The use of robots to eliminate mundane and repetitive tasks is helping retailers to cut costs without compromising service quality.

According to GlobalData, the recent Optus deals with Origin and Sumo mean that communications services are on their way to becoming a utility.

Alibaba Cloud has almost 50% of the infrastructure-as-a-service market share in China and its annual revenue grew 101% in FY18.

The global smart meter market is riding a wave of popularity as issues such as energy use, aging infrastructure and rising emissions take their toll on traditional systems.

Software-defined networking may be key to tackling security concerns about ever-increasing amounts of data in the enterprise space, says GlobalData.

GlobalData technology analyst Siow Meng Soh offers his view on opportunities and challenges to the parties involved in the TPG-VHA merger.

"The potential privacy implications which come with the advent of IoT are too alarming to ignore."

GlobalData service director Brad Shimmin’s view on recent research on a global shift toward IT spending on AI, big data and IoT.

Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle joined forces, pledging to speed up the progress of health data standards and interoperability.

Alternative payments have overtaken traditional methods in the e-commerce market, including accounting for one-third of total payments in Australia.

While cybersecurity has now become a critical business function, it remains a non-core competence for a significant number of boards.

"Among the various enterprise network and communications, budget allocation upside is mainly in SD-WAN and network services.”

Retailers including Amazon, Alibaba, Lowe’s and Tesco are developing their own AI solutions for automation, analytics and robotics.

This includes implementing in-store technologies such as self-checkout counters, scan and pay mobile applications and unmanned stores.

AR and VR technologies are reshaping the retail landscape by improving customer experience both in-store and online.

GlobalData believes that it’s still early days for the LPWAN era, despite an increased uptake as mobile operators increasingly offer IoT connectivity.

If companies fail to make artificial intelligence a core competency within the next five years, they will face either stagnation or elimination.

"How this technology will be used and potentially adopted at scale will drive the required infrastructure investment."

While blockchain technology will have lost much of its gloss by 2025, it will have found its way into the heart of many key business processes.

GlobalData says AI is way ahead of other disruptive technologies in terms of influencer mentions with over 25% share of overall discussions.

More than 330 million Twitter users are being urged to change their passwords after an internal system glitch caused the passwords to be exposed.

GlobalData has released commentary reporting Amazon's days at the top of the cloud market could be numbered unless it makes some changes.

Forget the hype, the road to full 5G coverage is going to be a little longer than vendors and service providers have promised.

The new landscape could be a problem for service providers. However, it could be a boon if telcos can situate themselves at the centre of services.