Middleware Consulting International

Samsung and IBM continue to build upon long-standing strategic partnership with challenge for developers using Samsung and IBM technology

SEOUL, South Korea and ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 26, 2021 — Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and IBM today announced the Call for Code Honoring Everyday Heroes Challenge for enterprise developers to encourage the development of new technology solutions to help everyday heroes. The Challenge, which was unveiled during the Samsung Developer Conference (SDC), will look to address challenges faced by delivery personnel, childcare workers, healthcare frontline workers, educators, and many more who have been invaluable to society during the Covid-19 pandemic. Application submissions will be evaluated by a judging panel from IBM and Samsung and the winner will receive a cash prize, Samsung devices, and deployment support for their solution.

“Our everyday heroes have tirelessly served us throughout the pandemic and we want to make their lives, and the lives of others around the world, easier and productive with new levels of connectivity and insights from technology,” said KC Choi, EVP and Head of Global Mobile B2B Team, Samsung Electronics. “To achieve this, innovation must be open. That’s why we’ve been working closely with IBM as well as our valued developer communities using open source platforms. It’s also why I’m honored to serve as an ‘Eminent Judge’ for this year’s 2021 Call for Code Global Challenge, along with other worldwide leaders in sustainability, business and technology. I look forward to seeing the submissions for both Call for Code challenges come to life.”

Submissions for the Call for Code Honoring Everyday Heroes Challenge must be able to run on a Samsung tablet, smartphone, and/or wearable device and make use of one or more IBM open hybrid cloud technologies such as IBM Cloud or IBM Watson. Participants will also have access to Samsung toolkits, as well as data from The Weather Company. The deadline for submissions is November 20^th, with the winner announced on December 9^th. In addition to Samsung technology and a cash prize from IBM, the winner will receive support from both companies to help bring their solution to life to make a real difference for everyday heroes.

“IBM and Samsung have a long history of proven success working together to improve business outcomes for clients and also for social good,” said Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Ecosystems at IBM. “Earlier this year, IBM, Samsung, and others worked together to deploy the 2019 Call for Code Global Challenge winning solution, Prometeo. I look forward to seeing how developers can use our open technologies now to benefit some of the most deserving people in the world today, our everyday heroes.”

The partnership between Samsung and IBM extends over 30 years, starting with work on semiconductors and now mobility, AI, 5G, Industry 4.0 and networks. At SDC, Samsung and IBM Consulting are announcing a collaboration to modernize hybrid work environments with mobile experiences optimized for the Galaxy Z Fold3, co-designed with major financial services institutions.

Additionally, to accelerate the convergence of Industry 4.0 between cloud-native applications and mobility, IBM and Samsung are researching ways to bring containerized AI workloads to Samsung Android devices with IBM Edge Application Manager. This effort focuses on using containers on Samsung devices to enable workloads to be flexibly deployed, managed and processed across premises such as factories, retail stores, warehouses, hotels and distribution centers to help drive faster development of powerful new use cases for mobile and edge computing.

Samsung and IBM continue to work together to create services that enable businesses and enterprise developers to take full advantage of cutting-edge networks, mobility and analytics.

DAPPER combines Deloitte Analytics Platform with IBM Cloud Pak for Data on Red Hat OpenShift

ARMONK, N.Y. and NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2021 — IBM and Deloitte today announced a new offering—DAPPER, an AI-enabled managed analytics solution. The solution reinforces the two organizations’ 21-year global alliance—which helps organizations accelerate the adoption of hybrid cloud and AI across the enterprise—and 10 years of experience implementing the Deloitte Analytics Platform. DAPPER’s end-to-end capabilities will allow organizations to gain confidence in the insights that their data provides via a secured, simple to consume managed service offering that aims to resolve the challenges of adopting AI.

Relevant and actionable data can catapult companies to success in today’s competitive, insights-driven business environment. Clients across industries report they are struggling to accelerate the value of AI and analytics—due to lack of trust in data, domain expertise, and the resources to create a solution that can work across business environments—while simultaneously meeting strict security and compliance requirements. Gartner^® recommends its clients “choose AI cloud services over building custom models to address a broader range of use cases and for quicker deployment and built in scalability” (Hype Cycle^TM for Cloud Computing, 2021, Published 14 July 2021 – ID G00747400, by David Smith, Ed Anderson).

DAPPER is a result of the combined technology leadership, hands-on business experience, and industry experience of the Deloitte and IBM alliance. DAPPER combines the Deloitte Analytics Platform with IBM Cloud Pak for Data on Red Hat OpenShift to offer business users a fully-managed AI solution­–designed to avoid needing to commit the resources and lengthy time associated with developing, implementing, and managing a bespoke solution.

Built upon IBM’s modern hybrid cloud architecture and AI technology, DAPPER brings organizations the ability to scale up operations, promote an organization’s trust in its data, and enable smart reporting. DAPPER is a managed service run by Deloitte in the IBM Cloud, and available on premises or in multi-cloud environments. Its fully-managed analytics service provides a choice of service offerings and subscription model, and contains three core elements, built so that businesses can obtain maximum value out of their data:

• A cloud-enabled analytics platform: Security and analytics platform backed by IBM with streamlined administration, operations and maintenance provided by Deloitte, engineered to give business users a seamless, automated data analytics solution.
• Analytics development factory: Access to specialized analytics building blocks and methods engineered to streamline analytics development with operations, giving a DevOps experience to help accelerate the delivery of analytics assets.
• Catalog of subscription service offerings: Combines simplicity with data integrations to offer a selection of analytics services including dashboards, enterprise reporting, data management tools, and orchestration and consumption of AI.

With DAPPER, Deloitte and IBM can help data scientists and business users alike build, organize, and manage insight-providing assets to help promote reporting that can be trusted within an organization and AI solutions so that enterprises can focus on business outcomes.

For example, with DAPPER, Deloitte and IBM can help enable a government organization to address fraud, such as tax fraud or those related to employment benefits, pension, or money laundering. With DAPPER, an analytics cloud can collect and help business users report upon siloed data across disparate data centers, making data available for advanced AI algorithms and reports, operating associated use cases, and supporting clients’ regulatory compliance requirements. Delivered as a managed service offering, all of this is designed to be deployed within weeks rather than months, and draws from real-time data across various business units or in this example, government agencies.

“Today’s announcement is another proof point of the companies’ longtime collaboration to help clients modernize with advanced technology,” said Evaristus Mainsah, GM, Hybrid Cloud and Edge Ecosystem, IBM. “Together, Deloitte and IBM have created a flexible hybrid cloud engine that can extract real value for clients by using AI to make the most of their data. DAPPER will drive transformation, spur innovation, and reshape business to pave a pathway to digital dominance.”

Richard Houston, Senior Partner and CEO Deloitte North & South Europe said, “DAPPER is built on 10 years of Deloitte’s business and technology innovation. It represents another market-leading example of how Deloitte and IBM have combined technology, experience and industry knowledge to help clients turn data into insights—quickly, reliably, and repeatedly.”

Deloitte, an IBM Platinum Business Partner, is part of IBM’s partner ecosystem, an initiative to support partners of all types—whether they build on, service or resell IBM technologies and platforms—to help clients manage and modernize workloads from the mainframe to the edge and everything in between using IBM solutions and Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform.

Open source Call for Code for Racial Justice solution “Five Fifths Voter” deploys during National Voter Education Week to help educate voters and make their voices heard

ARMONK, N.Y. and LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5, 2021 — IBM and the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles announced today during National Voter Education Week the deployment of a new solution designed to help improve awareness of local, statewide, and national issues in communities lacking traditional access to and education about voting. Five Fifths Voter is a web-based application built using open source-powered technology to help educate, empower and enable disenfranchised minority voters to overcome setbacks incurred by voter suppression.

Five Fifths Voter, available for both desktop and mobile browsers, provides one place where users can check their registration status, register to vote, and access information about deadlines, ballot drop-offs, and polling locations. It also offers resources tailored for specific circumstances including parents requiring childcare, people with disabilities, convicted felons, and senior citizens.

“For decades, the YMCA has been an invaluable resource for young Angelenos and their families,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “Through this collaboration with IBM, the Y will foster civic engagement and help to make our democracy more accessible to young people across the region.”

The web app was customized to the diverse needs of Metropolitan Los Angeles’ communities based on input from YMCA-LA and members from its Teens and Government program who participated in design thinking workshops with IBM and identified challenges they have encountered in voting. The customization includes translation of the app in 11 languages prevalent in the area, resources for young voters to prepare themselves to vote in upcoming elections, and clear steps people can follow to help their community engage in the civic process given the YMCA’s focus on the youth and underrepresented demographic.

“The collaboration with IBM gives the YMCA-LA the virtual tools to educate and empower our communities with essential resources to participate in the voting process,” said Mario Valenzuela, Vice President of Equity and Inclusion, YMCA-LA. “We’re thankful for this opportunity to provide realistic solutions to this youth-led initiative to get out the vote and encourage community members to use their voice to facilitate positive change.”

Five Fifths Voter was one of seven projects IBM made available for anyone to contribute code to last year through open source as part of Call for Code for Racial Justice, an effort to bring the developer community together to create practical tools that help tackle one of the greatest challenges of our time: racial injustice. The code is containerized and can be deployed across hybrid cloud environments, including multi-cloud with Red Hat OpenShift. Some of the open source frameworks and languages used include Vue.js, Node.js, Python, Apache CouchDB, and Carbon Design System. The web app is hosted on IBM Cloud; was built using technology including IBM Watson Tone Analyzer and Watson Natural Language Understanding; and uses the Google Civic and Google Maps APIs.

The Call for Code for Racial Justice projects, including Five Fifths Voter, are shared online so anyone can contribute code to enhance them with a focus on three key areas: police and judicial reform and accountability, diverse representation, and policy and legislation reform. Call for Code for Racial Justice is part of the broader Call for Code tech-for-good initiative in which more than 500,000 developers and problem solvers across 180 nations have participated since launch in 2018 to address problems such as climate change and COVID-19 with open source-powered software.

“Working with strong community organizations like YMCA-LA was our goal when we first created Call for Code for Racial Justice,” IBM Call for Code Director Ruth Davis said. “We believe bringing together developers, ecosystem partners, and communities around the world can drive lasting impact in the fight against systemic racism and are looking forward to enhancing Five Fifths Voter’s capabilities and bringing it to more communities.”

IBM and YMCA-LA invite developers in the Greater Los Angeles area and around the United States to contribute their ideas and code to the solution to further enhance it and make it even more relevant to their local communities’ needs.