Regardless of the geographies in which a retailer operates, peaks in demand are an inevitable yet very welcome fact of life in operations. Where once retailers spent many days in the run-up to a big sale event or promotion readying their physical retail outlets, today most stores also have to make ready their online retail operations: the virtual storefront, warehouses, distribution network, payment platforms, online marketing activities and a dozen more elements besides.

Whether it’s Singles’ Day, Cyber Monday, Christmas, or Eid al-Fitr, surges in demand for retail stores, both online and offline, contribute significantly to many businesses’ revenues. The ability to preserve excellent customer service and fulfil every order seamlessly depends on many of those moving parts functioning as themselves, but more critically, as cogs in the machinery of a larger retail machine.

At the consumer’s end, a late delivery or two may go largely unnoticed, but failing systems that underpin the retail experience at a significant scale can unleash a deluge of bad press that is difficult to recover from. Attempts to repair the damage after the fact and extraordinary measures taken during peak demand periods can be so costly that increased sales revenue is lost in additional costs.

Complex Stack

The potential for problems stems from the complexity of operations rather than an inability to plan and anticipate periods of peak demand. Like fashion, retail preferences and markets change very quickly, and in this vertical, the definition of legacy technology is less forgiving than elsewhere.

For example, a decision to make large investments in online retail made just a few years ago may now be eclipsed by the recent trend in consumers wishing to try before they buy in a physical retail store. Warehouse networks and associated technology platforms like DOMs (distributed order management systems) may be optimised for a channel that’s less favoured this year. And next year…who can say?

While XaaS solutions for retailers offer answers to some of the issues around the speed and cost of IT deployments, in some ways, cloud-based solutions exhibit the same underlying problem that so-called legacy platforms present. The issue of interoperability remains to a significant degree, regardless of whether core systems are in-house, cloud-based, monolithic or container-based and cloud-native.

Given that an agile approach to the software used to run a retail operation is optimal (to handle peaks and to change to reflect changes in the market), it’s the interconnection of operational technology that is critical to get right.

API Answers

In an ideal world, every piece of software in the stack would be built using open standards and an API-first approach. However, with many proprietary systems, that’s not entirely the case, and it often isn’t with bespoke, black box software that forms a basis in some enterprises.

Even with every part of the core infrastructure presenting API layers, there remains the significant overhead of developing the data layer that GETs and POSTs to APIs, parses EDI, negotiates FTP, and maintains robust connections.

Setting a development goal of stringing together a unified system that does all that is a fine concept, but it does not account for the moving target of the retail operator’s IT stack: finish an API-based data layer in 12-18 months, and it’s likely that at least one of the connected platforms will change significantly in that timeframe.

Self-made Solutions

A team dedicated to maintaining multi-system interoperability will always find itself reacting to events out of its control, like an API update or application upgrade. In fact, such a team may only be made aware of changes somewhere in a complex topology when production systems break. It’s Sod’s Law, of course, that breaking changes will occur under the real-life stress tests of Black Friday, Cyber Monday or similar.

The number of moving parts in a modern retailer’s technology includes backbone ERPs, point-of-sale, warehousing and distribution, e-commerce platforms and a host of ancillary systems like CRM and Martech. It’s difficult to simulate peak demand stresses to determine where failures or bottlenecks might occur in such a multi-faceted whole and, therefore, develop coherent plans that ensure high levels of performance throughout a retailer’s sales cycle with its inevitable highs and lows.

However, specialist providers exist whose sole purpose is to provide robust connectivity between all the technology elements in modern retail.

Patching for Perfection

Patchworks is a vendor-agnostic cloud platform that addresses the challenge of integration complexity faced by retailers and partners. It creates the data layer concept discussed above and lets users see information flowing in real time from system to system. Via its intuitive interface, it gives up-to-the-minute metrics on orders, stock, distribution system status, and so on – the details are determined, of course, by the platforms used throughout the chain.

Patchworks deployment can be achieved in-house or via one of their certified partners, with a no-code/low-code interface that helps visualise and simplify connectivity between data sources: e-commerce platforms, WMS, DOM, common ERPs, CRMs, databases and business analytics platforms. Essentially anything with an API. Retailers can synchronise inventory, orders, and customer data across various platforms with no specific vendor lock-in or dependent system. That means IT teams can change the elements of the IT stack in production and still retain the rich source of meta-operational data and know that systems will continue to update one another.

It allows a high degree of flexibility and scale and lets companies test their systems under load to better plan and provision for periods of peak demand. The cohesive operational structure means that as the retailer’s business model evolves, new and changing elements can plug-and-play with the rest of the stack. There are also pre-built connectors and applications designed solely for the retail industry, so many operators will find that their production systems can be integrated quickly and reliably.

You can learn more about one of their customers Triumph Motorcycles here, who needed help integrating John Lewis’ The Edge marketplace, as well as Commercetools, VirtualStock and Torque ahead of last year’s peak trading season.

Jim Herbert, CEO at Patchworks emphasised the importance and value of staying connected in a recent interview where he said, “As retailers prepare for peak season, staying connected and agile is crucial. As a proud member of the MACH Alliance and a leader in composable commerce, Patchworks empowers businesses to seamlessly integrate their systems, ensuring a smooth, efficient operation that can adapt to demand surges. This connectivity not only enhances customer experiences but also drives cost effectiveness and revenue growth by optimising every aspect of the retail process all year round.”

You can learn more about Patchworks and the ways it’s unifying retail platforms online and in-store by heading to its website and speaking to a retail sector advisor.

The post Interoperability the Key to Managing Peak Retail Demands appeared first on TechHQ.

There has been a world of difference between the emerging technology of AI and its attainment of the status of being usable every day by ‘normal people’. As a discipline, AI has been around for many years but was consigned to rarefied academic institutions where researchers in computer science, linguistics, and statistical modelling brought the concept from idea to reality. Now, thanks to OpenAI and its ChatGPT model, machine learning has become an everyday, usable system that has a significant impact on people’s lives across multiple areas, particularly in the area of expense management.

Artificial intelligence is finding more uses in many areas, but when models are built from scratch, significant work is needed to tune them to different areas of the business.

AI has been used in finance offices for a while now, for example, in optical character recognition, which is already common practice. Further up the scale of business size, large financial institutions use machine learning to spot fraudulent activity in the multiple transactions that flow through their systems daily.

Now, the same type of algorithms can flag potentially fraudulent expense claims submitted to every Finance department. In small companies, every misspend can have an impact on cashflow that is, in relative terms, worse than in a large corporation.

Source: Rydoo

The usability issue

The big hurdle to adopting any technology, AI included, is usability by the people in the workplace who aren’t necessarily Computing Science graduates. In fact, any technology implementation lives or dies by its uptake by employees.

To implement a finance tool, the software must be intuitive and straightforward for everyone who uses it daily, whether end-users, managers or finance teams. Elements like user interface (UI) design and simple task completion steps make a big difference for all the parties involved. Everything has to be done intuitively and easily, from daily expense claim submission right up to detailed strategic report formulation.

AI can drive wide adoption among a workforce by simplifying individual software choices, automating everyday tasks, and cutting out the mundane, repetitive steps such as submitting an expense claim.

Finance teams also benefit from usable, directed AI-powered software with specialised tools on the same platform as end-users. For example, complex financial compliance regulations can affect many aspects of spending and expense management. Policies might be local to certain jurisdictions, so what’s acceptable to spend in the UK by employees working out of the Zurich office may not be the same as those that apply to UK workers at a conference in the US.

Teams applying those policies to expense claims must be able to upload rules and apply them easily, with clear oversight of their effects. This ability is just as important as the need for a simple-to-use expense submission app or webpage.

How AI tools help save costs

In addition to their usability, expense management software are worth the investment because they can streamline processes and thereby reduce business costs.

If the process of an expense submission is easier and helps prevent fraudulent claims (a way to save costs in itself), then the cost of creating expense reports also falls.

A 2022 report from the Association of Associated Fraud Examiners claims that about 20% of expense reports can contain errors that need to be manually corrected. These errors often start as a mistake when the end-user submits the expense. The same report also states that, on average, it costs £58 to create such a report and a further £50 to correct it. That’s a significant cost burden due in part to the business paying a highly qualified Finance team to sift through line items one by one.

Source: Rydoo

Therefore, it’s simple to see that if an employee’s expense claim process stops misspending as its details are entered, the savings are twofold: less money spent on fraudulent claims and fewer hours spent tracking down potential fraud.

Even a modestly sized business’s Finance team can find itself doing a disproportionate amount of manual work, which is the type of work that AI algorithms can automate away. Among many, it’s just one area where having the right back-end system behind a user-facing expense app is vital for an efficient Finance function.

The necessity of fine-tuning

The AI algorithms in today’s most advanced expense management software have to be adaptable, as no two companies have the same policies. While AI can make decisions and help enforce policies, it’s important for administrators to upload them into the platform so the software can understand the rules and automatically flag or approve expenses, depending on the context. Submitting an expense for a team dinner where alcohol is shown in the receipt might go against policy, while a Board member taking a potential client to dinner and ordering a bottle of wine might be acceptable as an exception, given the context, for example.

AI-driven software allows complex rules and exceptions to cover every eventuality in businesses of any size because there’s no added work burden for Finance teams – it’s the type of work better done by algorithms that work quickly, 24/7 and with virtually no mistakes.

Rydoo understands and targets the pain points teams often experience when controlling expenses. It’s developed a specialised and highly personalised platform with usability at its heart. Rather than an implemention of technology for its own sake, the Rydoo platform addresses the key needs for cost control, smoother processes, compliance with laws and policies, and lowering costs while also providing accurate data and reports.

In later articles, we’ll be looking at some of Rydoo’s capabilities in the sector and focus on specific functionality. But with the right approach and offering the right tools available now, we recommend you find out more for yourself.

⁽¹⁾ Association of Associated Fraud Examiners, 2022, Global Business Travel Association, 2022.

The post AI beyond fraud detection: saving costs with smart expense management appeared first on TechHQ.

Today’s priorities for supply chain leaders

Over the last three years, the main focus for many supply chain leaders has been resiliency. Disruptions have been rife, with the chain of events starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing with the blockage of the Suez Canal and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and leading to the impacts of the Red Sea attacks this year.

Resilience can mean different things, from the ability to continue buying inventory and delivering products to schedule, to simply maintaining profit margins. Ultimately, it is about being able to adapt quickly to unforeseen challenges.

Source: Unsplash

A key takeaway from the supply chain disruptions is that the backbone of business resiliency is cost management. At the start of the pandemic, transportation costs increased dramatically, and shippers were buying inventories wherever they could find them. US business logistics costs rose by a record 19.6 percent in 2022, and half of that increase was due to inventory carrying costs.

To remain successful, logistics decision-makers must prioritize both resiliency and cost management. The former means being dynamic and agile, requiring connectedness and real-time data. The latter means reducing expenditure, as high inventory levels and fulfillment & transportation costs could otherwise dent profitability. This is where a unified supply chain helps.

What is a unified supply chain?

Traditionally, in supply chains, transportation and distribution have been managed separately. This siloed approach often led to inefficiencies and missed opportunities for optimization across the entire network. A unified supply chain is an integrated approach to managing all its aspects, from sourcing raw materials to delivering finished products. Components such as distribution, transportation, labor management, and automation work as a cohesive system, usually through a single app. This enables real-time visibility and collaboration across the supply chain network, eliminating silos and redundancy.

At a software level, the Transport Management System (TMS) needs to be connected to the Yard and Warehouse Management System (WMS) to improve operational efficiency. Managers can quickly and easily add capacity, adjust labor to match inbound arrivals, and change orders up to the point that a truck leaves the depot. Such integration streamlines operations, reduces costs, and enhances agility, allowing companies to react quickly to changing market conditions and customer demands.

The benefits of bringing the TMS and WMS together

To achieve a unified supply chain, companies invest in cloud-native software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, best built from microservices to enable easy integration and scalability. By adopting adaptable and boundary-less solutions, organizations can ensure rapid innovation, personalized customization, and enhanced connectivity across all supply chain functions.

Source: Unsplash

However, according to a recent McKinsey study, logistics leaders have significant concerns regarding technology investment, mostly surrounding the cost of the solution and the impact of change management. Businesses ideally want to lower their total vendor footprint and tech TCO while still boosting their ROI. While these goals may seem at odds with each other, a unified supply chain can ultimately work to achieve them these goals.

A unified supply chain consolidates disparate systems, such as distribution and transport management into a single, integrated solution. Without the need for specialized software for each function, businesses significantly reduce their vendor footprint. This streamlining simplifies technology management and lowers the TCO associated with licensing, maintenance, and support.

Another key characteristic of the unified supply chain is its ease of implementation and adoption compared to traditional, siloed systems. A solution that can be up and running quickly reduces the time-to-value and increases the ROI. Moreover, this lowers support costs by minimizing the need for customization and integration.

Consider Manhattan Active

Manhattan, a leading provider of supply chain management solutions, is the only vendor of a unified supply chain offering. The Manhattan Active Platform gives managers total control over adjuestments for supply, demand, resources, and shipment variations, allowing them to think in terms of inbound and outbound rather than WMS and TMS.

With the platform’s microservices-based architecture and API-first approach, organizations can easily integrate and customize their solution, reducing implementation time and costs. Manhattan Active supports various developmental approaches, including low-code, no-code, and custom coding, enabling IT teams to tailor solutions precisely to their requirements with minimum dependency on external vendors.

Instead of high-cost development to alter monolithic applications, internal teams can easily tune the platform to suit end-users’ requirements quickly and iterate on improvements according to need. And because the platform is cloud-based, core functionality is not affected.

By leveraging computational and behavioral intelligence, the platform optimizes decision-making processes and workforce productivity, ultimately driving cost savings and revenue growth. Manhattan’s cloud-native SaaS model eliminates the need for on-premises infrastructure, reducing maintenance and support costs while increasing scalability and accessibility. Continuous updates every 90 days ensure access to the latest capabilities without additional investment.

To learn more about how bringing together your TMS and WMS into a unified supply chain could transform your business, contact the expert Manhattan team today.

The post What is a unified supply chain, and what are the benefits? appeared first on TechHQ.

Before the impact of the current economic downturn began to taper off the demand for goods delivered to the door, retailers and carriers experienced something of a boom in turnover.

However, since the world’s purse strings tightened in the last six months, shoppers are more considered in their choices and are significantly more price-sensitive. They also spend more time researching purchases and exhibit less brand loyalty than they used to be able to.

Retailers are seeing a rise in cart abandonment, with around one in three potential sales online not completed. Given that competition is fierce on ticket price as a natural consequence of poor economic circumstances, the reasons for cart abandonment are often found in those final options at the checkout: delivery and returns options.

“Of course, retailers understand that, because they’re consumers themselves,” says Bobbie Ttooulis, Group Marketing Director of GFS, speaking to Tech HQ exclusively. “Everybody needs convenience, needs breadth of options for delivery. But what prevents retailers from offering […] more options and bringing on board a new service, a new carrier, is that it means an IT integration, and a relationship to manage, another invoice, another contract…and the complexity and cost of all that is just not scalable. That’s why retailers need to think differently about how they offer multi-carrier services – it doesn’t have to mean working with multiple carriers.”

Bobbie Ttooulis, Group Marketing Director of GFS. Source: Global Freight Solutions

Understanding the changing attitudes of customers and prospects is at the heart of understanding how to bring those cart abandonment rates down. And while offering free delivery helps address cost concerns, Bobbie said it’s by no means the only factor. “It’s down to breadth of choice because you can’t second guess what [a customer’s] priority is at that moment in time, or what their circumstances are. All you can do is offer as broad enough a selection of delivery options so that whether their key driver is cost or speed or convenience, provided you try to cover those bases, then you’ve got a good chance of being able to satisfy whatever their requirements are going to be at that point in time.”

The number of preferred delivery options may come as a surprise to many. A survey of over 2,000 UK consumers conducted by Retail Economics puts the benchmark between five and six. That ideal number would give shoppers access to services from same/next day to low-cost, long-wait deliveries for items that are low priority. Returns options, too, are important. Customers often consider ease of returns as insurance; the simplicity offers reassurance that purchases are low-risk.

The technology behind offering multiple shipping options at the point of sale is relatively simple with GFS Checkout, part of GFS’ multi-carrier platform – it’s a single integration within the retailer’s existing e-commerce platform, like Magento or BigCommerce. The technology is pre-configured with 1000+ delivery options for domestic and international, and gives retailers the control to add or remove services in real-time without the need for expensive IT involvement.

Source: Global Freight Solutions

Of course, retailers could manually ‘plumb in’ other carriers’ options. But it’s not necessarily the best approach. GFS acts as a single aggregator for telemetry from multiple carriers and becomes the single point of contact between the retailer and multiple logistics providers.

A multi-carrier approach helps mitigate risk and protect service performance and customer experience by ensuring that deliveries get made, no matter what. Bobbie told us, “Having contingency in your final mile delivery process is vital. We saw many retailers get caught out when Royal Mail went on strike during Peak last year. Whether it’s a strike, bad weather, or missed collection from the warehouse – whatever the reason, you have to be confident that your parcels can get to where they need to be. Having a multi-carrier partner in the background who can switch your parcels seamlessly from one carrier to another mitigates risk and gives you peace of mind that your delivery is safe.”

Early on, we discussed price sensitivity as a large factor in cart abandonment rates. Having a bulk carrier buyer in the form of GFS means retailers can benefit from its buying power and volume pricing that probably wouldn’t be available to even some of the larger retailers in the UK. Conversely, high-ticket brands might want to offer choices that focus on convenience, delivery timing, insurance and (sometimes) discretion. Again, retailers working with a single multi-carrier partner like GFS, can access those services and more, giving them all the advantages of multi-carrier delivery without the overhead of doing it with multiple carriers.

Customer queries are also routed through a single point, with GFS representatives handling all contacts with contracted carriers. That removes the human complexity traditionally associated with multi-carrier options: who to contact, in which time zone, using which language.

The same homogeneity of systems extends to logistics operations, too, if required. “Our technology will also integrate with the standard warehouse management systems that retailers use to pick, pack and fulfil an order. It will integrate to produce the labelling. Once that parcel has been shipped, then the next leg in our technology enables track-and-trace of that parcel […] and [data] flows into customer service teams,” Bobbie told us.

Source: Global Freight Solutions

The high standards in customer care and CX established by global multinationals with comprehensive in-house logistics are now available to companies looking to differentiate themselves from competitors in these austere times.

UK-based GFS is a leading provider of managed multi-carrier delivery and returns services. They offer over 1,000 carrier services in more than 220 destinations in the UK, Europe and worldwide. GFS also offers access to 320,000 returns drop-off points and 75,000 Click & Collect locations.

Those are significant statistics for companies looking to compete with household name retailers with the funds to offer customers every convenience and broad choice of delivery and returns services.

To find out how easy it is to complement your existing logistics with multi-carrier services, speak to a representative from GFS.

The post Can you have your cake and eat it with multi-carrier shipping? appeared first on TechHQ.

Businesses both big and small spend millions developing and crafting their brand, based on carefully-crafted customer experiences. Reputations in all industries are more quickly lost than built. There is a saying that a dissatisfied customer tells ten people, while a recommendation reaches just one.

And with customer expectations being set high thanks to the convenience of apps and the internet, it’s surprising that many companies seem willing to opt for second-best in their logistics choices. A logistics operator (or logistics function in a larger business) has a significant opportunity, therefore, to differentiate itself from the competition. It does this by providing a service that’s focused on the qualities trusted to it by the brand(s) it works for. At the core of brand values is the end-user’s experience.

Source: Alpega Group

At the heart of the issue are some seemingly simple enough expectations: customers expect trouble-free deliveries and returns; they appreciate transparent tracking of consignments; they rely on clear communications throughout. Increasingly, too, customers want to use companies where green issues like efficiency and low-waste services are employed, and they rightly expect trustworthiness, as few delays as possible, and overall professionalism.

Shippers successful in achieving these requirements can expect business growth, almost by proxy, but as we shall see, the processes and systems required to provide world-class logistics also enable companies to expand operations effortlessly into new markets and territories.

As you might expect from a website dedicated to business technology, we believe the pursuit of business transport excellence is best undertaken by means of digital systems: platforms that connect inventory management, route optimization, real-time tracking, scheduling and more, right along the supply chain. Connecting a logistics company’s existing systems with those of supply chain partners is important for visibility, and automation can remove a huge amount of manual processing by staff.

Basing operations on digital solutions brings additional benefits, too, ones that are never specifically seen by customers but enhance and optimize logistics operations creating indirect benefits for customers. Information accrued from new-generation logistics platforms becomes a resource for analysis, can have machine-learning algorithms applied to it, and informs strategies to further optimize operations.

To borrow from the vocabulary of software developers, the process of improvement becomes iterative; that is, small changes, one after another, build an improving operation. Vendors of technology often claim, wrongly, that their solutions are immediately revolutionary. It’s important to remember that in supply chain technology, change is brought about by logistics professionals using the best tools, deployed in ways that further the business’s goals. Experienced people who work in business transport know that maintaining standards (and, therefore, reputation) is paramount, and the tools at their disposal are just that: the means by which efficiency and customer satisfaction are achieved.

Attaining superior logistics capabilities is tough in 2024 because of the number of moving parts and the complexities of everyday operations right along the supply chain. The best business transport management solutions reflect the number of entities present (like third-party partners) and the variables involved, adopting a modular approach to required capabilities.

At the same time, it’s important to recognize that despite complexity, there must be clear oversight over the entire range of operations. With that, the possibilities of automation and simplification become apparent. What were previously nice-to-haves like, for instance, a real-time, informative customer portal become relatively simple to implement.

At its core, a good business transport software system is data-driven, but is primarily a set of tools used by experienced logistics pros who know their business and are able to enact the business’s strategy: for improved customer experience, for efficiency and lower cost, and to build market differentiation.

Source: Alpega Group

The data grounding of today’s logistics management systems creates possibilities, too. Modeling of potential changes becomes lower-risk, because so-called ‘digital twins’ – the trialing of new ideas and strategies – mean that customers are not unwitting guinea pigs for experimental change. The digitally-fluent company can base its strategies on empirical data from existing operations, data that can be enhanced by third-party information sources and processed by algorithms designed for the industry. Modules that connect supply chain partners’ systems to give wider, deeper knowledge to the logistics operator create the basis on which true customer satisfaction is based. To use some marketing terminology, customers in time can become brand advocates.

When global events and local conditions affect supply chain and sourcing, from regional conflict to labor shortages, the challenges to achieving BTE (Business Transport Excellence) are many. A reactive approach to problems is sometimes unavoidable, well outside the control of the individual. But a proactive approach to choosing and using platforms and systems on which logistics operations take place is possible. Of the best global players in cloud-based, extensible transport management systems is Alpega. In 2024, it launches its “Business Transport Excellence” platform, bringing together all its solutions for shippers and carriers in a single platform. The integrated approach reflects how supply chains work and what they are capable of.

To find out more about Aplega’s offerings and how they can instill differentiating change, contact a representative near you today.

The post Customer experience driving logistics digitally appeared first on TechHQ.

• Know Your Customer is a mandatory part of online transactions.
• Prohibitive costs form barrier to entry.
• Linux Foundation backs open source alternative.

READ NEXT

The ABCs of KYC: What is “Know Your Customer”?

While the possibilities of taking payments online offers both parties in a transaction massive convenience, the threat of online fraud is ever-present. The Global Anti-Scam Alliance reports that close to $1 trillion was lost to online fraud in 2023, a cost that increases secondary business costs paid in insurance premiums, payment gateway fees, and a host of other quiet additions to everyday bills that land each month on the desks of CFOs worldwide.

An integral part of digital payment processes is the myriad routines that run background checks on every transaction, like identity lookup, heuristic pattern recognition for anomalous behavior, and payment detail verification.

“World Trade Center, Bahrain” by Ahmed Rabea is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

These often furiously complex algorithms run quietly in the background, providing services like KYC (know your customer) and AML (anti-money laundering). They’re provided by reputable payment gateways and identity verification systems as a matter of course. Naturally, they come at a cost, one that’s pretty much mandatory whan running a lawful business and one that’s usually sold at a price that can be dictated by providers – as such, it’s rarely cheap.

However, that situation seems set to change in the near future, as the Linux Foundation Charities (with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) has launched Tazama, an open source alternative to proprietary anti-fraud measures whose cost is often prohibitive, especially for organizations in the developing world. According to a press release from Linux Foundation Charities (LF Charities), it includes capabilities for fraud detection, AML compliance, and monitoring of online financial transactions. That means it should be able to provide as much know your customer data as traditional closed systems.

The service will be hosted by LF Charities (although its open source nature will enable independent hosting) and so act as a showcase for the efficacy of open source as a secure, independent, low-cost replacement for closed and costly systems.

“Cr48: Disabling boot verification” by jamalfanaian is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said, “We are excited to see an open source solution that not only enhances financial security but also provides a platform for our community to actively contribute to a project with broad societal impacts.”

“The launch of Tazama signifies another stride towards securing and democratizing digital financial services,” said Kosta Peric, Deputy Director, Payment Systems at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

READ NEXT

Taking the fight to financial crime with blockchain tech

Greg McCormick, the Executive Director of Tazama, claims the platform has achieved 2,300 full payment transactions per second (TPS), which supports the type of throughput considered vital for a smooth and reassuring customer experience. The presence of delays, glitches, and timeouts is an anathema to payment processes (in B2C transactions, especially), as they suggest an unstable platform and worry users that they might be subject to fraud.

Several organizations are already working with Tazama to assess the platform’s effectiveness, including African organizations BCEAO and BankservAfrica, IPSL in the UK, and Jordan’s JoPACC. While emerging markets may be interested because of the lower potential cost of entry to a reliable payment platform, the overriding benefit of the open source Tazama will be the many thousands of eyes-on that will be able to attest to the veracity of the system and improve it overall.

The reputation of proprietary software in security-sensitive areas makes the case for Tazama. The experiences of Okta, SolarWinds, Lastpass and a half-dozen other companies suggests that in the area of highly-sensitive data, a limited number of developers and the tendency to place shareholder dividends before quality of product tends to create less secure software.

The post Tazama offers Know Your Customer options for all appeared first on TechHQ.

• The Bluesky vs. Mastodon question is on every ex-Xer’s mind.
• Which social media alternative is best for you?
• We weigh up Bluesky vs. Mastodon so you don’t have to.

The Twitter-becomes-X debacle has been discussed weekly since a certain someone bought the social media company and turned it into the handcart in which we’re all going to Hell. We’re tired of talking about it, frankly. Although the mass migration from the site that was threatened by many users never quite came to pass, a new dawn broke for alternative social media sites.

Meta-owned Instagram tried to go toe-to-toe with X by launching its own microblogging platform, Threads, but it was outliers Mastodon and Bluesky that took in those users who couldn’t bear to keep using what used to be Twitter.

With images from ITSFOSS‘s review, let’s take a look at the sites and see what users are saying.

Mastodon was launched in 2016 by Eugen Rochko as a decentralized microblogging platform that was really quite hit-and-miss. It spent a while trying to replicate Twitter too closely, eventually developing into a social medium operating on distributed servers, called instances, allowing for independent networks with different themes and topics.

Bluesky, on the other hand, began as a team funded by Twitter to build an open and decentralized standard for social media, in 2019. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was on the team, hoping the platform would be the first to utilize the protocol.

When you-know-who took over, the plan for an open standard Twitter (and the name itself) disappeared. Since 2021, Bluesky has been an independent company backed by Dorsey ever since, and open sourced the client code for the platform, with an invite-only system for the website. Now, it’s opened up to everyone.

Jack Dorsey left Twitter and is now on Bluesky’s board.

In terms of user experience, Mastodon has the benefit of being around for longer. The site has had time to evolve with community requirements. The interface is relatively similar to Twitter, with all the right differences to make the move feel worth it.

There’s no algorithm dictating what you see in the public feed (which some of us might miss, despite its foibles) and posts with more organic engagement will likely show up first. Otherwise, the feed shows posts by users you follow chronologically.

Experience does vary somewhat based on the instance you signed up to, because that impacts what you see and what server rules are complied with. This is pretty adjustable to your taste, though.

The number of instances to choose from is often lauded as a big plus for Mastodon. In fact, many reviews and user guides focus on all the benefits of the system but doesn’t elaborate on how best to make use of it.

That means it’s difficult to actually find the community that’s supposedly on offer – not many people want to put that much effort into building their social media profile. We’ve all gotten used to a handy algorithm to do it for us.

Glance too quickly and you’d think you were on the Twitter of old.

Another double-edged sword is the human moderators. In almost every way, servers moderated by humans are better for users, particularly when you can essentially choose servers moderated by individuals whose values align with your own.

Some have critiqued the system because, like the forum days of old, the people in charge can tend towards being power-crazed leaders with too much time on their hands. Not that that’s a Mastodon problem: it’s just people.

Bluesky, on the other hand, uses automated moderation. In many ways, it closely mimics Twitter in its heyday (unsurprising, really, given the Dorsey involvement) and you’d be forgiven for forgetting you’d switched to a new platform.

You get the option to choose an algorithm to follow per your requirements; limit your feed to just people you follow, or a custom one that learns what you like (a ‘for you’ feed tailored to your needs, baby!).

READ NEXT

What is Mastodon? A how-to guide for businesses

Although it’s separated from Twitter, Bluesky is still a corporate-backed product. It’s open source, and may soon let you host your own instance, Mastodon-style, but for now it’s a board-controlled entity.

Even if it completes its federation network and lets you self-host instances, Bluesky as a primary platform will use advertising and other monetization strategies.

Another one-up for Mastodon, perhaps, is its non-profit status and crowdfunded development. It’s not reliant on investors (like Twitter was…) and companies and users donate to Mastodon, keeping it free from monetization.

When it comes to privacy, both Mastodon and Bluesky get points for not requiring a phone number for sign up. Beyond that, Mastodon seems to come out ahead.

It allows users to push public posts or post only for followers and interact with individual followers using private mentions (a bit like direct messaging, which isn’t technically an option). You can also request an archive of your data and export it in an Activity Pub compatible format, and easily move your data to another instance or (within some limits) even move your account data to another handle.

Mastodon’s privacy policy is simple and easy to understand.

You can’t make your profile private in the same way you can on Instagram or X, but there is a setting that automatically deletes posts, and you can set up your account so you manually approve followers.

Bluedsky does offer private accounts but doesn’t use two-factor authentication – which Mastodon does. Plus, if your Bluesky account is private, your posts are only hidden from view for users who haven’t logged in to the site. The data is public to any other server connected to the network.

Data export is in the beta phase, so getting it all downloaded is a mammoth task. Bluesky’s privacy policy does clarify it might use your personal information for marketing and research and share it with third party services. FOSS doesn’t think it’s a good privacy policy for web service in 2024.

The thing is, both Bluesky and Mastodon come out remarkably well against the platform they might replace – and the major social media that’s owned and run by tech giants. Depending on what’s spurred you to seek an X alternative, the two platforms offer a well-rounded selection.

Mastodon, though perhaps on the moral high ground, definitely requires more effort to set up and establish a presence – or at least a timeline that keeps you scrolling in the same way algorithm-run feeds do. Bluesky offers pretty much what was lost in the switch to X, perhaps without the years of user-feedback-influenced improvements.

Early reviews of Bluesky, back in invite-only beta, all celebrated its comparative positivity, harking back to ‘simpler times’ online. Whether it’s remained quite so fluffy and nice is questionable – as is how strong a marketing factor that will be.

Increasingly, you’ll notice that if you scroll to the bottom of a company’s website there’ll be a link to a Bluesky or Mastodon account – maybe even both. While the more mainstream services are still going, there is a sense that they’ve exhausted their peak and a new era of social media feels closer to realization than it has for years – maybe even since the beginning of Instagram.

So, give one of the alternatives a go, even if only to say you were there when it all started.

Tired of the Twitter swamp? Be more Groot…

The post Leave your X behind, head for Bluesky appeared first on TechHQ.

• Italy’s Piracy Shield breaks multiple sites.
• CDNs’ clients hit by association.
• Even limited censorship breaks parts of the internet.

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Political parties are fond of making big promises, especially when in opposition, and few such claims are more specious than the promise to ‘clean up the internet’ to protect its citizenry from the scourges of pornography, piracy, and terrorism.

Political statements on the matter usually contain the word ‘children’ in the context of child abuse or protecting minors from the evils that lurk just a couple of mouse clicks away. While their aims are entirely laudable, they ignore or are unaware of the fact that the internet is not a place that can easily be policed either at national boundaries or by filtering content in an effective manner. The digital domain was never designed in a way that would allow total oversight, and attempts to impose the type of stricture required after the fact will always be hugely imperfect. Circumvention of stricture is in the digital DNA of the internet.

“Via Tasso, Sorrento – Italy football shirts” by ell brown is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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That’s never stopped governments trying, of course, with the latest attempt from the Italian government coming in the form of its Piracy Shield. This was designed to address just a small area of lawlessness: the highly popular activity of watching live sports streams without paying the official providers of such services.

Given such a tight remit, it may have been imagined to be a relatively trivial undertaking. Unfortunately, that’s proved not to be the case.

Sports fans at the weekend just gone soon discovered firsthand how complex a specifically-targeted act of traffic blocking can be.

An IP address belonging to CDN Cloudflare found itself on the wrong side of Italy’s Piracy Shield, which prevented innocent traffic from reaching the ODW Prison Volunteers Association and Elimobile, a telecomms company, among others.

“Stade de France – Italy-France football game” by Eric-P is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Part of the issue is the complexity of the modern internet, where content distribution networks deliver large portions of online content. They offer this service because they’re better than smaller hosts at ensuring streams of data are delivered safely. Independent servers are more likely to suffer from interruptions caused by bad actors, and the fast voluminous cache-ing capabilities of CDNs makes their use logical in many instances; large-scale video streaming being one of the primary among them.

But because large CDNs aggregate data from multiple sources, the nefarious actions of just one of those sources can cause all of its clients to be tarred with the same brush. Bad actors are as wont to use CDNs as lawful parties, and traffic delivery assignment algorithms can’t differentiate between them. Additionally, it’s easy to mistake genuine traffic for bad traffic. In short, at a low level, things are very, very complicated, in ways not easily explained to those who draft laws.

The Italian experience should be a salutary lesson for lawmakers the world over. Even with a tightly constrained remit, the fallout from attempts to control the digital arena is unpredictable. As a rule of thumb, preventing dubious data movements is borderline impossible to achieve with any accuracy. The public has to be made aware of this fact, so that when the next clarion call goes out for legislation to ‘protect the children,’ the populace recognizes there may be secondary motives – or utter ignorance – at play. Both possibilities are equally alarming, and it’s naive to believe that people in government are any smarter than most.

The post Italy’s Piracy Shield proves the internet works appeared first on TechHQ.

• VMware for free heads into the sunset.
• VMware vSphere free edition axed.
• VMs’ alternatives threaten company’s future.

Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the company has axed its free tier that offered the ESXi hypervisor to test labs, hobbyists, and home lab builders.

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In a knowledge base article, the company stated that the “VMware vSphere Hypervisor (Free Edition) has been marked as EOGA (End of General Availability). At this time, there is not an equivalent replacement product available.” While VMware for free is no more, “not an equivalent replacement product” is a significant misnomer.

What is a hypervisor?

Hypervisors are pieces of software that control virtual machines and encapsulated instances of operating systems, allowing multiple virtual computers to be run on a single computer. The technology of virtualization is one of the ways that servers can deploy multiple applications and services using fewer pieces of hardware than dedicating a single piece of hardware to each. It’s possible because a typical combination of computer + operating system rarely utilizes all its resources at any one time. Hypervisors share resources on a host machine across all of its virtual machines, allocating processor cycles, memory, and I/O across its fleet.

Source: Twitter

VMware established itself as one of the main suppliers of virtualization technology in the early 2000s, just as commonly-available hardware capabilities became such that virtualization was viable. Relatively low-cost hardware was able to run multiple instances of servers, meaning organizations and data centers could offer server facilities without necessarily needing to supply dedicated hardware for each server instance. Today, it’s possible to rent a VPS (virtual private server) for as little as the cost of a round of take-out coffees, one that’s capable of running, for instance, a web server, database, and security stack.

Broadcom’s decision to limit its offerings is driven in part by a desire to recoup some of the $61bn cost of its acquisition of VMware. Previously, VMware had been bought and sold by EMC and Dell. By ensuring that the majority of its users will pay for licenses from now on, the company guarantees itself a revenue stream. The company has also ended perpetual licenses in favor of subscriptions.

Five threats to VMware’s future

While Broadcom may be content with its market consolidation and ensuring all users pay their dues, there are five threats to VMware that will ensure its eventual long-term demise, assuming its trajectory with regard to licensing remains the same.

1. Competing products such as KVM, Harvester, Proxmox, and Zen offer IT teams alternative hypervisors and virtualization technologies that, in monetary terms, are free at the point of use. Their widespread use means that a large body of users are able to refine, update, and extend their solutions without the restriction of either fees or the closed strictures of the proprietary VMware platform. A significant portion of those users will also upstream their improvements and bug fixes and release new capabilities of the software to all other users under less restrictive license terms.
2. By removing the ‘free to play’ tier, VMware and Broadcom have effectively removed the up-ramp to the paid tiers. Students, hobbyists, and career-minded IT staff are less likely to consider the platform to learn virtualization technology on. Large institutions offering CS courses, for example, can choose between free-to-use or paid-for licenses for software that is at least equal in capability.
3. Organizations operating test environments for their development and deployment activities no longer have the wherewithal to experiment to the degree they might require. Strictures on using VMware in environments that can be created and torn down (test labs) will be subject to the same fees as production environments. That places a barrier created by financial constraints on how organizations’ solutions can be tested.
4. Advances in container-based workload deployment and management now make microservice-based applications and services viable in many contexts. Containerization is one area in which cloud computing has significant advantages for the creator. New projects are more likely to opt for containers over full virtualization if the latter seems to come with a price tag.
5. The specter of a large company owning the rights to technology on which its customers depend brings with it several undesirable elements. Broadcom can, and might, either further raise prices, limit hypervisors’ capabilities, or ditch the project altogether. Or not. It’s the unpredictability of decisions made well away from the customer base that represents significant danger to organizations looking to bed in for the long term. Vendor lock-in may have been effective in previous decades when technological advancements were made by a single party in combination with a crushing marketing budget. Windows NT and Oracle, to take two such examples, were able to near-monopolize their chosen sectors (desktop and database, respectively). But such practices were very much of their time; in 2024, end-users have to deliberately choose their degree of lock-in and, of course, can opt for next-to-none. Existing license fee-paying customers find themselves offered two expensive alternatives: the devil is to be milked for license revenue until the end of time, and the deep blue sea is to make deep investments in moving to a different platform.

“The devil and the deep blue sea” by WarmSleepy is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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It’s a common misconception that companies are bound by law to deliver increasing value to their shareholders – an idea, albeit an incorrect one, that might explain why Broadcom and VMware have chosen the path of license-fee revenue generation over ensuring a healthy intake of new users. What both companies’ decision-makers are bound by, however, is a need to stay in a position from which a board of directors and/or a shareholder vote can remove them.

Making shareholders happy at least ensures a short-term future that promises high salaries, stock options, and performance-related bonuses. If the desire for a third Ferrari or a modest mega-yacht outweighs the desire for the long-term viability of a software offering, then it’s easy to predict which way the wind will blow.

The post VMware & Broadcom axe free tier appeared first on TechHQ.

• Brussels regulators investigated Apple following a Spotify complaint, leading to a hefty penalty.
• The EU focused on the rule by Apple preventing app developers from linking to outside subscription sign-up pages.
  
• The battle between Spotify and Apple has been ongoing for years – and Apple is expected to vigoroulsy appeal.

A colossal clash has between two industry behemoths – streaming powerhouse Spotify and tech titan Apple – has been unfolding for months. Spotify has leveled charges of anti-competitive behavior against Apple, contending that the Silicon Valley giant employs its market dominance to throttle competition and hobble rival services. But it’s not just the combatants locked in this struggle; European regulators have also stepped onto the battlefield, poised to challenge Apple’s stronghold over its app store empire. 

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Spotify argues that Apple’s strict regulations and steep fees are barriers to competition, stifling creativity and limiting consumer options. The contentious issue of the “Apple tax” looms large – a term coined to describe the substantial commission fees exacted by Apple on in-app purchases. 

For Spotify, this translates to navigating a landscape where every musical note played carries a hefty price tag, jeopardizing its ability to maintain a competitive edge and sustain profitability. Beyond financial concerns, Spotify alleges that Apple’s influence permeates the user experience, with accusations of preferential treatment towards its music streaming service, Apple Music, fueling claims of anti-competitive behavior and igniting industry-wide debate and dissent.

At the forefront of Spotify’s battle is CEO Daniel Ek, who’a spearheading the fight against what he views as Apple’s monopolistic grip on the music streaming sector. In an October 2023 op-ed for the UK’s (avowedly right-wing) Daily Mail, Ek condemned Apple’s imposition of a 30% tax and restrictive regulations on developers, many of whom played pivotal roles in shaping iOS into its current form. Ek also highlighted Apple’s shifting stance towards these developers, now seen as adversaries by the tech giant.

Daniel Ek, Founder & CEO, Spotify, makes progress in his Apple battle. (Photo by Noam Galai/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP).

Frustrated by what he sees as Apple’s anti-competitive practices, Ek has not shied away from taking his concerns public. In a bold move, Spotify filed a complaint with the European Commission in December 2023, alleging that Apple’s behavior violates EU competition law. The legal battle has ever since underscored the high stakes involved. Neither Apple not Spotify has shown a willingness to blink first.

For Ek, the fight against Apple is more than just a business dispute – it’s allegedly a matter of principle, inasmuch as such things can be said to apply to big business. Ek claims to envision a future where innovation flourishes in “a fair and open marketplace,” where consumers have genuine choice, and competition breeds excellence. To achieve this vision, Ek remains steadfast in his commitment to holding Apple accountable for its actions and advocating for a level playing field for all players in the music streaming industry.

This of course should not detract from Spotify’s own pitiful remuneration of artists who appear on the streaming platform. There are matters of principle and matters of profit involved in both companies’ operations – and it’s rare that they can be counted on to intersect.

What is the outcome for Apple and Spotify in the EU?

Before the latest complaint filed in December 2023, Spotify lodged an official antitrust grievance with the European Commission nearly four years ago, citing Apple’s anti-competitive practices that impeded innovation and detrimentally affected developers and consumers globally, especially in Europe. Despite the passage of time, the situation remains essentially unchanged, according to the streaming giant.

Spotify noted that the absence of definitive regulatory intervention has encouraged Apple to persist in its questionable conduct. Despite a growing chorus of advocates clamoring for action, regulators have been slow to act decisively, leaving a palpable frustration among stakeholders.

Before the complaint was filed two months ago, Spotify and seven other companies and organizations in sectors including publishing, audio streaming, dating, communications, and marketplaces sent a joint letter in January 2023 to call for meaningful regulatory action against Apple’s long-standing allegedly anti-competitive European practices.

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After much back and forth between regulators and the tech giants, on February 19, 2024, the bloc announced its intention to fine Apple for allegedly breaching EU law concerning access to its music streaming services. This historic penalty marks a pivotal moment in the ongoing battle between regulatory authorities and Silicon Valley giants, underscoring the EU’s commitment to enforcing fair competition practices in the digital realm.

The EU’s decision to impose its first-ever fine on Apple also sends a clear message to the tech industry: compliance with EU regulations is non-negotiable. Reports indicate that this development follows a protracted investigation by EU authorities, drawing on insights from five individuals intimately familiar with the case. Their direct knowledge sheds light on the intricate details of the long-running probe, revealing the meticulous scrutiny of Apple’s business practices.

“In a closed-door meeting between EU officials and Apple in June last year, the tech firm told regulators it had already addressed any possible competition concerns arising from Spotify’s complaint,” a report by Bloomberg reads. For Apple, although accustomed to navigating complex regulatory landscapes, this fine represents a significant setback. 

When contacted for comment, Bloomberg also noted that Apple referred to a previous statement, which said that the “App Store has helped Spotify become the top music streaming service across Europe.” The translation of that terse statement is that Apple is expected to vigorously challenge the fine, using its formidable legal and financial resources to defend its practices. Nevertheless, the EU’s unwavering stance underscores the imperative of upholding fair competition principles to safeguard consumer choice and innovation within the digital ecosystem. 

This decision has broader implications for the tech industry. As the tech landscape continues to evolve, this fine against Apple is a poignant reminder of the regulatory challenges confronting industry titans. With the EU leading the charge in enforcing antitrust laws, the repercussions of this decision will surely reverberate across the global tech industry, shaping the future of digital competition and regulation for years to come.

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