Latest news with #AmazonQ
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Mondelēz demystifies AI-powered coding gains
This story was originally published on CIO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CIO Dive newsletter. As Mondelēz International embarked on a sizable systems overhaul, the snack maker was looking for ways to alleviate burdens on its tech team and developers. 'With all the things we've been doing, finding ways to speed up and make [engineers] more agile and give them capabilities was a No. 1 priority,' Sean Tibor, director of global cloud engineering at Mondelēz, told CIO Dive. A coding assistant fit the bill. Tibor gave developers access to Amazon Q, a generative AI-powered assistant, 'as early as I possibly could, to be honest.' Since embedding the tool in engineering workflows, Mondelēz shortened its development cycles and new hires began using it as a learning resource. Mondelēz measures the tool's value in three parts: quantitatively, qualitatively and anecdotally. 'We are set up well to encourage adoption, and then we've got the feedback loop on the metrics to be able to see what they're actually using it for and that we're getting the value out of the spend that we're putting into,' Tibor said. Enterprises have tied more development practices to AI as engineers have embraced coding assistants and the technology has improved. In one benchmark, AI systems solved nearly 72% of coding problems in 2024, compared to just 4.4% in 2023, according to the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI's latest AI Index report published in April. Mondelēz developers have free rein to use Amazon Q across any project in the company's environment. An internal AI review board helped make the decision after ensuring that teams could use encryption keys to manage data, monitor usage and disable training for outside use cases. 'We've done a major migration from legacy data centers over to the cloud, and this is wave three of cloud migrations for Mondelēz,' Tibor said. 'What we've been migrating over has been a lot of the most difficult legacy systems to bring over and finding new ways to modernize and run those workloads at scale.' In addition to code creation, engineers ask Q to validate and test code generated by the tool or a human. 'They've seen a speed up, not just in generating code, but in validating the code before it goes into our development,' Tibor said. The AI tool has also sped up server provisioning, which used to take seven to ten days. Fully compliant servers are now ready in about 20 minutes, said Tibor. Like most other enterprises, Mondelēz has grappled with tech talent woes. Skill gaps can threaten project momentum and have been blamed for hours wasted and exacerbated inefficiencies. A dearth of talent also puts pressure on existing staff. Tibor said it can be difficult to recruit and onboard cloud engineers into the company's environment in an agile way. 'It's a very high-demand job internally within our organization,' Tibor said. 'We found that we can use Q not just as a way to write code, but also to act as a tutor so that they can learn more about the services and offerings through chat capabilities.' Previously, developers might have had a question for a senior member of the team and had to wait for a response, which could slow down processes, given the organization's global nature. 'That senior engineer might still be asleep,' Tibor said. 'It's cut down that cycle time for learning and made iteration a lot faster, which has been exciting to see everyone taking advantage of, especially with our new hires onboarding.' Skill gaps can also push employees to try and find their own solutions, leading to problems down the line, like shadow IT. 'By offering a high-quality coding assistant, it kind of removed the desire for them to go get things like Copilot, which we're not using,' Tibor said. 'We're still very mindful of the security aspects of it and make sure that what we're doing is appropriate.' AI-powered productivity pushes can lead to unintended outcomes, such as degraded quality and security implications. Guardrails and security are crucial with output expectations on the rise as more than two-thirds of developers say AI tool adoption has put pressure on them to deliver on projects faster, according to a HackerRank report. 'Culture makes a huge difference,' Tibor said. 'I'm really proud of the engineering team, and they are highly accountable and trustworthy. They want to do the right thing, and when they look at coding, they're assessing it on the same rubric that I am, which is: how much is this helping me versus how much is this creating further problems and code integrity issues.' Recommended Reading How Mondelēz laid the groundwork for a major digital overhaul Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Why the tech trade has more room to run even as the Nasdaq 100 hovers at all-time highs
The Nasdaq 100 reached a new peak this week, but there's no reason to expect the booming tech trade to take a breath, UBS wrote this week. As President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran, the tech-heavy index coasted to a record closing high on Tuesday. The Nasdaq's recent gains have been propelled by rallies in top chip makers like Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, and Nvidia, three artificial intelligence leaders that have spent the last month moving steadily higher. These companies' ability to withstand volatile market conditions and continue making progress has caught the attention of top commentators. Investor and former Pimco exec Bill Gross recently predicted a "little bull market" for stocks, citing the dominance of the AI market. Now, UBS says investors should stick with the tech trade, as the AI party is still just kicking off and AI adoption is accelerating. Citing data from a recent Census Bureau survey on the use of AI in the workplace, UBS said use of the technology is rising steadily. "AI adoption rates rose to 9.2% in the second quarter of this year, from 7.4% in the previous three-month period and 5.7% in the December 2024 quarter," states the report. "This means AI adoption is likely to soon cross the 10% threshold that took US e-commerce 24 years to reach." UBS highlights the example of Amazon Q, a virtual assistant powered by generative AI that is reportedly "saving around USD 260mn every year through coding assistants." It also notes that 20%-30% of Microsoft 's coding is completed by AI and that PayPal uses AI to handle 80% of its customer service interactions. In addition, the report highlights the benefits of utilizing AI in healthcare. Its authors note that it has proven highly effective in areas such as detecting abnormal tissues that might have previously been overlooked. All of this suggests that AI adoption is likely to increase in the near future, paving the way for the sector's leading stocks to continue rising. "We believe a peak in overall AI adoption is still a long way off, and accelerating AI use is set to drive further monetization across industries," UBS states.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SK Group and AWS Team Up to Build Cloud Computing Infrastructure to Support AI Innovation
SK Group, in partnership with AWS, will provide data center infrastructure for a new AWS AI Zone location in Ulsan that will support AI adoption 15-year strategic deal will expand SK Group and AWS capabilities for customers in South Korea The new AI Zone will give organizations in South Korea greater choice in onshore infrastructure with operations expected to begin in 2027 SK Group plans to scale capacity, with a vision to become a data center hub in Asia-Pacific (APAC) SEOUL, South Korea, June 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- SK Group, South Korea's second-largest conglomerate, announced its partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to expand cloud infrastructure in South Korea. SK Group, in partnership with AWS, will build a data center in Ulsan, South Korea for a new AWS AI Zone that will help organizations in South Korea build innovative and new AI applications locally while leveraging the full breadth of AWS capabilities. The AI Zone will bring together multiple innovative capabilities, including dedicated AWS AI infrastructure and servers with world-class semiconductors, UltraCluster networks for faster AI training and inference, AWS services like Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, and AI application services such as Amazon Q to advance Korea's mission to be a world leader in AI. On June 20, SK Group and AWS held a signing ceremony for the establishment of the AI Zone in Ulsan, where both parties pledged cooperation for the successful launch of the project. Chey Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group; Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom; Prasad Kalyanaraman, Vice President of Infrastructure Services at AWS; Jaime Valles, Vice President and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan at AWS; and Ham Kee-ho, Country Managing Director of Korea at AWS attended the signing ceremony. The data center in Ulsan is scheduled to begin operations by 2027 and is expected to generate up to 78,000 direct and indirect jobs over time as the data center scales and operations expand. The AI Zone in Ulsan will combine industry-leading capabilities from SK Group and AWS through a 15-year partnership to provide top-tier network operations, a semiconductor supply chain, and efficient power infrastructure. This partnership is in addition to AWS's long-term US $5.88 billion (approx. 7.85 trillion won) planned investment in Korea by 2027. SK Group will lead the construction of the data center, while AWS will establish the AI Zone in Ulsan, which will deliver a broad selection of AWS's leading AI and cloud capabilities to customers in South Korea. The project brings together key SK Group affiliates, including SK Telecom, SK Broadband, SK hynix, SK Gas, SK Chemicals, SK multi utility and SK AX, uniting the Group's core competencies across ICT, energy, and semiconductors. Above all, Ulsan is considered the optimal location for the establishment of the AI Zone, as SK Group possesses a stable gas supply network, advanced energy solutions, and ideal sites in the region. In addition, Ulsan offers a favorable environment for submarine cables and is highly supportive of industrial activities. The AI Zone in Ulsan is designed to meet global performance and security standards. It features an AI-optimized computing system, ultra-high-density rack configurations, a hybrid cooling system combining air and liquid cooling, and a stable, robust network infrastructure. The SK Group and AWS partnership underscores a shared commitment to driving innovation in cloud computing infrastructure to support AI innovation. SK Group and AWS are expanding their strategic partnership and plan to pursue wide-ranging collaborations that will benefit customers, giving them the ability to meet the demand for rapidly growing generative AI with compute, storage, database and edge computing capabilities. The new cloud infrastructure is a part of the AI Infrastructure Superhighway strategy announced in 2024 by SK Telecom, which is involved in AI initiatives within SK Group. SK Group expects to establish a key hub for hyperscale AI infrastructure through the AI Infrastructure Superhighway project. SK Group plans to enhance data sovereignty and strengthen its global competitiveness in AI by processing AI workloads generated in South Korea directly within the country. "When SK Group's exceptional technical capabilities combine with AWS's comprehensive AI cloud services, we'll empower customers of all sizes, and across all industries here in Korea to build and innovate with safe, secure AI technologies," said Prasad Kalyanaraman, VP of Infrastructure Services at AWS. "This partnership represents our commitment to Korea's AI future, and I couldn't be more excited about what we'll achieve together." "We are pleased to combine the technological capabilities of SK Group with AWS, the world's leading cloud provider, to establish a core infrastructure for a Korean AI ecosystem and create a powerful new engine for 'AI highway,'" said Chey Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group. "Moving forward, SK will continue to build an AI data center hub in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by leveraging the unique strengths of each affiliate and our global partnerships." About SK SK Group, South Korea's second-largest conglomerate, is a global technology leader delivering innovations to build the backbone for a new era of industry. Based in Seoul, SK has 198 companies and over 100,000 employees worldwide with a focus on developing and producing advanced solutions in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, energy and life sciences. SK businesses have a shared commitment to create economic value while having a positive impact on society. For more on SK, visit About Amazon Web Services Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, media, and application development, deployment, and management from 117 Availability Zones within 37 geographic regions, with announced plans for 13 more Availability Zones and four more AWS Regions in Chile, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit About Amazon Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth's Best Employer, and Earth's Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit and follow @AmazonNews. View original content: SOURCE SK Group; SK Telecom
Techday NZ
19-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
NiCE & AWS deepen AI partnership to power CX automation
NiCE has announced an expansion of its collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive intelligent automation through its CXone Mpower platform, introducing enhanced integration with various AWS artificial intelligence (AI) offerings. The collaboration aims to accelerate the deployment and scaling of AI-powered customer service solutions by combining NiCE's customer service automation expertise and interaction data with AWS's cloud and AI technology. The effort is focused on enabling end-to-end automation across enterprises using NiCE's CXone Mpower solution and AWS services like Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and Amazon SageMaker. Expanded integration NiCE and AWS are integrating generative AI services across the CXone Mpower platform to enable automation throughout enterprise workflows. The initiative covers several use cases, including automated AI agent creation, intelligent workflow orchestration and real-time AI-supported guidance for employees. With the integration, Mpower Agents will allow businesses to deploy AI agents instantly and without coding or prompt engineering, tailored to each organisation's specific needs. Using Amazon Q index, these agents access the latest policy, product and case information for accurate responses. Training on rich customer experience data is enabled through Amazon SageMaker, ensuring continuous learning from best practices and high-performing interactions. The platform also features CXone Mpower Orchestrator, which integrates with Amazon Q Business to connect enterprise systems, applications and data. This functionality enables more personalised, seamless customer journeys by breaking down operational silos, delivering real-time decisions using the AWS Nova family of large language models for various objectives such as speed, accuracy and business impact. The CXone Mpower Copilot tool supports agents, supervisors and leaders with real-time AI-powered assistance, aiming to streamline tasks and support productivity. AWS's global infrastructure underpins this function, allowing deployments with low latency and high availability across different geographies. Leadership comments NiCE brings decades of deep customer service expertise, rich data and a proven AI-based foundation. AWS brings enhanced scale, infrastructure and generative AI innovation. Together, we're delivering enterprise-wide automation, turning vision into action across the front, middle and back office. Mpower Agents are just one example: AI-powered agents that deploy instantly, adapt in real time and operate with precision at scale. According to Barry Cooper, President of the CX Division at NiCE, the collaboration is designed to deliver broad automation and responsive AI agents that adjust and function efficiently at enterprise scale. Mila D'Antonio, Principal Analyst at Omdia, described the collaboration as an example of complementary capabilities, stating: "This collaboration is a textbook case of complementary strengths coming together: NiCE has the domain depth, the data, and the AI maturity in CX; AWS has the tools, infrastructure, and generative AI firepower. The result is innovation like Mpower Agents that are enterprise-ready, context-aware, and built to scale, delivering automation with both intelligence and impact." Customer reaction Taylor Mobley, Chief Revenue Officer at Bamboo Insurance commented on the partnership's impact: "This collaboration between NiCE and AWS is raising the bar for what's possible with AI in the enterprise. By combining deep expertise with powerful technology, it will help us move faster, work smarter, deliver more value across the board, and ultimately provide a better, more personalised experience for our customers." The director of customer experience at Vera Bradley, Susan Campbell, noted the partnership's ongoing evolution: "We're always excited to see the innovative things we can do with CXone Mpower... and we know CXone Mpower will evolve with us, so we can continue to improve the customer experience—even into the future. I feel like NiCE wants to make us a better version of ourselves. And there aren't a lot of other companies that really invest in thought leadership, especially around how AI will forever change the face of the contact center." AWS perspective Rohan Karmarkar, Managing Director, Partner Solution Architecture at AWS, said the partnership broadens the capabilities available to businesses: "At AWS, we're committed to providing the capabilities to help businesses with AI-powered transformations. By combining Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and our Nova family of LLMs with NICE's CXone Mpower, we're enabling enterprises to deploy intelligent automation that's both powerful and purpose-built for real customer challenges. This collaboration with NICE demonstrates how AWS's generative AI capabilities can help accelerate innovation at scale across customer experience workflows." The announcement follows a trend among enterprise technology providers to incorporate generative AI features in customer experience platforms, seeking to streamline operations, improve accuracy, and personalise customer engagement through scalable technologies.
Business Wire
17-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
NiCE Advances AWS Strategic Collaboration, Accelerating Agentic AI Across CXone Mpower Platform
BUSINESS WIRE)-- NiCE (Nasdaq: NICE) today announced the next evolution of its strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), announcing a new collaboration to accelerate a shared vision to innovate the development, deployment and scaling of intelligent AI-powered solutions purpose-built for end-to-end customer service automation. Together, NiCE and AWS bring improved enterprise capabilities combining NiCE's leadership in customer service automation, deep domain expertise, and rich interaction data with the power and scale of AWS Cloud and AI services. Leveraging CXone Mpower and the Amazon Nova family of large language models (LLMs) and services such as Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and Amazon SageMaker, this relationship is transforming business operations, driving intelligent automation at scale, accelerating time-to-value, and delivering measurable impact across the front, middle, and back office. NiCE and AWS will integrate AWS generative AI services across the CXone Mpower platform, delivering intelligent automation that spans every corner of the enterprise. This will unlock enterprise-wide value through the following high-impact use cases: Simplifying AI agent creation with content-aware automation: Mpower Agents generate intelligent AI agents instantly, no code or prompts required—tailored to each business's needs. With Amazon Q index, agents act on the most current policies, product info, and case history to ensure accurate, compliant outcomes. Integration with Amazon SageMaker allows training on rich CX data, letting agents be built from and continuously learn from patterns and top-performers. The result is smarter, faster automation at scale that embodies best practices in customer interaction and process execution. Driving end-to-end enterprise automation with intelligent orchestration: CXone Mpower Orchestrator automates workflows across the front, middle, and back office, eliminating silos and optimizing operations. By integrating with Amazon Q Business, Orchestrator connects a wider range of systems, applications, and data allowing seamless, personalized and unified customer journeys. Support for the Amazon Nova family of models delivers real-time decisions at key moments with model selection tuned for speed, accuracy, and business impact. Empowering global teams with AI augmentation: CXone Mpower Copilot delivers real-time, AI-powered guidance and task support for agents, supervisors and leaders to streamline tasks, boost productivity and support better decision-making across the enterprise. AWS enhances this capability with globally distributed infrastructure, allowing fast, scalable deployment with low latency and high availability anywhere in the world. "NiCE brings decades of deep customer service expertise, rich data and a proven AI-based foundation. AWS brings enhanced scale, infrastructure and generative AI innovation," said Barry Cooper, President, CX Division, NiCE. "Together, we're delivering enterprise-wide automation, turning vision into action across the front, middle and back office. Mpower Agents are just one example: AI-powered agents that deploy instantly, adapt in real time and operate with precision at scale." 'This collaboration is a textbook case of complementary strengths coming together: NiCE has the domain depth, the data, and the AI maturity in CX; AWS has the tools, infrastructure, and generative AI firepower,' said Mila D'Antonio, principal analyst, Omdia. 'The result is innovation like Mpower Agents that are enterprise-ready, context-aware, and built to scale, delivering automation with both intelligence and impact.' 'This collaboration between NiCE and AWS is raising the bar for what's possible with AI in the enterprise. By combining deep expertise with powerful technology, it will help us move faster, work smarter, deliver more value across the board, and ultimately provide a better, more personalized experience for our customers,' said Taylor Mobley, Chief Revenue Officer, Bamboo Insurance. 'We're always excited to see the innovative things we can do with CXone Mpower… and we know CXone Mpower will evolve with us, so we can continue to improve the customer experience—even into the future,' said Susan Campbell, Director Customer Experience, Vera Bradley. 'I feel like NiCE wants to make us a better version of ourselves. And there aren't a lot of other companies that really invest in thought leadership, especially around how AI will forever change the face of the contact center.' 'At AWS, we're committed to providing the capabilities to help businesses with AI-powered transformations,' shared Rohan Karmarkar, managing director, partner solution architecture at AWS. 'By combining Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Q, and our Nova family of LLMs with NiCE's CXone Mpower, we're enabling enterprises to deploy intelligent automation that's both powerful and purpose-built for real customer challenges. This collaboration with NiCE demonstrates how AWS's generative AI capabilities can help accelerate innovation at scale across customer experience workflows.' About NiCE NiCE (NASDAQ: NICE) is transforming the world with AI that puts people first. Our purpose-built AI-powered platforms automate engagements into proactive, safe, intelligent actions, empowering individuals and organizations to innovate and act, from interaction to resolution. Trusted by organizations throughout 150+ countries worldwide, NiCE's platforms are widely adopted across industries connecting people, systems, and workflows to work smarter at scale, elevating performance across the organization, delivering proven measurable outcomes. Trademark Note: NiCE and the NiCE logo are trademarks of NICE Ltd. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners. For a full list of NICE's marks, please see: Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements, including the statements by Mr. Cooper, are based on the current beliefs, expectations and assumptions of the management of NICE Ltd. (the 'Company'). In some cases, such forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as 'believe,' 'expect,' 'seek,' 'may,' 'will,' 'intend,' 'should,' 'project,' 'anticipate,' 'plan,' 'estimate,' or similar words. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described herein, including but not limited to the impact of changes in general economic and business conditions; competition; successful execution of the Company's growth strategy; success and growth of the Company's cloud Software-as-a-Service business; rapid changes in technology and market requirements; the implementation of AI capabilities in certain products and services, decline in demand for the Company's products; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; difficulties in making additional acquisitions or difficulties or effectively integrating acquired operations; loss of market share; an inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements; the Company's dependency on third-party cloud computing platform providers, hosting facilities and service partners; cyber security attacks or other security incidents; privacy concerns; changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, the effects of additional tax liabilities resulting from our global operations, the effect of unexpected events or geo-political conditions, including those arising from political instability or armed conflict that may disrupt our business and the global economy; our ability to recruit and retain qualified personnel; the effect of newly enacted or modified laws, regulation or standards on the Company and our products and various other factors and uncertainties discussed in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the 'SEC'). For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the SEC, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law.
