IT Insights, May: What has been going on in the world of IT

What’s been happening in the tech and vendor world in May 2023? We compiled the latest vendor news and trending topics of the past month. It takes just a few minutes to be up to date.

Vendor news

Microsoft launches new AI tool to moderate text and images. Called Azure AI Content Safety, the new offering, available through the Azure AI product platform, offers a range of AI models trained to detect “inappropriate” content across images and text.

Microsoft launches its first datacentre region in Poland which will guarantee the highest standards of security, privacy, and regulatory-compliant data storage in the country. Moreover, this will accelerate Poland’s transformation into a technology hub for the Central and Eastern European region.

AWS is also set to open two more data centres in India and is investing $12.7 billion into cloud infrastructure in the country by 2030 to fulfil rising consumer demand for the cloud in the country.

Oracle also continues to invest in the cloud and opens a cloud region in Serbia. The new region will also support the increasing cloud computing demands of private and public sector organisations throughout Serbia. Oracle also has plans to invest an estimated $2.4 billion every quarter over the coming months in cloud infrastructure.

Oracle named a leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems and Supply Chain Planning Solutions.

IBM has announced launch of IBM Hybrid Cloud Mesh to help enterprises regain control of their multi-cloud Infrastructure. Hybrid Cloud Mesh is engineered to automate the process, management, and observability of application connectivity in and between public and private clouds. This will help modern enterprises operate their infrastructure across hybrid multicloud and heterogeneous environments.

IBM will automate cloud data protection with the acquisition of Polar Security - an innovator in technology that helps enterprises discover, continuously monitor, and secure cloud and application data. IBM has acquired more than 30 companies since 2020, bolstering its hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

SAP has raised its 2025 total revenue outlook for continuing operations by around 4 billion euros and announced a share buyback of up to 5 billion euros, boosted by a strong demand for its cloud business.

ServiceNow and Nvidia are collaborating to build generative AI applications for different enterprise functions to optimize business processes and workflows.

Tech news

Microsoft is developing its own artificial intelligence chip code-named "Athena" which will power the technology behind AI chatbots like ChatGPT. There are predictions that “Athena” will reduce Microsoft’s dependence on Nvidia which currently dominates the market. This chip-making foray is to reduce costs, which Athena could possibly slash by a third in comparison to Nvidia and thus reduce Microsoft’s dependency on Nvidia.

Recent Microsoft Entra enhancements have been released which are designed to strengthen identity security and avoid cyber-security attacks, helping safeguard organisations and their IT estates. These include identity and access management (IAM) tools which provide a powerful additional layer of protection against identity-related cyber-attacks.

One of the biggest cloud migrations in the history of the consumer products sector was completed by Accenture and Microsoft for Unilever. The migration has helped Unilever – whose 400+ brands are used by 3.4 billion people daily – become a cloud-only enterprise.

Microsoft Edge features is now the first and only internet browser with an integrated AI image generator. Image Creator is now available to all Edge users around the world.

According to a new Study by IBM and The Consumer Goods Forum, Consumer goods companies are increasing their technology budgets by 34% to align sustainability with operational efficiency, driving growth as a result.

AWS systems manager incident manager now supports Microsoft Teams to help support and drive collaboration. The hyperscaler is extending support to three chat collaboration platforms, Amazon Chime, Slack, in addition to Microsoft Teams.

Oracle introduces new AI and automation capabilities to help customers optimise supply chain management. Oracle is introducing new capabilities across Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite that help customers automate supply chain planning. This will increase operational efficiency and improve the accuracy of financial forecasting.

SAP is also investing heavily in AI with plans to embed ChatGPT in products as quarterly revenue beats estimates.

AWS has announced the launch of its global generative AI accelerator for startups. This is 10-week initiative designed to take the most promising generative AI startups around the globe to the next level and accelerate their growth.

IBM has announced plans to double down on its focus on AI. IBM and Moderna will explore Quantum Computing and Generative AI for mRNA science.

In a move to address public-sector cyber-security vulnerabilities and improve digital security levels, Google Cloud and the center for Internet Security, Inc. this week, launched the Google Cloud Alliance.