“Media companies now favor hybrid cloud workflows for flexibility, speed, and cost-efficiency. Open standards ensure interoperability, while strong security protects valuable IP. Experts stress aligning cloud use with business goals, maintaining control and visibility, and using cloud strategically—not universally—to optimize collaboration, performance, and infrastructure investment.”
Publicly Published with video edition: April 27, 2025Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli
ABSTRACT
CES 2025 allowed over 141,000 attendees to see more than 4,500+ exhibitors including 1400 start-ups. Attendees and exhibitors agree the phrase that best described the event was “tech that is available.” While CES 2024 brought concepts, CES 2025 brought available products with realized agentic AI, mixed reality, brain computer interface – even in consumer technology, autonomous, solid state, flexible, and with alternative power means across all aspects of life, work, and play.
The Conference
The first Consumer Electronic Show (CES) was held in New York City in 1967 with 17,500 attendees1. It is an industry conference focusing on all aspects of technology. 2025 is the first event where CES is not officially an acronym. The conference features new product announcements in product categories and marketplaces across consumer, enterprise, and industrial computing.
CES 2025 was held in Las Vegas, Nevada and had just over 141,000 registered attendees, with 4,500+ exhibiting companies.
If 2024 was the year of this is what we are planning, 2025 was the year of its here and available.
Attendees at CES 2025 hold titles such as CEO, Founder, Investor, VP, Director, Chief Marketing Officer, VP of Engineering, VP of Product Development, data scientists, lead engineer, and buyer.
Cautions
Care must be taken when creating a CES schedule. CES 2025 spanned multiple venues; buses and the Vegas Loop were provided with convenient routes between all venues. To this end, one’s schedule must allow for the transport or walk time between events. TBW Advisors’ analyst found that 30 minutes was sufficient between LVCC and Sands Convention Space; attendees should plan to allow one hour for transfer between other venues.
Just because a product has advanced AI and is designed for the home or office, doesn’t mean that your privacy was fully taken into consideration. Adopters must verify data location and policies for any new products before they are brought into the home or office.
After 36 hours, 76,000 steps, 20 flights of stairs, 1 Vegas loop ride, 136 videos, 140+ fact checks from around the world, our coverage of CES 2025 closes. If attendees had complaints in 2024 CES, it was that when asked, where can I buy it? They were told, “this is just a concept”. In 2025, the attendee complaint of the day was that they saw it all before. YES, as prototypes last year. Today you can buy it, and it has a consumer edition available on Amazon. Even the Flying saucer is available for pre-order with delivery in 2 years; more on that in the mobility section.
CES 2025 had some 141,000 registered attendees and 4500+ exhibits including 1400 start-ups* that spanned multiple venues. Mandalay Bay always opens the shows with two days of Press events. Mandalay Bay was the site for Showstoppers Launch it hosted by Jethro, Unveiled which is the first preview of CES Exhibits for member of the press only, and CTA Tech Trends, a presentation of CES’s hosting organization on all the data about the sector. They even had breaking news on the estimated impact of the forthcoming tariffs, estimated to lead to $90-143 Billion dollar decline in spending. Any of the host hotels or the airport provided badge pickup capabilities, minimizing lines. Aria hosted the Hollywood and AI content which echoed our NAB Show coverage. Over at the Las Vegas Convention Center or LVCC, South Hall is home to design predominantly downstairs while South Hall upstairs hosted the sourcing.Central Hall is home to the Big-Name Brands and CES Mainstays such as our LG Tour you’ll read about later. The North exhibit hall – not just the meeting rooms – was open post construction and showcased the exciting enterprise meets innovation exhibits. There is a walkway that connects the North Hall to the West Hall across the street. The Vegas Loop is also available to commute between the various LVCC sections. Buses are available between locations and run frequently but it is advised to stick with one location per day if you want to maximize your time at the actual event versus traveling. Speaking of getting around, the LVCC West Hall is home to mobility and autonomous solutions. CES is the largest automotive show in the world after all.
Most years at CES were extremely visual and easy to see the innovations. There were no robots one year– next year there are robots with very limited functionality. Many of the innovations in 2025 were most appreciated at the detailed level; thus, those that quickly walked by seeking visual stimulation likely missed a lot of what was shown. Fortunately, since media can specify their interest areas, many of the great products found TBW Advisors so to quote the theme of CES 2025, let’s dive in.
CES is known for its amazing sessions. If you suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out), be prepared. At any given moment, at any given location, I have found there is always more than one session to select from that I believe I would genuinely enjoy. A session that at some recent point in my life, I have been in a conversation where that may have been useful to know they thought. CES 2025’s sessions made it difficult to choose location anchor days to minimize transportation time waste as well.
Diving right in to the Creator Stage outside of LVCC Central Hall, Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am shared his exciting news and his feelings about LG’s XBoom relationship and how it came about. In addition, Will.i.am announced his FYI beyond radio project, an innovative technology space and AI environment for creators that allows you to create a channel for LG’s ecosystem also accessible on the web.
Agentic AI was the hot topic for the session titled, The Rise of AI Agents. The year 2025 is not just about generative AI but rather a coordination of AI agents working together to solve complex problems for users and businesses – autonomously or with HITL (humanin in the loop). The panel shared that only 15-17% of projects have been successful but equally important, they provided three keys for a successful AI project. First, it should be viewed as a business project. Second, you must have the right data for the project. Finaly, they suggested starting small.
In the maximum capacity talk on The Race for Generative AI and LLM Supremacy, the panelists discussed the competition amongst the solutions. The challenge of every LLM developer is getting good solid data. Thus, the conclusion of the panel is that the race for LLM supremacy will provide the prize to the entity that holds that best data set. That right, it’s the data set that ultimately determines who wins the race.
Fortunately for all, there was the session on a topic so hot, we drew a crowd so large they knocked over my camera on Data Collection, Privacy, and Why you Should Care. (Bias disclosure) TBW Advisor’s own Chief of Research had the privilege of moderating and thus was on stage and could not hold the camera. Part of the cybersecurity track, this session reminded all that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Globally data privacy laws in practice are frequently leveraged as a tax. The need for resiliency for some nations can challenge the reality of data boundary laws. The panel touched on a very big debate: the data protective minimalists vs agency-assured data maximalists. The panelists also discussed what happens with your information once it has been compromised.
The Cybersecurity track had a very exciting announcement. All Conference Whispers: CES printed editions over the years have carried a stark warning in the Cautions.
“Just because a product has advanced AI and is designed for the home or office, doesn’t mean that your privacy was fully taken into consideration. Adopters must verify data location and policies for any new products before they are brought into the home or office. – Conference Whispers: CES 2020“
We cannot contain how excited we were to see the session on the announcement of the US Cyber Security Trust Mark! Coming this year, products can go through official certification. One is no longer left to wonder or forced to annoy your nearest tech relative to do an architecture review before you buy a baby monitor or a device for office use! Soon this mark will be as ubiquitous as the UL certification or EnergyStar certifications. US Cyber Security Trust Mark – get ready to look for it in 2025.
An additional session in the cybersecurity track was that on finding cybersecurity talent. Given how many engineers have hit the market due to generative AI coding solutions, one critical point the entire panel agreed on was that the required cybersecurity skill set required is evolving, Specifically, cybersecurity now requires a more consultative approach. Perhaps due to the fact the human-in-the-loop are frequently the source of compromise.
While we once described the robots seen at CES being combination of “the house roaming vacuums, the technology of the smart speakers, and an iPad,” that is no longer true in 2025. We witnessed a solution ripped straight from a ConExpo coverage preview while at Unveiled. The fully autonomous HKCRC Rebar tying robot achieves 99.6% accuracy! This next robot is for you if you are not in construction but rather a service industry. Maybe hospitality or healthcare? Temi by Robocore is a general-purpose fully autonomous service robot ready to come to your service. Another fully autonomous solution from unveiled that could easily be cast in a Disney theme park is Jennie by TomBot. Jennie the robot dog is a service dog for dementia patients providing comfort without risking the safety of the animal. Jennie always drew a crowd just like a real puppy as well!
Our first example of the powered trend arrived at Showstoppers Launch it and featured a bionic leg by Bionic M. This powered leg assists the amputee with movement though its internal power versus just existing and leaving all the work to the recipient. For some, self-powered movement is not possible. Venetian Expo Hall featured an exoskeleton for those physically unable to walk therefore enabling movement for all by Cosmo Robotics.
Seeking to build a robot? Showstoppers Launch It featured all the details on the very popular Jizai robot developer kit. At the same event, we captured all the details on Thinker, the pre-touch sensor one can integrate into your own robot design. Need an entire humanoid hand? Mimic in the Swiss Pavilion shared their highly nimble humanoid hand that is the perfect solution to eliminate repetitive movements from actual humans! If you are focusing on vision capabilities of your robot or autonomous vehicle, then Eye2drive which enables human vision on a chip may have caught your attention in Eureka Park. If motors are involved, then rotary position sensors are a must to ensure proper functioning. Magnetic Tech shared their rotary position sensors for all to incorporate into your designs. Mobiltech sensors and digital twins also exhibited in Eureka Park. Mobiltech is a Nvidia partner for lidars and camera sensors providing precise synchronization between multimodal sensors. Interfaces are another area of innovation with Kyocera sensors creating floating displays and precision technology. TBW Advisors LLC had an exclusive Press Interview with the creator of realized Holograms at PXE Imaging discussing their technology. Holograms are now real! Who is ready to be beamed up in the new year?
Power is a big topic of innovation at large. CES North Hall featured a very popular flexible paper battery! Their entire booth was constructed of cardboard. InnoPhase IoT gave us an exclusive look at the Talaria 6. The Talaria 6 family of system-on-chips (SOCs) provides an ultra-lower power over Wi-fi solutions. The Taleria platform spans smart home devices such as lights, thermostats, and door locks for voice activated ecosystems such as Alexa, Siri and Google Home. Solar panels are getting a real makeover in 2025. First, they can be quite flexible and even 3d such as the flexible solar panels by Coatema. Second, the electrodes are getting an upgrade! In fact, Coatema featured one of the vendors we met in the Swiss Pavilion, GraphEnergyTech. GraphEnergyTech created new electrodes to replace traditional solar panels’ electrodes. Their solution saves 87% of the cost for solar panels while being 97% greener for the planet. How is that for an exciting technology jump?
There is a relationship between power in electronics and cooling. CES Innovation award Winner AirJet by Frore systems brings solid state active cooling to reality. Passive cooling creates bulky devices.
Prior solutions at active cooling meant a large noisy fan. Not anymore! Frore Systems have a variety of AirJet models available to meet your design needs. Enjoy these examples shared with TBW Advisors during our exclusive booth tour that demonstrate the impact of the AirJet. Specifically, common devices had their power measured. They then removed the existing cooling solution and replaced it with the AirJet. The power of the device was measured again and demonstrated the increased power when leveraging their AirJet. Furthermore, AirJet is not just a concept, is available in products today.
In the Manufacturing and Industrial/Commercial solutions space, we will once again discuss energy. This time a unique solution we found in the Swiss Pavilion by Enerdrape. For those unfamiliar, energy is the largest cost to run a data center outside of the servers. All the heat generated by the technology must be displaced for optimal performance. Enerdrape is a geothermal system that collects ground heat and requires no drilling to install. Depending on location, the Enerdrape sheets collect an average 100 to 200 W/sqm harvested continuously. This harvesting corresponds to a heating/cooling output of 350’000 Wh/sqm per year or 950 Wh/sqm per day. We will be keeping an eye on this technology going forward.
At TBW Advisors, we love data solutions, data technology, and all things sensor data. Fortunately, Showstoppers Launch it and Unveiled had us covered. Caddi presented their manufacturing data platform at Showstoppers. Seeking digital twin as a service for your factory? Enjoy CalTa’s Showstopper presentation. Prefer to focus on process automation? CalTa’s digital twin as a service can also be leveraged for process automation as described at Unveiled.
Real-time and continuous monitoring were terms we heard multiple times at CES2025. Fortunately, the Swiss Pavilion’s AeroSpec is able to continuously monitor air quality at the edge. This continuous monitoring of air pollution is a significant step forward over spot air quality check. Realtime, continuous, air quality is critical to keep populations aware of the true air quality conditions outdoors as well as indoors. Unfortunately, many commercial buildings (and residential) suffer from radon gas, a known human carcinogen. Continuous indoor air quality monitoring particularly for Radon is available from Radoff. Another continuous real time monitoring solution, this time to measure for target liquid monitoring was shared by AI Cubic K. CES occurred during the Cold, Flu, RSV and Norovirus outbreaks. To continuous disinfecting corporate or industrial spaces, Germpass offers a variety of solutions to automatically keep common touchpoints free from germs.
For anyone developing in and around the factory or industrial solutions, perhaps involving Siemens equipment, the AWS/Siemens developer kit should be on your radar. We were able to catch all the details in their joint presentation in the middle of Eureka Park. Concerned about the rapid retirement of the industrial workforce and all their related tribal knowledge, Rimon just might be a solution to put on your radar.
We witnessed exciting innovations in safety tech for manufacturing and industrial solutions. The Swiss Pavilion’s Wearin created wearable devices specifically designed for firefighting and other dangerous industrial jobs. The devices gather information about air quality around the worker, encrypts it, and sends to their software solution. This solution leverages an open design that can accommodate different sensors and models to monitor what is critical for a given scenario.
Safety glasses may not seem exciting if you walk by quickly. However, if one stopped for a conversation, you were in for a surprise. That’s right, mixed reality has been realized for industrial environments. Virnect shared all the details on their mixed reality safety glasses in our exclusive interview. One final safety equipment innovation we would like to share, safety ear Budz for construction. Not only providing location and information on action, Budz can also monitor the employee’s wellbeing and temperature to prevent heat exhaustion or hyperthermia on the job.
Mobility
In 2024, CES declared itself the largest automotive show period. CES is not just about Cars, it is about every mode of transportation as seen on Media Days. TBW Advisors was able to capture the entire briefing made by Invo. For those of you not familiar, Invo is an EVTOL or electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle. Invo is not a helicopter as it has no exposed blades. Invo is not a fixed wing drone although it is fully autonomous. Most would describe Invo as something ripped right from the Jetsons as it resembles a flying saucer! And Invo is taking reservations for delivery in 2 years for a mere $350,000.
Another complete press announcement we were able to capture in the mobility space remarkably familiar to our clients, subscribers, and followers is John Deere. We frequently run into John Deere at ConExpo and were excited to see their update. Overall John Deere announced they are live with automation in 4 major areas: field, orchard, quarry, and grass. It is amazing to see how far they have come with their technology albeit I wondered if they fixed the issue with solar flares1. Their solutions rely in GPS and GPS can have its issues. Fortunately, at least the Orchard solution also leverages lidar technology. The question arose as it is fair to assume that in non-peaceful times, GPS may become a weapon either through spoofing experience in Ukraine or may become unavailable like with solar flares. But food isn’t optional. Of course, per our coverage of the Commercial UAV Expo, the technology exists to solve this problem. Of course, clients will recall ANELLO Photonics optical gyroscope. Anello Photonics allows one to navigate even in GPS denied or spoofed environments in air, on land, or by sea and was in the LVCC North Hall.
CES 2025 Editor’s Choice Award winning AI dashcam was found upstairs at Venetian in the Swiss Area. This AI Dash cam by Vueroid leverages low power so it can monitor things even when you are away from your car for extended periods of time. Leveraging HDR, even in the lowest light it has clear video and recording of its environment and any license plates it comes across. Visibility in the dark is a challenge for recording and safety. Unveiled brought us RheoLight Paint designed to maximize reflection ensuring visibility. Applications span Motorcycles, Helmets, Work Trucks to any mobility device you want to ensure the best chances of it being seen in the dark. Another fleet solution that leverages existing tire sensors on vehicles to provide new insights. Sensing Core turns any tire into an intelligent tire. Their solution will be unbelievably valuable for fleet owners desiring preventative maintenance.
Bicyclists desiring extra safety, visibility, and documentation of their rides should evaluate Inen’s soluton. Prefer roller blades or make that power roller blades and your comfortable going 80 miles per hour. Enjoy the Atmos Gear overview and DEMO!
CES 2025 had exciting technology for municipalities. That’s right no one was left behind in the innovation. Continuous and real time once again describe a solution this time for water quality monitoring. Instead of spot checking, this innovative solution simply monitors the health of Mollusks in the water by MolluScan Eye. Yes – this solution leverages existing Mollusks like clams, oysters, mussels, and squids found in your fresh or sea water. Since these creators live in the water and are so sensitive to changes, by monitoring their health the water quality is continuously and real-time monitored. The Mollusks are now the canary in the mine for water quality.
If you are a city administrator and want to make your city smart, Ask Jules can guide you through 500 smart city capabilities. For those in very hot climates like those of us in Vegas, SoCold enables cooling without power. This special coating provides passive active cooling that doesn’t consume energy. Instead, SoCold uses the sun and sky to create sub ambient temperatures below the coating. Another desert issue is the conservation of water. Leaks are a waste of water and must be found. Water leaks also cause mold and other health conditions. Netsensi developed by Mathclick enables one to detect and find interior water leaks in residential or commercial buildings.
In the Swiss Pavilion, acknowledging bees are the critical component in the World’s food supply but are subject to mites. Smart Beehive designed by a 7th generation Beekeeper has solved that with their smart hive LifeHive. Another Swiss highlight for those desiring a classroom for their children but lack continuous internet or power. BeeKee enables a digital classroom anywhere in the world regardless of local infrastructure.
CES 2025 featured technology to enhance every aspect of your life. Adding sunlight to a workday for desk workers is critical is said to improve one’s health and mood. Fortunately, SunLed Life has invented a small sunlight creating device you can just flip onto the top of your laptop. For those in IT or others that leverage a keyboard all day, and prefer a split keyboard, Naya BB also provides hinges and adjustable modules for the ultimate in user experience. However, if you have a shoulder injury, you will want to evaluate Auto Keybo. AutoKeybo is specifically designed for those with shoulder injuries and removes the need to move the arm left to right to access mouse and other functionalities.
Does your job require travel and presentations on the road? The Splay Collapsable Display is an incredibly convenient solution for travel featuring a display that collapses like an umbrella. Available today with a 25-inch screen with a battery that last 2-4 hours, the 35-inch display is coming midyear and will launch through Kickstarter. Another exciting innovation the traveling engineer can leverage is the new and first smart drive by iodyne leveraging FroreSystems AirJet. This portable secure drive provides enterprise class storage you can carry. Featuring RAID 6, AES 256 encryption, pass keys, pass key enclave, data separate, NFC chip it is the ultimate secure travel storage!
Having a challenging time answering all the cybersecurity questions in your organization? Certy is a speciality helpdesk chatbot designed to answer cybersecurity questions. Seeking to optimize your IT processes? AWIT created an intelligent IT process automation solution designed to help you meet and exceed your KPIs. We will be on the lookout for any case studies that result from its deployment to fully appreciate its impact.
Tasked with creating an augmented reality solution for your products but don’t have weeks? Once again the Swiss Pavilion featured Identic enabling one to create AR identic solutions for your products in hours. Identifying and stopping deepfakes ruining your sleep? Unveiled featured Cyberette that can stop deepfakes in 2 seconds with 99.7% accuracy whether video, audio, or text. Are you trying to create a generative AI solution but lack the data? GenGen AI generates and provides training data for your AI training days. Finally, in the age of Agentic one needs a multi-agent AI coder and Koder AI is there with their solution. They are the first multi-agent solution with each agent taking on a different role just like a real software engineering team. In addition, this multi-model solution allows you to bring your own models if you choose.
One press conference we expected to cover in Mobility was about the home; specifically, Toyota’s exclusive press conference and the discussion of the Woven City. If you are working on any smart home, smart city technology be sure to connect with Toyota. Another highly produced press conference was held by Samsung. The event covered their entire vision for smart homes and intelligent lives through Smart Things. As a follow-up to Conference Whispers: CES 2020, Balle will be available this year. Enjoy our private booth tour of a versatile solution meant to please any engineer that has ever used a device with a battery presented by Lithel. First the Lithel lawn mower with its interchangeable batteries was shared. Then, it was explained that that same battery can power anything. Any lawn care equipment, a portable fridge, your phone, your computer, an entire product line designed around a single universal rechargeable cell. All I kept thinking was, someone finally got it! At Unveiled, we uncovered a fully autonomous mower by Lymon. Not just any autonomous lawnmower, but the toughest lawnmower you may have seen. There are videos of it succeeding with thick country grass, over rough country acreage –having lived in rural country – my jaw dropped.
There was a classic late night television commercial for a revolutionary device called The Clapper. This device is installed between a lamp or radio and the outlet then it became the boss of that device. If you clapped according to how it was programmed the light would turn on or off. A 2025 solution of course would not be to clap but to make that engineering reachable by an IoT solution. At Show Stoppers Launch It, Obniz shared their solution for making anything in your home connected. Another modernization solution spotted at Unveiled was Pixilwall. Pixilwall is an interchangeable solution that allows one to enjoy their photos in the physical world. Prefer the picture larger and to leverage multiple frames – they have the AI to manage it for you. If you would prefer a mirror on the wall to tell you your fitness data and the likes, Withings OMNIA Smart Mirror integrates with all Withings products and other leading health and fitness electronics. A Speediance Smart Home Gym with Digital Resistance shared details on their solution so you can look tone in any mirror.
Moving to the Kitchen and family room, TBW Advisors was able to set up – yes – a private press tour of the LG booth. We view this technology from the perspective of the art of possible achieved. Understanding the complexities of the sensors and solutions involved in achieving what they are describing is where the work took place! Interesting to understand by adding what technology brought what features to the customer. Think about the data being collected and shared. The first appliance was the LG Signature Range Smart Microwave that does everything including air frying. It is so sophisticated the front is a video of your food cooking as it has no window. That screen is also a general-purpose entertainment screen for TV or internet programming and has generative AI built in. That video can become your next viral hit if you like as well. Or just enjoy the video on your phone so you know how the food is doing. The intelligent full double oven has AI browning technology to make sure you cook your food perfectly. LG has taken the guesswork out of cooking. LG Dual View Fridge once again has displays on the door so no need to open the fridge to see inside. As one might expect, it can suggest what you can make for dinner as well. While in CES 2024 LG told the world about its Transparent OLED, this year you can have it in your home! LG had a stunning display celebrating their Transparent OLED’s we were able to capture for you to enjoy. Turning your home into a short-term rental? Taskbeast.ai is designed to take the stress out of short-term rental management.
Fraunhofer that specializes in audio codecs shared their exciting news regarding advances in standards. We had an exclusive briefing on the xHE ACC codec for the ultimate audio experience. We also received an in-depth briefing on the exciting MPEG-H Audio which is already live in Brazil. We were most excited to understand a viewer can turn up the volume on the dialog independently if one chooses with this new standard.
Pets are always in for a treat at CES. We were able to capture the Pookie Intelligent Pet carriers at Unveiled. This intelligent pet carrier is full of descriptors! It heats, it ventilates, it sanitizes, it deodorizes and of course carriers your pet! It is quite sophisticated use of sensors in a coherent solution with aerodynamic engineering to bring a very sophisticated high-end product to market. To turn any pet collar into a smart pet collar that monitors location, activity, and health, Queva shared their innovation to protect your dog. Prefer Anime over a pet? Unveiled brought Anime Virtual Character Live House by Sybran. This exhibit was ALWAYS crowded. Another Unveiled exhibit was the LiberLive C1 Stringless Guitar – no Nintendo required.
Some robots were meant for home. Meet the simplest and quite popular, turn your phone into robot Looia. As with anything connecting or downloading to your phone, I once again draw your attention to our cautions in the published form of this document. Loona AI is a pet robot that acts like a pet but requires no food or bio breaks. The Robot named Unit can teach a kid how to code but strategy can be found with Sense Robot. Sense Robot can play a physical game of chess with another player. It can set up the board, move its own pieces just like a human opponent completely autonomous with various levels of difficulty. This intelligent robot leverages cameras and sensors to ‘understand’ what pieces the human has moved as well.
The ultimate ecosystem for a child’s myFirst Fone S4 – kids smartwatch, GPS fitness & habit trainer was in the middle of Venetian. This extensive and mature product set provides just enough access to provide safety but nothing more. As would be expected, it integrates with any adult phone via an app. The kid’s smartwatch even has a camera to take pictures! We look forward to hoping it is quick to achieve its US Cyber Trust Mark in 2025.
BCI or Brain Computer Interface was hot at CES 2025. Enjoy the standing room only session we were able to capture. A simple attachment to the skull is making big headlines against depression. But if you thought BCI was only for medical doctors to get involved with, meet the consumer product by Cortex Machina that you can purchase today at your favorite ecommerce site! The importance of sleep for the functioning of one’s brain and body as a whole was emphasized in the Press Conference by the National Sleep Foundation captured in its entirety. Capturing your brainwaves while in a deep sleep and playing them back to you, we once again ran into MyWaves at Unveiled where they shared their new evening device. Want to improve your memory? Meet the generative AI interactive game to improve your memory by Monoxer. Undergoing evaluation for acceptable medical treatment certifications across the globe, keep your eyes on NeuDive. Neudive is a 6-week program that trains autistic patients, particular children, on social interactions. Of course if someone in your life suffers from the issue of dementia, Jennie the fully autonomous Dog for those Dementia is a worthy consideration to evaluate. Moving from the brain to the Vagus Nerve stimulation, Zenowell’s solution is meant to bring Zen into your life.
Non-invasive was also the healthcare word of CES. Unveiled brought us both needle free injections from Flowbeams to non-invasive glucose monitoring by Apollon. Global, universal, and rural healthcare requires innovation. Unveiled brought us cervical cancer screening with the convenience of a cell phone greatly increasing accessibility due to its leveraging of AI. Even blood pressure monitor cuffs got an upgrade from Withings. The variable cuffs and built in intelligence for Withings BPM Vision may not catch your eye during a quick walk by the exhibit, but to the user the of the device, it will make all the difference. Withings also offers an at in app service that compliments their devices called Cardio Checkup. The Cardio Check Up app includes 3 meetings with a cardiologist every year. Can’t get to the eye doctor? Showstoppers Launch it brought you Elcyo universal eyeglasses. We also witness the unveiling of the smart thermometer and camera enabling remote diagnostics by Otiton. The ultimate telemedicine solution enabling rural healthcare was revealed at a detailed press conference by OnMed. Admittedly these innovations bring me back to the days I founded Patient Forward, unfortunately 10 years too early.
Two final health care innovations to share. First the automated pharmaceutical tech by Camelotech which can also be leveraged for supplements. Last and very exciting is MEDIAPLUS, Inc. who brought AI to tackle the bottlenecks in the clinical trail process. In this case, AI was leveraged to modernize how trails are set up and the data is managed. In fact, MEDIAPLUS, Inc. has the World’s largest clinical trial information set – even larger than the NIH!
Confused where you should open a store? The wrong corner of the right intersection can make all the difference. To solve this problem, Showstoppers Launch It brought you unerry. Using a data centric solution, unerry takes the guess work out of finding that perfect location for retail. At that same event, the question for those who must find out the owner of off the market property was answered. Where has all the data you need to track that hard-to-find contact to keep your project moving forward. The next Showstopper is something fast food lovers are hoping is coming to a location near them. VOX AI spoke to us about their AI drive through technology that understands the customers in 90 languages and automatically orders the correct food.
Money 20/20 USA 2024 was held at the Venetian and boasted over 10,000 attendees from over 90 countries with 80% of attendees coming from the USA. The over 400 speakers and 300 exhibits were captured by TBW Advisors with over 340 minutes of video captured and posted. As the place where money does business, the event brings together the ecosystem of money spanning banks payments tech startups, and capital market. AI everywhere, cross bank collaboration and cross geography collaboration along with fighting fraud were the key themes throughout.
Highlights
AI everywhere with particular focus on fight fraud along with cross bank and cross-border collaboration was discussed throughout the keynotes and the exhibits.
Cautions
As with all new AI technology use cases, it is critical to verify the quality of the data used in training the models and identify any inherent biases. The desire is to increase accessibility of the fintech market as opposed to further facilitating biases and disenfranchisement.
After more than 340 minutes of taping, 29 videos, a few hundred shorts forthcoming, and over 50 fact checks, our coverage of the Money 20/20 USA 2024 closes. Money 20/20 USA had over 10,000 attendees, 400 speakers, and 300 exhibits full of vendors from around the world*. Nonetheless, there were no lines at registration to pick up one’s badge. An exciting note was shared during the press briefing that 47% of speakers were women in 2024 up from 11% in 2023. The conference provided a full breakfast for all attendees as well as some smaller stations with continental breakfast. If that wasn’t enough food, have no fear a full lunch was also available to all attendees right in the exhibit hall as well. Speakers graced one of 6 stages with a fan favorite being the Sentient stage featuring Money 20/20’s custom sentient robot, Aiana-live.
No matter where in the world one resides, your life is impacted by fintech. Some experience significant inconveniences such as sending digital money to relatives across the globe only for those relatives to receive physical money. Cross border payments maintaining digital banking convenience was one of the examples shared in the distinguished panel on creating a new language for cross-border payments. This panel featured Ryan Zagone from Wise who presented his company’s solution. Other panelists included leaders from TBD – a block company, Bankaya and Vansary. A key to achieving customer desired functionality is continual modernization of payment platforms beyond migrating to the cloud. This panel included leaders from Wise, Bank of America, Deloitte, and Amazon. A session on Navigating the journey to the cloud featured leaders from Featurespace, AWS and T-Sys. The focus of this session was the need for collaboration amongst partners for the benefit of the customers. One part of the ecosystem cannot go to the cloud if critical components they depend on remain on premise. The migration journey is never truly completed. To ensure your product has solid APIs to easily integrate with the rest of the market, APImatic shared their product on the expo floor. APIMatic increases adoption by leveraging automation to ensure you complete the journey to usable APIs.
One key ingredient every business requires is customers! The panel, “Small is the next big thing” emphasized the sheer magnitude of opportunity by serving small businesses which make up 44% of the US GDP. This panel featured leaders from Co-created, Penelope, and SMB Franchise Advisors. The emphasis was to encourage the creation of a one-stop shop, a single pane solution for all one’s financial needs for the SMB space. One method to extend the reach to additional customers includes embedded payments and private capital to expand the consumer credit space. A panel on this topic featured leaders from Jeffries, Milken Institute, Citi and Pagaya. The session emphasized the need for new risk rating models for those not currently served by the sector. In this regard, an AI risk decision engine for financial services by Bordo.ai was displayed in the expo hall.
Once you have your customers, you want them to have an amazing experience. To facilitate a unified view of all customer activities on your platform, Mixpanel was one of the vendors on hand demonstrating their capabilities. This product along with the talk on hyper-personalization in the age of AI reminded us of our coverage of the Adobe Summit. If this is a passion area be sure to review this research as well as enjoy its related playlist.
Expanding on the hyper-personalization to serve customers, a fireside chat featured Fortune reporter Luisa Beltran interviewing PayPal’s Frank Keller. Titled, AI + Trust, the question of when too personalization becomes a creepy user experience was discussed. The one where you have a conversation on the phone then suddenly your computer has an advertisement for such a product. Part of the challenge with the trust question arises because the bad guys are organized, collaborate, and share information but the good guys do not. As discussed in the session “Fighting Fraud in an AI First World’, until the good teams collaborate, the issue will remain. This exciting panel featured leaders from Google, Mostly AI, BNY and Swift. This point was also emphasized in How AI Innovation Influences Trust and Safety panel. This panel featured leaders from JP Morgan, Walmart, Trulioo, and OpenAI. A key takeaway included that AI plus humans is creating new capabilities to try to counterbalance the aggressive progressive of the fraudsters leveraging AI in a coordinated fashion.
Trust is a two-way street. For financial institutions attempting to establish trust with their customers, they may wish to leverage Inscribe.AI. This platform reviews all documents turned in by customers for signs of fraud leveraging generative AI. Maintaining compliance can also assist with maintaining trust. A highly automated intelligent solution for achieving compliance that is traceable, explainable, and auditable by Trisotech was on exhibit. As anyone who has played with early consumer editions of generative AI knows, true value of generative AI is not just the answer but understanding the why behind the generated answer. If, however, your organization is interested in leveraging behavioural AI to prevent fraud, Futurespace may be one of the products for your organization to evaluate.
Nothing loses a customer’s trust like compromising their privacy and their data. Sometimes, no matter the steps taken, a company accidently leaves a backdoor open or misconfigures their environment compromising customer trust. Have no fear, Packetlabs and their white hats are here to offer their services. Remember: it is always better to hire white hats to find your security issues instead of finding out on the front page of the news.
Finally, one of the more critical aspects of trust according to SEC Chair, Glen Gensler is the whistleblower program. This was one of the many topics discussed in this fireside chat.
We had a flashback to our coverage at Identiverse, as one might expect at any conference in a highly regulated space. The expo hall had some identity solutions on display. A true global identity solution can be difficult to find but Shufti shared their solution. Available across 240 countries validating over 10,000 document types with outcomes in over 150 languages, Shufti is based out of London.
Another identity problem arises in Fintech around the use of credit cards. Is the person using the card really the person we issued the card to? Prove shared their solution that enables you to prove it is really you with only one small line added to the magnetic strip. Prove interestingly leverages the technology within smartphones today to enable the credit card to be a key. With a tap of your credit card to the phone, the phone can let the company know if it is really the card holder holding the official card making the charge.
While very little of the conference did not involve AI, a key concern within Fintech involves using public models with their highly regulated data. Glean shared their product that consumes all your internal data to create a customer LLM for your organization. If your emphasis is one producing customer facing content from your own data, then Writer that leverages generative AI over your own data may be something to explore.
One of the more creative talks on Generative AI was titled, “Killer GENAI Cake”. Emphasizing the parallels to how baking powder created new use cases for baking, GENAI will expedite fintech and related user experiences to the next level. Featuring leaders from Microsoft, iGenius, Growfin and Citizens. Questions addressed by this panel included what use cases could materialize in 2025 and beyond?
Next year’s Money 20/20 USA will be once again held at the Sands Convention Center on October 26-29, 2025.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
Analyst(s) and Photojournalist: Doreen Galli, PhD MBA
ABSTRACT
After 400 minutes of filming, 30 videos, countless shorts and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Smart Retail Tech Expo 2024 closes. Smart Retail Tech Expo is part of 5 conferences held at once at the same time and place: White Label, Retail, Supply Chain and Logistics Expo, Smart Retail Tech, Ecommerce Packaging and Labelling and Com Business Live. It was held in Las Vegas from May 8 to May 9 at the South Lower Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). The event featured 5 theaters with each featuring 4-5 talks each day for a total of 47 keynote sessions. With discussion on distribution and logistics and vendors for every step of the journey, one could launch a new business with the contacts from this event alone.
After 2 days of filming some 400 minutes of content, 30 videos with endless shorts coming and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Smart Retail Tech Expo closes. The event is five events held at once all together. White Label, Retail, Supply chain and Logistics Expo, Smart Retail Tech, E-Commerce Packaging and Labelling and Com Business Live. With row after row of exhibits*, the event was made whole by the balanced combination of talks and exhibits. Even better, there was 15 minutes in between the talks so one could catch the exhibits. Furthermore, all theaters schedules were once again aligned in the event you wanted to switch theaters as well.
The short two-day event packs a punch with 5 keynote theatres each featuring 4 or 5 talks a day for a whopping 47 sessions. The first day was supposed to be capped off by a presentation Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy but it was cancelled purportedly due to security concerns. We captured 30 videos that will result in a lot of great shorts so be sure to save the entire playlist of videos for Conference Whispers: Smart Retail Tech Expo. We were able to capture the walkabout of the entire conference right at the conference’s grand opening. If you are wondering what was to eat at the show, we have you covered with video of the food lines and menus.
The keynotes at this smaller event were quite impressive and featured talks from Google, AWS, Home Depot, Lenova, and ASCM (Association of Supply Chain Management) to name a few. Douglas Kent of ASCM (Association of Supply Chain Management) shared top supply chain trends during his keynote. Jesus Sanchez from Google show the many ways in which you can put Google AI to work for you for your retail solution. It is all about optimizing marketing expenses. He also shared the interesting statistic that 15% of all searches are unique. Amazon’s Justin Honaman shared the many ways AWS Gen AI is being leveraged for innovation in retail and CPG. Phil Pench of DHL ecommerce shared an interesting talk with the list of options for the end of the supply chain particularly for those importing goods.
Home Depot’s Paul Ganz shared the ripple effect of failing a customer. He reminded all that you only get one chance to take care of your customer. That once the customer bought the product, you are handling their item – not yours and it should be treated as such. Chewy’s Debarati Das gave a detailed talk highlighting the complexities of inventory management in the context of the corporate goals and customer satisfaction requirements. There were many people waiting to speak with this speaker following the talk. Kevin Lawton of @thenewwarehouse examined the question of doing fulfillment from the retail location versus a warehouse. Admittedly, this talk reminded me of a patent I was awarded as an IBM Engineer on this exact topic in the heart of the dot com era.
While many of the exhibits focused on the White Label portion of the show were captured in the walkabout, there was no technology for us to cover. Nonetheless, we discovered quite a bit of tech to capture. If you need to make a professional video to sell your wares or any other services in getting your product to market, newegg was on display with media, sellingpilot, and marketplace. If you are not sure about the size of the object you are selling, vMeasure was on site. vMeasure leverages cameras, sensors and scales with some great AI /ML models to provide the size of the object.
If one is selling something in a store, are instead display, Retail Media Management was there to share their digital signs and smart retail tags. One only needs to change the price online, and all price tags will automatically update. They are reported to have a 5-year battery life. Admittedly, we know days of batteries in such electronics is limited as glass can now capture energy from thin air as seen in our coverage at CES. Another digital sign company, Hongzhou had a smart menu kiosk on exhibit. This kiosk not only takes the order and payment but coordinates the order to the kitchen staff. Limited staff but want to open a pizza joint? Pzza has an automated solution to make commercial pizzas that only requires one employee to run the shop. This exhibit gave us flashbacks to the automatic stir fry tech we saw at CES, Techmagic. If you would like to bring home the bacon instead of serving it, Bacon Tech was on site with their staffing and employee management mobile application. If your retail business involves CBD, Argyle Payments was on hand to help you with your banking needs.
To secure a retail space, many require video surveillance. LVT remote surveillance with their solar panel powered solution complete with simple intelligence was on the floor. This intelligence is leverages to identify objects in the video and notify as appropriate. Is your business is looking for warehouse space AND will create 10 jobs or more? Global Site Location Industries collaborates with municipalities around the country. This collaboration allows Global Site Location Industries to offer their assistance for free.
If you warehouse scanners or other mobile technology is missing or you need an extra, ASR Tech was on site and can fix anything. If simply cannot find your products in your warehouse or want to monitor them through the supply chain, Lyngsoe Systems passive RFID has a solution for you. RFID has come a long way with stickers at just .05 each. We also heard about Cirro Fulfillment’s Smart robots as they were to enhance the supply chain. SRSI shared their automated storage and retrieval technology available in all 50 states. In fact, SRSI handles all technology available within the 4 walls of the warehouse. Goods was on display to remind you to focus on your business with their integrated solution handling inventory management, order management, and warehouse management.
As a conference about logistics, there were many logistics companies! Fellowship logistics shared that they can reach 99% of the US in 2 days and 75% in 1 day. Meanwhile, ExFreight was sharing that they provide 100% online capabilities for their entire service logistics offering to 175 countries. C&C logistics serves all continental US and Mexico and can move anything from a single pallet to an entire warehouse.
There were vendors on display with technology for every aspect of your retail business. Shopline intelligent offered a unified commerce platform. There was also a solution called iVision to automate customer loyalty. Admittedly, both solutions intelligence is not yet fully realized compared to many of the technologies analyzed at the Adobe Summit or even Fintech Meetup.
Smart Retail Tech Expo comes to Las Vegas every year. The next Smart Retail Tech Expo will occur April 16 and 17th, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
After 85 flights of stairs, ~40,000 steps, 12 Vegas loops trips, and over 40 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 NAB Show, National Association of Broadcasters Show, ends. NAB Show was held in Las Vegas from April 13-17. It is the premier event for content professionals in the broadcast, media, and entertainment ecosystem seeking to create superior and innovative audio and video experiences. The conference featured over700,000 net square feet of exhibits, nearly 1300 exhibitors, 750 educational courses and sessions, and over 61,000+ attendees from an amazing 163 countries. Attendees witnessed endless examples of cloud enabled remote production, early implementations of generative AI, and discussions on sustainability in production and technical security for remote live production.
The Conference
The first NAB Show was held October 11, 1923, in New York City at the Commodore Hotel. There were 16 radio stations represented among the 23 attendees. NAB Show moved to Las Vegas in 1991.
NAB Show was held April 13-17, 2024, in Las Vegas. The event featured over 61,000 attendees. Within those attendees 27% were international attendees from an amazing 163 countries represented.
The exhibitions featured nearly 1300 exhibitors in over 700,000 net square feet of exhibits a 30% gain over 2023.
Attendees at NABShow held titles such as Production Director, Production Editor, Production Engineer, Broadcast and Network Engineer, Logistics Manager, Electrical Engineer, Sound and Video Engineer, Director of Product Management, Technical Architect, and data scientist.
After 85 flights of stairs and 40,000 steps, and 12 Vegas loops trip, our coverage of the 2024 NAB Show produced by National Association of Broadcasters, ends. NAB Show 2024 exhibitions surpassed last year’s by nearly 30% with 700,000 square feet in all. Attendance came in at 61,000 attendees with 27% coming from international destinations. NABPAC contributors were recognized in the West Hall. The conference leveraged the entire indoor conference exhibit spaces in the West Hall, Central Hall, South Upper and South Lower and a few rooms in North Halls. A majority of North Hall was under construction. Fortunately, the Vegas Loop was running with free rides so one needed not walk the entire distance. We took advantage of the loop no less than a dozen times. When asked attendees reported meeting their business objectives and described it as really good. Once again – the quality of attendees itself was mentioned by the exhibitors. Our entire playlist of video research for NAB Show is available online at our YouTube Channel.
With over 200 exhibitions and over 150 sessions on AI, generative AI was once again the star of the show. Amid the buzz about AI and generative AI transforming broadcasting, one question was on the mind of video engineers – “Will it affect our jobs?”. Luisa Winters had an answer in her keynote. If you are adapting and using the new technologies, you will be fine. No different from the move from tapes. More importantly, you will not only be able to deliver something acceptable but have time to make it great! Another keynote emphasized the importance of great metadata for your assets if you want to fully leverage generative AI solutions in sports coverage. As one might expect, there were countless examples* of tools for production and distribution and each of the tasks involved. Pixellot was on hand with their exciting deep learning automated sports tracking leveraged for streaming sports. Their solution leveraging their state-of-the-art cameras and patented technology that stitches it all together. As would be expected, each sport has its own model. In fact, they had over 10,000 live events streaming as I conducted the interview. Pixellot also includes capabilities for monetizing said sports streams.
One keynote provided a demo of Adobe Premier Pro, something we didn’t recall seeing at Adobe Summit.Backlight showcased their extensive collection of products for media content creation and distribution. Backlight’s solution leverages AI and generative AI to simplify media workflows. Backlight allows horizontal and vertical video distribution. Backlight leverages their own AI and LLM models to transcribe the video/audio. That transcription is then used to quickly generate all the metadata to put on social media. They leverage automation to automate the creation of sports highlight clips out to social media by registering all key moments as the game plays. Finally, their solution also enables monetization.
Amazon and AWS were at NAB Show in full force. A huge display was on hand where they shared their entire Generative AI stack with those looking to develop solutions. Experts were on hand if you had any questions including seeking insights on Amazon Bedrock. In the Microsoft pavilion, SymphonyAI was there as part of the beet the buzzer architecture that enables viewers to play along with game shows. Microsoft offered a Pilot demonstration of AI enabled marketing.
Transcription and translation are a big area for generative AI in broadcasting and media, sometimes referred to as localization. This topic was featured in a keynote as well as in exhibits. Microsoft featured their solution based on Open AI. TRINT featured their text to speech solution adopted across the industry. One exciting development is the ability to do full motion capture without putting on a special suit due to generative AI! In fact, Zerospace Captury was on exhibit sharing their solution. Interestingly, the room only requires about 15 minutes to set up the space to capture motion.
With all of the generative content capabilities shown, stopping misinformation and deepfakes was a very popular topic featured in a keynote. The solution involves knowledge of the content frequently communicated through metadata. To that end, Hand (Human & Digital) shared their solution for identity intelligence for notable talent.
Leveraging capabilities of 5g, XGN featured their solution that enables users to connect direct to mobile to send content from the field – no SIM card required! Cobalt Digital shared their extensive collection of open gear based on 2110, 12G and ultra-low latency. Their gear also supports Rest APIs. Cobalt Digital featured routers, control panels, and multi-viewers for video and audio processing. As might be expected with the continual increased resolution, a new video compression standard is being rolled out and is already rolled out in Brazil, LCEVC. In the LCEVC showcase, all the providers with their next generation of tech leveraging LCEVC were on display. Ateme also focuses on compression – for the purpose of technologies such as the Apple Vision Pro which they showed off in the exhibition. Once you created all your content, if you wanted to manage the programming data so it is accurate in every tv program listing, Titan TV shared their solution. If you wanted to optimize the way in which you manage ad campaigns, Showseeker shared their solution to simplify advertising scheduling.
For those requiring the ability to manage the labor and payroll for that remote labor, Procrewz shared their solution. If keeping track of and on top of all the compliance requirements for broadcast and streaming is your challenge, Vela exhibited their product.
NAB Show also featured technology and solutions to support the creator economy. In Vimeo’s session they stated that one can expect 2% of free YouTube subscribers to convert to a paid subscriber on Vimeo. For those wishing to participate in a reality show about making creators or leverage it for advertising, the team from the TV show Follow Me had a lively panel. The central Main Stage featured an interview with Jennifer Hudson. During the interview Jennifer told the audience that she is always cheering for everyone. A great session on diversity in broadcasting featured the Las Vegas Aces Alysha Clark who majored in broadcasting during her college career. Alysha Clark made the great point to all that inclusion means opening prime spots to diversity be it tv slots or board and executive spots in corporate America.
NAB Show is held every year in Las Vegas since 1991. The next NAB Show will occur April 5-9, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
This Whisper Study demonstrates two “lift and shift” as organizations migrate their enterprise data warehouses to the cloud. The first is a “lift and shift” from Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse on-premise to Teradata Vantage deployed in Amazon Web Service (AWS) leveraging the Teradata Everywhere license. The second is an update to near real-time product data on the web followed by a “lift and shift” from ETL jobs into Exadata to IPaaS integration storing in Amazon Redshift.
The Studies
Bayer Crop Science EDW Migration to the Cloud
Scenario: Enterprise data warehouse migration to the cloud
Start State: Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse on premise
When transferring large amounts of data, such as during a lift and shift, be sure to check your network packet size. Using a default packet size involves significant overhead creating network latency.
Leverage IPaaS to make up for the differences between on-premise data warehouses with integrity checks and a cloud data warehouse without integrity checks. IPaaS can also accommodate data format differences.
IPaaS templates with dynamic binding in the new world can make up for years of ETL jobs burdening older data architectures.
Organizations are regularly considering migrating to the cloud, which raises the question: how difficult is it to migrate an organization’s enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to the cloud? This Whisper Study examines how two organizations succeeded in this task that often seems insurmountable. The first case remains with the same data vendor after the cloud migration. The second case utilizes a different vendor on the cloud from on premise and follows a near real-time update of quality product information to the web application, which is also discussed.
Bayer Crop Science was migrating its data warehouse to another location when they were approached to use Teradata Everywhere1 to migrate to the cloud. Teradata Everywhere is an approach that allows users the flexibility of leveraging the license on premise or in a cloud. At that point, Bayer Crop Science decided to go ahead and “lift and shift” data from the enterprise that was on premise in a Teradata appliance to Teradata Vantage on AWS, as depicted in Figure 1.
When the Teradata appliance was first stood up at Bayer Crop Science, it was directly connected to their ERP system. It operated near real time and included all major enterprise data from order processing to finance. Regions had their own data warehouse and data marts. Global functions leveraged the Teradata appliance since all data was already present in the appliance.
Bayer Crop Science planned to move the data in three phases. The first phase involved testing how the other two phases were going to be executed. The test had to be successful before they attempted to move development and testing environments’ data. Only after a successful test move and development move did they attempt to migrate production data.
The first hurdle was to execute a successful test data move to the cloud. The following approaches were made:
Amazon Import/Export Service2: This is a service provided by Amazon to assist clients in shipping their data to the cloud. Once received, the turn-around time to install the data is over 24 hours in addition to the transport time. Unfortunately, the ability to be down for several days was not an option. In addition, the data import did not check for errors, leaving the data unusable without extensive work.
Teradata Backup and Recovery (BAR)3: Backup and recovery is a common capability. It enables a system to quickly change from one copy of the data to another. As it is used for recovery from disasters, the second or back-up copy of the data is frequently at a different location in case the disaster was location based. Most organizations’ business continuity requires this capability to be somewhat seamless and regularly tested. This solution appeared to be straightforward until network latency issues were found while moving the data.
When transferring data over the network, it is easy to monitor the amount of data being transferred. Unfortunately, in the early test moves, data did not seem to be flowing. Instead, Bayer Crop Science experienced significant latency in the actual data coming across the network. This problem stumped the entire team for a couple of months. The team searched high and low to try to understand why the desired data wasn’t flowing to the cloud!
The problem causing network latency turned out to be the default TCP/IP packet size. Each packet has a header and footer with routing information and other overhead information to ensure the packet makes it to the destination. The payload is the portion where the data you are trying to transfer is put within each packet. Unfortunately, by using the default packet size, too much room was taken up in the overhead of the packet instead of the payload. By not enlarging the payload size in the packet, too high a percentage of the transferred data was the overhead vs the payload. Figure 2 depicts an example of the variable payload size within a packet. The payload can be increased up to the maximum segment size4.
With the data latency issue solved, the team verified the test move. With the success of the test data move, the team moved onto Phase 2: migrating the development environment. Success again. For the third phase, they told BAR to back up their production Teradata appliance to AWS. The team then kept track of all changes since the backups were created in AWS. These final changes were the only remaining updates required in order to officially have a full data set on AWS and were migrated over the weekend. It is valuable to note that a back-up copy of the logged changes was made prior to using the logs to update the AWS data version. Once the final changes were migrated to AWS, the switch was flipped to move the system to their backups. In this scenario, the backups on AWS were the new primary home. The cloud migration was complete.
Since the migration, the corporation was bought and changed its name to the form in this document. The acquirer was 100 percent on premise, and as such, the environment is now technically hybrid. The team plans on leveraging the success from their cloud migration to evolve their new enterprise.
The second study involves a large retailer outside of North America that had the general business problem of being unable to update their full product catalog online for e-commerce. If a sweater only has two colors available for any size, the e-commerce site should never show all colors that were once available, only the current colors and sizes. Their solution was not real time as the website was not able to directly connect to the product information and provide complete, accurate, near real-time information. Instead, a highly manual process involving spreadsheets was used to get product information to the web application platform. Of course, once they updated their systems to real time, they desired near real-time analytics. As you might imagine, not only did their web application lack near real-time data, their data warehouse was also not in real time. Generally, it was an old-fashioned data architecture. The desire was to modernize, enable the e-commerce platform to become real time, and then transition the warehouse to near real time as well.
In the beginning, the web application lacked the ability to reflect current inventory levels, and the data was not fresh and accurate. In addition, the e-commerce site only represented a very small portion of their product portfolio – well below 25% of all potential products. They had a strong suspicion that representing their entire product line with near real-time data on their e-commerce site would result in revenue increases. In the beginning, the process for loading information to the web application was fundamentally manual involving a lot of Excel, as represented in Figure 3.
Of course, if it were easy to connect the ERP system to the web application directly, they would have likely already integrated the two systems. The first stop was to leverage Informatica’s Product Information Management Solution (PIM5) which is tailor-made to clean up your view of your product data by creating master data management (MDM) for your product data. As with most migrations and upgrades, there is always a surprise or two. In this scenario, once they had MDM, they realized that not all data sets used the same time standard, in addition to other data quality issues. By leveraging Informatica Data Quality (IDQ6), this problem was quickly and permanently solved. More important, within a quarter, they were able to successfully represent accurate inventory for 60% of their product portfolio. They were able to reach 100% online within one year of the project. The new solution is represented in Figure 4.
Now that their e-commerce site represented their entire product portfolio with accurate real-time information, the business desired a near real-time enterprise data warehouse for near real-time analytic insights to match. The largest difficulty was estimating how much work everything was actually going to take to accomplish the migration. Their existing data warehouse was an Exadata, on-premise warehouse they started creating 10 years ago. Like most data warehouses, their ETL developers were busy constantly adding new data combinations to the warehouse for the business.
The challenge was how to capture and reflect all these ETL jobs that took 10 years to create.
To address the differences and accomplish the migration with all ETL jobs represented without spending 10 years on the task, the team decided to leverage Informatica’s IPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) solution, known as Informatica’s Intelligent Cloud Services (IICS7). Next, they leveraged IPaaS templates to represent the ETL jobs. These templates enable dynamic binding of specific jobs to the templates. Thus, the templates were simply called with the data set needing that template’s represented data transformation. Now, a single template could represent a thousand different ETL jobs from the old data warehouse. In addition, the use of IICS allowed the IT team to confirm success when data was transferred, as data integrity was not provided by Amazon Redshift.
To accomplish the lift and shift, each data source was first connected to the IPaaS platform. Next, the dynamic binding of the templates was used to create the new data warehouse for those data sets. In the beginning, they prototyped and tested a single topic over 45 days. The new solution was in the cloud and provided a continuous flow of data, thus enabling near real-time analytics. Not a single data model had to change. The new EDW being tested in the cloud ran concurrently with the on-premise, soon-to-be-retired EDW. This gave the business and IT time to verify the plan was working, and the new EDW was as expected.
After the first successful topic was in the new data warehouse, it took the team another five months to finish the “lift and shift.” No redesign of data models was required. In order to efficiently accomplish the “lift and shift,” multiple IPaaS accounts were leveraged, providing additional bandwidth for the project.
