The news is once again flooded with artificial intelligence announcements, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce releases. Aptean announced it has completed the acquisition of Affinitus Group, a provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning solutions built to support the specific needs of fresh produce, food service, bakery, meat, dairy, and agricultural organizations. IBM announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Vista Equity Partners to purchase Apptio Inc., a provider of financial and operational IT management and optimization (FinOps) software, for $4.6 billion.
Hi and welcome to episode 94 of The ERP Minute. I am your host, Rebekah McCabe.
The news is once again flooded with artificial intelligence announcements, including Oracle, Microsoft, and Salesforce releases.
In response to the increasing demand for AI, ML, and cloud services, Oracle will be offering free training and certification testing worldwide, with free certifications available exclusively from Oracle University until August 31st, 2023, and digital training for OCI available for free continuously. The new program includes instruction and certification on in-demand skills across OCI, AI/ML, data management, and Oracle Fusion Cloud applications. Oracle aims to fill the resource gaps moving forward by empowering users, employees, and the like to get the most from their Oracle applications, regardless of background.
Microsoft continues to capitalize on AI advancements with the announcement of its new strategic partnership with Moody Corporation, a global integrated risk assessment firm that utilizes data, analytical solutions, and insights to help decision-makers identify opportunities and manage the risks of doing business with others. This partnership will combine Moody’s robust data and analytics capabilities and the power and scale of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to create innovative offerings that enhance insights into corporate intelligence and risk management. This collaboration will allow Microsoft and Moody to co-create new products and services built on Azure OpenAI Service for enhanced data and risk management, including “Moody’s CoPilot”, combining Moody’s proprietary data, analytics, and research with the latest large language models and Microsoft’s generative AI technology. Advancements like this will be important to the future of effective data gathering and the application of those insights to run businesses more efficiently.
As part of its commitment to AI expansion, Salesforce Ventures announced its investment in Runway, a pioneer in democratizing AI tools for a new generation of storytelling and content creation. Launched in 2019 as a model directory that enabled others to deploy and run open-source machine learning models, Runway has transformed to become a developer of AI-powered editing tools, including text-to-image, video-to-video, and text-to-video generation products powered by proprietary state of the art generative models. The Runway advancement is a major opportunity for Salesforce to become an early adopter of these advanced technologies that will revolutionize the way we conduct business, train users, generate content, and more.
In other news, Aptean announced it has completed the acquisition of Affinitus Group, a provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning solutions built to support the specific needs of fresh produce, food service, bakery, meat, dairy, and agricultural organizations. Aptean continues to grow its technology stack with acquisitions across the market. We are excited about the momentum building behind Aptean and look forward to its expansion within the space.
Finally, IBM announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Vista Equity Partners to purchase Apptio Inc., a provider of financial and operational IT management and optimization (FinOps) software, for $4.6 billion. The acquisition will accelerate the advancement of IBM’s IT automation capabilities and enable enterprise leaders to deliver enhanced business value across technology investments. In a time when businesses have access to tools enabling them to provide previously unattainable value, it is vital that businesses continue to enhance their technology stacks to adapt to the changing technology landscape.
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