As part of the collaboration, Vonage will provide SAP with access to Vonage network APIs from Vonage’s Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), including Quality-on-Demand (QoD), Device Location and Number Verification. The QoD API enables businesses to deliver exceptional real-time experiences, from extended reality to autonomous vehicle support and enhanced broadcast experiences, serving as a cornerstone for elevated user satisfaction. Through the use of Vonage APIs, SAP can use Device Location together with Number Verification APIs to provide an authentication experience for its customers to help mitigate the risk of fraud, while Device Location APIs, together with IoT, can help to enhance asset tracking, track and trace, and fleet management by using network-based location data.

Vonage plans to work with SAP on cutting-edge innovation that combines generative AI and immersive services on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) with Vonage’s network APIs, which can help improve experiences with QoD to support sustainability through advanced technologies, enhanced data visualization and augmented reality training. Immersive analytics can be used to leverage data from the network to provide deeper insights, understanding and strengthen data-driven decision-making.

Michael Ameling, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Business Technology Platform, said, “We are delighted to partner with Vonage to revolutionize the use of SAP Business AI across the API landscape. This collaboration opens a world of possibilities for developers and businesses, empowering them to innovate and succeed like never before. Our partnership is not just about cutting-edge generative AI innovation, but about redefining the future, with network API integration and transformation. Together, we bring a blend of expertise, next generation technology, and a shared vision towards customer value.”

Seckin Arikan, Head of Business Unit API for Vonage, comments, “We are excited to announce our partnership with SAP to power innovative new capabilities with communications and network APIs coupled with SAP Business AI. With the increasing demands in customer expectations, businesses need to pivot their approach to designing and delivering more secure and enhanced engagement experiences for their customers and employees and become data-driven organizations set for success -- and they need to do it faster and easier than before. Together, we aim to make new capabilities available that can help developers create new applications for enterprises to reimagine their business, improve customer experiences, and create new communications and engagement capabilities.”

Vonage’s Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) is a mature platform that makes it easy for a community of more than 1.6 million developers to embed communications capabilities into applications, systems and workflows through Communications APIs. Vonage offers a comprehensive suite of communications APIs including voice, video, messaging, and verification, as well as a portfolio of AI-capable, low-code/no-code programmable components that speed and simplify the development of applications.

With Ericsson’s mobile network leadership, this platform can be extended to enable developers to build advanced secure, reliable and innovative applications by exposing 5G capabilities as network APIs, including SIM Swap, Device Status and Number Verification to tackle fraud, as well as Device Location Verification, and Quality on Demand, along with additional network capabilities to address improved connectivity and enhanced engagement to meet the needs of enterprise customers.

To find out more about Vonage, visit www.vonage.com.  

About Vonage 

Vonage, a global cloud communications leader, helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation. Vonage's Communications Platform is fully programmable and allows for the integration of Video, Voice, Chat, Messaging, AI and Verification into existing products, workflows and systems. The Vonage conversational commerce application enables businesses to create AI-powered omnichannel experiences that boost sales and increase customer satisfaction. Vonage's fully programmable unified communications, contact center and conversational commerce applications are built from the Vonage platform and enable companies to transform how they communicate and operate from the office or remotely - providing the flexibility required to create meaningful engagements. 

Vonage is headquartered in New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Israel and Asia and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), and a business area within the Ericsson group called Business Area Global Communications Platform. To follow Vonage on X (formerly known as Twitter), please visit twitter.com/vonage. To follow on LinkedIn, visit linkedin.com/company/Vonage. To become a fan on Facebook, go to facebook.com/vonage. To subscribe on YouTube, visit youtube.com/vonage. 

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. 

Building the Australia-Asia Tech Corridor explores the vital connections between Australia’s and Asia’s tech ecosystems and is based on a unique data analysis of outbound Australian investment in Asian tech startups.

The TCA notes that the value of Australia-linked investments in Asian startups grew 27-fold between 2016 and 2018, the paper found - hwever, it reached its lowest point since 2016 in 2023, dropping more than 86% from 2022 to reach just $779 million, mirroringa decline in venture funding from all investors.

“While the amount invested year-to-year has fluctuated in line with global conditions, we expect this relationship is here to stay and shows great potential for mutually beneficial growth,” the paper explains.

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Other key findings of the paper include:

• Australian investors have led 40% of the transactions they have engaged in over the last decade.
• Significantly, 77% of investments of Australian investments target seed and early-stage companies in Asia, particularly in the Consumer and B2C sectors.
• Over half the value of all Australia-linked investments is directed towards Singapore, making it the premier destination for Australian tech investments in Asia.
• The value of Indian capital raisings involving an Australian investor grew by 95% over the course of the decade (2013-2023) and the number of transactions doubled between 2015 and 2023.

The TCA also notes that the paper proposes establishing a regional dialogue, collaboratively led by both industry and policymakers, to deepen the Australia-Asia tech corridor - and the exchange of capital, people and technology would create the conditions for two-way investment to grow, and benefit both the Australian and Asian tech ecosystems.

Building the Australia-Asia Tech Corridor is the inaugural discussion paper in the Tech Connections Series, which aims to develop a holistic picture of the linkages between Australia and Asia’s tech ecosystems - and the Tech Connections Series is available on the Tech Council of Australia and Asialink Business websites.

Commenting on the paper, Robert Law, Director Advisory & Insights, Asialink Business said: “The development of a robust Australia-Asia tech corridor is critical for fostering innovation, growth, and collaboration; how connections can drive mutual success across both regions." -

"Success in Asia requires more than just capital. It demands a deep understanding of local dynamics and the ability to build strong, in-market relationships. Developing Asia-specific capabilities is essential for Australian investors looking to unlock new opportunities in Asia’s tech markets,” -said Leigh Howard, CEO, Asialink Business.

“The mutually beneficial exchange of expertise, via talent, investment or technology, is the foundation of strong economic relationships between Australia and Asia. These connections can support both regions to grow companies globally,” Damian Kassabgi, CEO, Tech Council of Australia.

Other comments included:

“Establishing a regional dialogue that strengthens the Australia-Asia investment landscape and explores opportunities for collaboration across policy and research will contribute to a thriving tech ecosystem in both regions and drive innovation.” - Susan Travis, Head of Research, Tech Council of Australia.

“Asia’s rapid urbanisation creates incredible opportunities for leading emerging technology companies to scale. For Taronga Ventures, we see many investment opportunities across the built environment and real asset sectors and this is a strategic driver for long-term growth.” - Jonathan Hannam, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Taronga Ventures.

About Asialink Business 

Since 2013, Asialink Business has helped thousands of Australian organisations and professionals seize opportunities in Asia. As Australia’s National Centre for Asia Capability, we equip leaders, entrepreneurs and employees with the insights, capabilities and connections to succeed across Asia. Asialink Business is supported by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. It is part of the Asialink Group hosted by the University of Melbourne. To find out more, visit www.asialinkbusiness.com.au or follow us on Twitter @asiacapable and LinkedIn 

About Tech Council of Australia 

The Tech Council of Australia (TCA) is Australia’s peak industry body for the tech sector. The Australian tech sector is a pillar of the Australian economy, contributing $167 billion per annum, and employing 861,000 people. This makes the tech sector equivalent to Australia’s third largest industry, behind mining and banking, and Australia’s seventh largest employing sector. The TCA represents a diverse cross-section of Australia’s technology sector, including data-driven local and global companies and venture capital funds with investments in data-driven enterprises. 

GlobalData’s New Zealand Mobile Broadband Forecast (Q2-2024) reveals that mobile voice service revenue will decline at a 1.8% CAGR over the forecast period owing to the increasing consumer preference for over-the-top (OTT) communication platforms, and the decline in voice average revenue per user (ARPU) levels with telcos offering unlimited voice minutes with their mobile service plans.

Mobile data service revenue, on the other hand, will increase at a CAGR of 5.8% between 2024 and 2029 driven by the steady growth in the consumption of mobile data services over 4G/5G networks, and most importantly increasing adoption of higher-ARPU yielding-5G services.

Hrushikesh Mahananda, Telecom Research Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “The average monthly data usage over mobile networks is forecast to increase from 7.6GB in 2024 to 13.7GB in 2029, driven by the growing consumption of online video and social media content over smartphones, on the back data-centric packages offered by telcos.”

4G will remain the leading mobile technology in terms of subscriptions through 2029 as operators continue to upgrade and expand their LTE networks. 5G subscriptions, however, are estimated to increase at the fastest rate over the forecast period and are expected to account for about 46% of the total mobile subscriptions by the end of 2029 as operators accelerate their 5G rollouts to more locations in the country.

For example, as of July 2024, Spark 5G network coverage spans 103 locations in New Zealand, with further plans to extend connectivity to all towns with a population exceeding 1,500 by 2026.

Mahananda concludes: “One New Zealand will lead the mobile services market in terms of subscriptions through 2029, given its strong focus on 4G and 5G network developments and expansion across the country and its various affordable prepaid and postpaid plans with unlimited calls and data.”

The bank says that after making significant progress on its transformation program, it is focused on tapping the “strong pipeline of demand that exists for its products and services”.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank CEO and Managing Director Richard Fennell said the changes would support the Bank’s growth agenda while ensuring it retained its position as Australia’s most trusted Bank.

“We have entered the financial year with momentum and growth on our side. This has been made possible by the strong foundations we have created by simplifying, modernising and digitising the Bank,” Richard Fennell said.

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“The time is right to accelerate the next phase of our development by continuing to invest in the areas that will help us deliver sustainable growth such as our digital bank Up, the Bendigo Lending Platform and the Business and Agri transformation.

“After carefully considering the capabilities we need to deliver against our objectives and to continue meeting the evolving needs of our customers, I am pleased to announce the following changes and additions to the executive team.”

The bank also announced that Taso Corolis has been appointed Chief Customer Officer, Consumer Banking with a focus on “continuing to drive portfoliogrowth and productivity enhancements for the benefit of our customers. Taso has fostered a deep connection with the customer since joining Rural Bank in 2008 and has been a strong advocate for our customers in times of difficulty, such as natural disasters and the pandemic. Taso has spent the last six years as the Bank’s Chief Risk Officer.”

Bendigo Bank notes that Sarah Bateson has been appointed Chief Marketing Officer to form a new Brand, Marketing and Communications Division. - and will be based in Bendigo and “brings with her considerable experience in leading Marketing and Customer teams in Australia and internationally.

“Her experience is highly valued as the Bank unites its communication and marketing resources for greater impact. She will be a strong voice for creative growth at the Bank, as she continues to build national awareness for the Bendigo Bank brand and its purpose.

“Xavier Shay has been appointed Chief Digital Officer in addition to his current role as CEO of Up. Xavier will bring together the Bank’s digital capabilities and will be responsible for driving greater penetration of our digital offerings across the Bendigo and Up brands.

“Xavier’s experience in leading high performing digital teams at Up and as Director of Payments Engineering and Analytics at Square will support the growth of the business and continue to improve returns for shareholders.”

Bendigo Bank says the changes are effective immediately with the exception of the appointment of Taso Corolis, who will commence his new role on October 7 when he returns from a period of leave.

Richard Fennell congratulated the new appointments and additions to the executive team, saying renewal was important to ensure the Bank could continue to “deliver on its purpose of feeding into the prosperity of its customers and the community”.

“Over the last five years the Bank has made significant progress in reducing complexity, investing in capability and telling our story,” Fennell concluded.

With 3.3 million wireline and 3.6 million mobile customers, Fastweb promotes the digital transformation of society to build an increasingly connected, inclusive and eco-sustainable future. By integrating Cloudian’s technology, Fastweb strengthens its commitment to the country’s digital transformation by providing cutting-edge cloud storage solutions that are increasingly scalable and efficient.

“Partnering with Cloudian represents a significant stride in our mission to empower clients with technology that drives performance and growth,” said Emanuel Armati, Manager of Fastcloud Managed Services at Fastweb.

“This collaboration equips us to deliver an even more scalable and highly available infrastructure that helps us meet our customers’ evolving needs more quickly.”

Cloudian's AI data lake introduces an era of limitless on-premises storage and the industry’s highest S3 API compatibility. This ensures flawless operation with S3-compatible software to deliver the infrastructure excellence that Fastweb’s customers expect.

“Cloudian is proud to support Fastweb’s vision of providing increasingly scalable, secure cloud storage services,” said Carsten Graf, Cloudian’s Vice President of EMEA Sales. “Our AI data lake platform is designed to meet the demands of data-intensive applications, providing Fastweb with a scalable, robust and secure solution.”

This partnership positions Fastweb to enhance its service offerings, further reinforcing its market leadership in Italy's telecommunications sector. Fastweb’s Cloudian deployment includes 3.4 petabytes (PB) of capacity in two data centres.

About Cloudian
Cloudian is the leader in secure, S3-compatible AI data lake platforms. With military-grade security, limitless scale, and seamless cloud integration, Cloudian delivers plug-and-play interoperability with AI tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Kafka, Arrow and more. Our software-defined, on-premises solutions let users simplify and accelerate AI workflows, meet data sovereignty requirements, and cut costs by consolidating information to a single, cloud-like environment. Cloudian’s geo-distributed architecture manages and protects object and file data at the edge, core, and in the cloud, for both traditional and modern applications. Learn more at cloudian.com.­­

The company today released its full FY24 results with July revenue of $5.5m, an increase of 34% on the PCP.

Results highlighted by Smart Parking reveal included

• Group revenue of $54.3m1 (up 21%)
• Adjusted EBITDA of $14.7m2 (up 28%)
• Adjusted EBITDA margin of 27%2 (up 150 bps)
• Growth in global parking breach notices up 22%
• Growth in APAC/Germany parking breach notices up 271%
• Adjusted Free cashflow of $12.2m3 (up 40%)
• 1,424 total group ANPR sites under management
• Cash of $7.2m to self-fund organic growth, expansion into new territories, and complementary acquisition opportunities
• Organic growth complemented by 2 acquisitions in the UK and Germany.
• Denmark operations commenced in January 2024

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Paul Gillespie, Smart Parking Group CEO said the company’s key focus remains to deliver 1,500 sites by December 2024 and it is “on track to exceed this milestone”.

“Our growth strategy remains intact, and with our balance sheet and positive cash flow we're well capitalised to take advantage of organic and inorganic opportunities as they arise.

“I look forward continuing to update our shareholders on positive progress in the near future, and would like to thank our Global team for their outstanding contributions over the year,” Gillespie concluded.

Click here to view Smart Parking's full result presentation.

 

According to netBI ,without the adoption of technology, Australian transport organisations may find meeting the Government’s legislated Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050 an uphill battle.

John Langford-Ely, CEO,  netBI said, “Public Transport Agencies and Operators are faced with more complexity today than ever before. No longer are they responsible for managing service delivery alone, they are expected to be experts in an ever-growing list of technologies and systems that power their depots and vehicles, as well as the data that they generate. This expertise is hard to build internally, and ironically this complexity requires more technology to help simplify matters through automation.

“When it comes to monitoring carbon emissions, we are finding our clients are struggling to handle their reporting and analytical requirements through their existing processes. The process of obtaining and warehousing the data, analysing it and pulling together the required reports takes weeks to complete when done manually. In the end, the results are often incomplete, inaccurate and difficult to audit, while the associated knowledge is hard to maintain.

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“It’s exciting to see netBI’s Emissions Reporting Tool helping our clients to overcome these challenges. It’s making the process repeatable and its delivering confidence in the results. It’s also allowing clients to analyse and report on an array of pollutant data at a much more granular level, such as by vehicle, route and trip over any time horizon.”

netBI observes that the New Zealand Government has also pledged a Net Zero Carbon emissions by 2050, which has spurred the Greater Wellington Regional Council to work with netBI to automate the recording and reporting of their bus emissions data.

Andrew Myers, Manager Customer Insights and Assets for Metlink, Greater Wellington Council said, “We can more accurately meet Government Emissions reporting obligations and use the same data to deliver insights to other stakeholders.”

Public transport users can also make emissions-conscious decisions for their chosen route when using the netBI Emissions Reporting Tool through supported journey planning apps, which calculates the emissions value for each journey using public transport, as well as petrol and electric vehicles for driving.

This cutting-edge technology, developed in Brisbane, has the potential to help government agencies globally to better manage their sustainability programs, especially in relation to transport emissions. netBI also recently announced being a finalist in the QLD Export Awards’ Sustainability and Green Economy category, happening 4 September in Brisbane.

About netBI
netBI is a leading, cloud-based SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) data platform and analytics solution for the mass transit sector. netBI makes sense of all streaming and historical data through custom-built solutions that unify and analyse complex data sets, from any system. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, netBI puts business data into context, is fast and low-risk to implement, and delivers insights that are impossible to achieve using traditional approaches. netBI | Cloud data platform and BI solution for deep insights

Joining the global Qualtrics Partner Network, Perceptive will “expand” its abilities to help clients manage their market research, customer experience, and brand experience programs through a single platform, optimised with program support and consulting.

Perceptive will standardise its existing programs using Qualtrics as part of the partnership, helping to unlock operational efficiencies, advance industry expertise, and enable clients with direct access to the latest experience management capabilities and global market insights.

“Perceptive’s partnership with Qualtrics has been met with huge enthusiasm among our clients. It will take our industry capabilities to the next level to deliver more value and innovation to the 150+ clients we support, while unlocking significant efficiencies across our business,” says Perceptive managing director Dan Shaw.

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“Qualtrics is at the centre of the experience management ecosystem, and key to this is our deep focus and investment to continually build and cultivate a community of trusted, expert partners - including Perceptive - that help organisations unlock significant value and drive meaningful innovation with experience management,” says Qualtrics head of ecosystems Asia Pacific and Japan Zoe Nicholson.

GlobalData,says the numbers of deals represented a decline of 9.9% compared to the 8,840 deals announced during the same period in previous year.

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Subdued deal activity remained a global phenomenon with all the regions, including the APAC, witnessing a decline in deal volume. However, the decline experienced in APAC region was relatively lesser compared to other regions.”

The report notes that whille APAC was the only region to register single-digit decline in deal volume, other regions North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America witnessed respective deal volume decline by 19.6%, 16.9%, 11.7% and 27.7% YoY during January-July 2024.

Bose adds: “While most of the APAC markets witnessed decline in deal volume, the impact was negated to some extent by improvements experienced in markets such as India, Japan and Thailand.”

The report observes that China, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia saw YoY decline in deal volume by 21.1%, 2.6%, 1.3%, 23.7%, 14.5%, 17.2% and 32.2%, respectively, during January-July 2024. On the other hand, India, Japan and Thailand witnessed their respective deal volume improve by 2.4%, 5.7% and 8.5%, YoY.

And, an analysis of GlobalData’s Deals Database revealed that all the deal types under the coverage registered decline during the review period - for instance, the number of M&A deals YoY declined by 8.3%, whereas the volume of private equity deals and venture financing deals YoY fell by 25.4% and 10.9%, respectively.

The collaboration has been core to the development of Elastic Security features—Automatic Import, Attack Discovery and Elastic Assistant for Security—on the Elastic Search AI Platform- features Elastic says streamline user migration to AI-driven security analytics and expedite security operations workflows.

"Working with Elastic has been amazing in so many ways. The Elastic AI Assistant for Security, powered by LangChain's standard large language model (LLM) interfaces and instrumented using LangSmith, has successfully deployed to production, reaching hundreds of users,” said Erick Friis, founding engineer at LangChain.

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“Elastic is also using LangGraph to build more controllable agents. It's inspiring to see how our shared users have embraced similar retrieval workflows on their Elastic deployments.”

The integration between Elastic Security with LangChain leverages two key components:

LangChain and LangGraph provide the necessary tools for building applications that require context-aware reasoning, such as:

•  Enhancing Elastic AI Assistant’s ability to understand and react to complex security scenarios and generate queries 
• Attack Discovery’s ability to identify and describe attacks
• Automatic Import’s ability to craft an accurate data integration based on sample data

Users have the freedom to integrate the generative AI features of Elastic Security with their LLM of choice. With the Elastic Open Inference API and LangChain’s extensive chat model ecosystem, Elastic is quickly expanding customers’ LLM options.

“Elastic is focused on delivering innovative AI features for security teams to accelerate their migration from legacy SIEM and free up teams from traditionally time-consuming, complex and mundane tasks,” said Mike Nichols, vice president of product, Security at Elastic.

“Through our close relationship with LangChain and integrations with LangGraph and LangSmith, we’ve created features that give valuable time back to security practitioners.”

Read the Elastic blog for more information on Elastic’s work with LangChain.

About Elastic 

Elastic (NYSE: ESTC), the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real-time using all their data, at scale. Elastic’s solutions for search, observability and security are built on the Elastic Search AI Platform, the development platform used by thousands of companies, including more than 50% of the Fortune 500. Learn more at elastic.co.