voice assistants themselves remains a challenge.

Cerence Inc. announced that Bean Tech, a strategic partner of Great Wall Motors, will deploy Cerence ARK (AI Reference Kit) to build AI-powered automotive assistants for the Chinese automotive group. These technologies provide fast and accurate voice-powered access to a range of in-car systems and functions, including the telephone, radio and media, vehicle controls, navigation and point-of-interest search, and more. In other connected-car related industry news, BMW Group has selected the new NVIDIA Isaac™ robotics platform to enhance its automotive factories—utilizing logistics robots built on advanced AI computing and visualization technologies.

QuillBot announced that it raised over $4M in seed funding, led by GSV Ventures and Sierra Ventures with participation from Service Provider Capital. QuillBot is the first and only comprehensive AI writing collaborator that rewrites full paragraphs and refines content.

Security News

The pandemic is also creating some new security concerns for service providers. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. announced findings from a new survey, conducted by Dimensional Research, examining the coronavirus pandemic’s impact on enterprise security. The survey results show that 71 percent of IT and security professionals globally report an increase in security threats and attacks since the coronavirus outbreak started, as criminals seek to exploit the remote working explosion. Check Point Research has published its latest Global Threat Index for April 2020. Researchers saw several COVID-19 related spam campaigns distributing a new variant of the Agent Tesla remote access trojan, moving it up to third place in the Index, impacting 3 percent of organizations worldwide.

The ETSI Technical Committee CYBER has recently released a key standard for digital evidence bag (DEB). ETSI TS 103 643 covers “techniques for assurance of digital material used in legal proceedings” and provides a set of extra tools for those wanting to demonstrate the integrity of digital evidence.

NordVPN has released survey findings indicating trends in global digital surveillance by country—and that these might extend beyond the end of the current pandemic.

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