Why can’t your chatbot just solve my query?

Chatbots are, to be blunt, everywhere. It feels as if you can hardly visit a website these days without a bot asking how they can help you. It’s not just a matter of perception either. According to research from Gartner, chatbots will become a primary customer service channel for around a quarter of organisations by 2027. Ubiquitous as chatbots are becoming, however, they still have a significant problem: aside from their inability to understand customer queries, many of them simply aren’t that helpful.

Data rate adaptation limitations of video streaming

This is a two-part article on the background of the internet protocols and standards used for audio-visual streaming, including their associated limitations for congestion control. Part 1 provides a background to the buffering problem

experienced by most mobile viewers and Part 2 (in October 2022 EngineerIT) looks at the newer protocols that have attempted to alleviate the problem with some degree of success.

Meeting 5G communication and data centre demands with advanced power management technology

Across the advancing communications world, the most challenging applications for today’s power electronics face the technical hurdles of size, weight, and power (SWaP). Almost every application seems to be getting smaller and lighter while demanding more power. The need to optimise SWaP is driving the power electronics industry in many new ways. Power management technology is playing a significant role in the innovation of today’s data centre and communication industry.

With sustainability and cost reduction as the goal, technology leadership means higher system efficiency is the target. With more advanced process technologies being used in communications systems comes lower operational voltages and significantly increased currents, which challenge system efficiency. Methodologies beyond pure silicon development need to be considered for these next generation systems. This is where ADI is poised to bring advances.

CIO Playbook: How to pitch As-a-Service to your organisation

The CIOs’ work fuelling their companies amid the pandemic was critical to keeping the economy moving forward. IT leaders have rapidly adopted cloud services and stitched together various applications to support their businesses.

With digital transformations forever evolving in a world reshaped by various disruptions, C-suite leaders want assurances their CIO peers are putting the business in the best position to not only capture but sustain a competitive advantage. More than ever, CIOs must be ready to adapt to change. As a result, they are increasingly turning to as-a-service IT models which offer a cloud experience anywhere they operate – from the data centre to the edge, enabling CIOs to focus on achieving business outcomes and uncovering new business opportunities.

Education at the speed of tech: Why a paradigm shift is required to teach software development

Technology is evolving rapidly. It seems only fair to expect that the skills being taught to those entering the workplace also need to change and adapt. However, this is not the case with tertiary institutions like universities and technical colleges, which are still stuck in the traditional mindset of only focusing on transferring knowledge. What is needed is an environment in which aspirant software developers can get trained and move into a good career as quickly as possible. If anything, being able to train somebody with the end goal of getting a job and building a career has become the key differentiator. Just consider how the world’s software requirements have grown exponentially over the past 20 years. Every organisation needs software to be successful. Whether it is a retailer looking to open more stores or a brand wanting to expand on its product range, software is the golden thread tying everything together.

Invariably, this has created a massive need for software developers. But in South Africa, the number of software developers entering the market is low, mainly because of the reliance on the ‘old way’ of doing things.