Technology

Global Organizations Boost Growth with Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

Published

6 months ago

July 10, 2024

Ahold Delhaize, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Lemtrans, and Mazda Motors Logistics Europe N.V. move their business-critical VMware environments to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution

Latest OCI Compute with AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA processors give Oracle Cloud VMware Solution customers greater scale, performance, and address new use cases like virtual desktops and AI and ML

AUSTIN, Texas, July 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Global organizations across industries including Ahold Delhaize, Hitachi Construction Machinery, Lemtrans, and Mazda Motors Logistics Europe N.V. use Oracle Cloud VMware Solution to exit their on-premises data centers and migrate their business-critical applications to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). To continue to add new capabilities to this service, Oracle released a new OCI Compute shape with an NVIDIA A10 Tensor Core GPU and an Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8358 Processor for Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, and plans to release another shape based on the AMD EPYC™ 9J14 processor. This will provide customers with additional compute options and improved performance across a wide range of workloads.

“Many organizations that want to move their VMware estates to the cloud are often daunted by the heavy lift and prospect of needing to learn an entirely new set of IT skills,” said Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “Oracle Cloud VMware Solution enables organizations to maintain full control of their VMware Clusters and preserve their tools, skills, and processes, eliminating reskilling requirements. For customers, it is a low-risk approach to modernize in the cloud by maintaining an identical operational model to their on-premises VMware Clusters.”

Ahold Delhaize Accelerates Cloud Migration to Keep Pace with Retail Growth

Ahold Delhaize is one of the largest food retailers in the world, with 16 regional brands, 7,700 stores, and more than 400,000 employees. Ahold Delhaize has been operating its on-premises VMware environment for many years, alongside other diverse IT systems and solutions to support its operations. After running Oracle and non-Oracle applications for critical business processes on VMware, it decided to accelerate the migration to the cloud to increase performance and help cut costs. Starting with its key local brands in the Netherlands, Albert Heijn, Etos, and Gall & Gall, Ahold Delhaize leveraged Oracle Cloud VMware Solution to migrate over 400 VMware virtual machines (VMs) supporting its e-commerce, supply chain, and retail processes, to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution. This allowed Ahold Delhaize to reduce its remaining data center footprint to zero while maintaining full administrative control over its VMware environment. The roll-out was managed and implemented by the AH Tech Team and Oracle partner DXC Technology, a member of Oracle PartnerNetwork.

“After a review process, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution was the choice for us,” said Gerhard van der Bijl, chief technical officer, Ahold Delhaize Europe & Indonesia. “It allowed us to extend our data center VMware environment into the cloud and leverage our existing processes and expertise, while delivering on our data center exit strategy. One of the most important reasons for us to choose Oracle is that we could lift and shift our workloads without having to make impactful changes to the underlying infrastructure, which allowed our business to continue to operate while we migrated workloads overnight.”

Hitachi Construction Machinery Accelerates Digital Transformation

Hitachi Construction Machinery develops, manufactures, sells, rents, and services hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, road equipment, and mining equipment, with more than 400,000 units of construction equipment in operation worldwide. To drive its digital transformation strategy, it is migrating approximately 500 virtual servers from an on-premises VMware virtualization environment and 100 databases to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution and Oracle Exadata Database Service on OCI. Hitachi Construction Machinery has already reduced its infrastructure operating costs by 20 percent while improving its online transaction processing performance by 50 percent and batching processing by 60 percent.

“OCI is the only public cloud that can securely migrate mission-critical databases running on Oracle Exadata and VMware virtualization environments since we can migrate quickly without configuration changes and reduce costs. Other clouds would have increased our costs due to having to rebuild applications,” said Noriko Momoki, senior officer and president, DX Promotion Group, Hitachi Construction Machinery. “The increased performance has significantly improved business processing time while reducing operational and management tasks, meaning our IT department can now focus on new projects to strengthen our business competitiveness.”

Lemtrans Improves Resiliency for Critical Railway Systems

Lemtrans is a leading private operator of railway vehicles in the Ukraine, operating more than 15,000 gondola cars that transport over 52 million tons of cargo annually. Lemtrans had an urgent need to transition critical processes and databases, including train scheduling and identity and access management, to the cloud. Lemtrans relied on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution to quickly relocate its data and applications outside of the Ukraine, achieving greater resiliency while preserving its IT investments.

“Oracle Cloud VMware Solution was the perfect choice for us to ensure that our business would not be disrupted,” said Ivan Radchenko, head of IT department, Lemtrans. “The tools we use in OCI and our on-premises VMware environment are identical, which greatly simplified the migration of our data and VMs and provided more confidence in our business continuity. This helps us maintain the highest standard of quality for the Ukraine’s rail system.”

Mazda Motors Logistics Europe N.V. Consolidates Applications to Reduce Data Center Footprint

Mazda Motors Logistics Europe N.V. (MLE) is responsible for distributing cars and parts to European customers. MLE delivers spare parts directly to over 2,300 dealers and independent distributors in more than 30 European countries and vehicles to the ports of Barcelona, Antwerp, and Zeebrugge for European distribution. To achieve its goal of phasing out its data centers and modernizing its operations, MLE migrated 500 VMware VMs and consolidated an Oracle Exadata system into 80 Oracle Databases running on Exadata Database Service in OCI. MLE also consolidated its business-critical applications into several software-defined data centers (SDDCs) with 12 hosts on Oracle Cloud VMware Solution. As a result, MLE closed its two data centers in Frankfurt while maintaining the same high level of application customization and database compatibility.

“As a long-standing customer of both VMware and Oracle, it was important for us to maintain the operation and management of our virtual infrastructure as closely as possible,” said Leander Dierckx, cloud domain lead, Mazda Motors Logistics Europe N.V. “Migrating our racks of Exadata and VMs to OCI let us keep our data and workloads in one place. This had helped us increase our agility and productivity while reducing operational costs.”

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution Introduces New Compute Shapes for Greater Customer Control

Oracle released a new Oracle Cloud VMware Solution compute shape with an Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8358 Processor and an NVIDIA Tensor Core A10 GPU to run VDI, AI inferencing, and graphic-intensive workloads on VMware this month. Oracle VMware Cloud Solution plans to also introduce a new compute shape using the AMD EPYC™ 9J14 processor, which can allow up to 50 percent more cores per cluster and bring the latest generation AMD processors to customers running VMware, later this year.

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is designed for organizations requiring the highest levels of scalability, performance, security, and control. Customers can directly manage cloud infrastructure and VMware consoles for complete administrative control of their entire VMware stack. This enables organizations to rapidly migrate on-premises VMware estates to the cloud, while preserving existing skills, best practices, and tools.

VMware environments operate in isolated customer tenancies at the highest levels of security, including FedRAMP High, to help meet compliance requirements. In addition, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution delivers enterprise-level performance along with predictable costs, including the industry’s lowest data egress prices, and consistent low pricing across Oracle Cloud regions. With Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, customers gain OCI’s flexible cloud infrastructure and zero-trust security, while retaining the full VMware administrator experience and control. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution SDDCs are deployed on OCI bare metal compute instances, a simple, consistent approach compared to solutions that use separate compute instances just for VMware. Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is available across public, government, sovereign, or even dedicated cloud environments, anywhere in the world.

Additional Resources

Learn more about Oracle Cloud VMware SolutionLearn more about Oracle Cloud InfrastructureRead more about Oracle Exadata Database Service

About Oracle

Oracle offers integrated suites of applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle, Java, MySQL and NetSuite are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. NetSuite was the first cloud company—ushering in the new era of cloud computing.

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SOURCE Oracle

Technology

Thinkpal learning tablet from Think Academy wins TechRadar Pro Picks and Trusted Reviews Best in Show awards at CES 2025

Published

23 minutes ago

January 11, 2025

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Think Academy debuted its Thinkpal tablet at CES 2025 and has won a TechRadar Pro Picks and Trusted Reviews Best in Show awards for this innovative new product.

Both awards are given to innovative products and solutions at CES that stand out from a packed crowd. Think Academy President, Alex Peng, was presented the awards at CES, noting the awards were given to Thinkpal because it is both a wholly unique product in the education technology market and also provides such value to parents and educators.

Designed to transform the way kids learn, explore, and thrive in an ever-evolving world, the Thinkpal is powered by cutting-edge AI that serves as a guide and tutor for young learners. With significant learning loss experienced in recent years, families and educators have faced unprecedented challenges as test scores in reading and math have seen steady declines. Parents have expressed their struggles in reigniting their children’s passion for learning, while educators grapple with the complexities of bridging diverse learning gaps.

To meet these challenges, the Thinkpal tablet offers a tailored, AI-powered solution that provides step-by-step writing guidance and real-time math support, making learning more intuitive and enjoyable.

Alex Peng introduced several key features of the Thinkpal during a press event. He showed the audience how Thinkpal’s “GeniusTutor,” an AI-powered system that transforms learning into an interactive and engaging experience, is the heart of this product’s features. Built on the Microsoft Azure OpenAI GPT-4o model, GeniusTutor provides real-time guidance and feedback, empowering students to:

Conquer complex math problems through logic-driven, step-by-step explanationsMaster writing with interactive prompts and instant feedback that build confidence and creativityEnhance vocabulary and reading skills with innovative tools like “Point-and-Discover,” where children can point to words in a physical book, and the tablet’s camera instantly provides explanations, along with guided reading exercises

Adding a touch of fun and companionship, “Thinkie,” an advanced AI-powered learning companion, engages children through voice-based natural language interactions. Thinkie chats, answers questions, and fosters curiosity, making the learning process enjoyable and dynamic.

With an extensive library of ebooks, gamified coursework, and compatibility with popular applications like Google Classroom, the Thinkpal Tablet is a versatile tool for modern families. The 11-inch TÜV Rheinland-certified eye-care screen also safeguards children’s vision during extended use, while the optional keyboard transforms the tablet into a Chromebook-like device, enhancing productivity and usability.

“Our mission is to provide every child with a personalized, world-class tutor that inspires confidence and a lifelong love for learning”, noted Alex Peng during a media interview Q&A. “We’re honored that TechRadar and Trusted Reviews recognize the potential of the Thinkpal to improve learning through advanced and accessible technology.”

The Thinkpal Tablet will be available for $249 ($339 including keyboard) at shop.thethinkacademy.com. Pre-orders open today.

About Think Academy

Think Academy, a subsidiary of TAL Education Group (NYSE: TAL), has been at the forefront of education innovation for over two decades. Serving more than 5 million K-12 students across 10+ countries, Think Academy is dedicated to creating fair and comprehensive educational opportunities. By integrating advanced technology with expert curriculum design, Think Academy is shaping the future of learning to be more accessible, engaging, and impactful.

For media inquiries, contact:
Cecilia Qian
cecilia@impact5r.com

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SOURCE Think Academy

Technology

MLVision M5 Unveiled at CES 2025: Pioneering Innovation in Wearable Technology with the World’s Lightest AI-Powered AR Glasses

Published

23 minutes ago

January 11, 2025

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — At CES 2025, MLVision has officially launched its groundbreaking MLVision M5, setting a new global standard for wearable technology. Weighing a mere 25.8 grams, the MLVision M5 is the world’s lightest AI-powered AR glasses. The device combines cutting-edge artificial intelligence, precision engineering, and a commitment to privacy and accessibility.

“MLVision M5 is more than just a wearable device; it represents a significant breakthrough in both weight and product design,” said CEO Zhaoen Dai. “Our goal is to create smart AR glasses that feel effortless to wear, leveraging cutting-edge AR display technology and advanced AI models to genuinely help users work and live more efficiently and conveniently.”

Crafted with aviation-grade titanium and ultra-lightweight floating plastic, this device achieves an unprecedented balance between durability and comfort. Weighing only 25.8g, 40% less than traditional AR glasses, it ensures an effortless, all-day wearing experience that feels almost weightless. The ergonomic design caters to users’ needs, making it a perfect companion for both work and leisure.

This device introduces an industry-first modular design, setting a new benchmark for adaptability in AR glasses. This innovation allows users to seamlessly transition between an all-in-one configuration and a clip-on style, accommodating diverse preferences and use cases. For nearsighted users, the M5 eliminates the need for custom prescription lenses—a common limitation in traditional AR glasses. Instead, it can be conveniently clipped onto existing prescription glasses, offering unmatched practicality and cost savings. This thoughtful modularity not only enhances accessibility but also positions the MLVision M5 as a versatile solution for a broad spectrum of users.

One of MLVision M5’s standout features is its immersive visual projection system, which offers an 86-inch private virtual screen. Powered by MLVision’s proprietary Hummingbird Micro-LED light engine and advanced nano-scale diffraction waveguide technology, the glasses create a secure and private viewing experience, ideal for reading confidential documents or browsing personal files. To prioritize eye health, the device utilizes soft green light with a projection distance of 4 meters, reducing strain during extended use.

The MLVision M5 is also equipped with the AIOS platform, delivering unparalleled AI-driven capabilities to enhance user productivity and accessibility. With intelligent tools like document summarization, real-time translation in seven languages, and interactive AI chat for setting reminders and brainstorming ideas, the device seamlessly integrates into the modern workflow. Additionally, its innovative Care Mode provides real-time audio transcription, enabling a more inclusive experience for users with hearing impairments.

The MLVision M5 excels as a navigation powerhouse, offering intuitive, real-time directions to guide users seamlessly through various environments. Whether exploring a new city, finding the fastest route to your destination, or navigating while riding a bike, the M5 ensures you always stay on the right path with ease and confidence.

The MLVision M5 will launch in China at the end of January 2025. Pricing and pre-order details will be announced in the coming weeks.

MLVision, a global innovator in wearable technology, continues to push the boundaries of what is possible by merging innovation, style, and functionality. With the launch of MLVision M5, the company reinforces its commitment to accessibility, sustainability, and creating cutting-edge solutions that redefine how technology is integrated into everyday life.

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SOURCE MLVision

Technology

Brandivio Launches Advanced Retail Allocation Platform for Inventory Excellence

Published

24 minutes ago

January 11, 2025

Brandivio’s inventory optimization solutions empower footwear and apparel brands and retailers to buy smarter, allocate & replenish faster, and meet demand with precision.

NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Brandivio, a new generation inventory excellence platform for apparel and footwear retailers, announces its expansion into North America, in conjunction with the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show in New York City.

The Brandivio platform addresses the unique needs of the retail allocation market, ensuring apparel and footwear retailers have innovative tools to grow and thrive,” said Keith Whaley, SVP of Retail Solutions at Brandivio.

Brandivio, already supporting top-tier brands in EMEA, is built by seasoned retail experts to solve critical inventory challenges in fashion and footwear.

Leveraging machine learning, real-time demand signals, and automation, the Brandivio platform optimizes the distribution of products across a retailer’s stores and e-commerce channels ensuring the right products are in the right places at the right times, ultimately improving sales and margin performance, customer satisfaction, and inventory efficiency.

Key Features of Brandivio –

Advanced Demand Sensing: Predict future demand for short lifecycle products using machine learning native algorithms incorporating hyper-local external datasets to map powerful demand drivers.Dynamic Inventory Allocation: Adjust inventory in real time at the SKU/location level based on in-season trends to reduce stockouts and overstock situations.Real-Time Analytics: Drive test and learn strategies, optimize assortment in-season and connect functional teams across the organization with actionable insights for rapid response to market trends.Automation: Reduce up to 80% of existing manual planning efforts and redirect planner focus towards even greater efficiencies.Ease of Use: Intuitive workflows ensure rapid adoption without extensive training.

“Retailers can no longer rely on outdated tools or seasonal strategies,” said James Townsend, CEO of Brandivio.

“Brandivio democratizes retail data science, enabling brands to level the playing field, compete effectively, and maximize profits in today’s fast-paced market.”

This launch underscores Brandivio’s mission to support U.S. retailers facing tighter margins and increasing competition. “Our platform addresses the unique needs of this market, ensuring retailers have the tools to grow and thrive,” added Keith Whaley, SVP of Retail Solutions.

Media Contact

Keith Whaley, Brandivio, Inc., 1 9494453183, keith.whaley@brandivio.com, https://brandivio.com

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SOURCE Brandivio, Inc.