BLUESCOPE’S ASEAN AWARD TO HONOUR REGIONAL EXCELLENCE IN STEEL ARCHITECTURE

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 (Bernama) -- NS BlueScope announced the 2024 BlueScope Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN is now open to projects harnessing the company’s steel in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Entrants are accepted in Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Institutional building sectors, while there is an additional category of ‘Long Lasting Beauty of COLORBOND’ which celebrates projects that have used BlueScope’s COLORBOND steel to weather all conditions to maintain their beauty and strength.

NS BlueScope Chief Executive, Connell Zhang said the company aimed to create and inspire smart solutions in steel, and its new awards programme is a great opportunity to showcase some of the very best architectural projects in this region.

“As well as setting industry benchmarks and promoting best practice, these awards are a great way to encourage knowledge sharing and support our vibrant ASEAN architect community.

“As the industry leader in premium coated and painted steel, BlueScope is in a unique position to support the architectural community in bringing their dream designs to life,” he said in a statement.

The 2024 BlueScope Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN are backed by several respected organisations, including The Association of Siamese Architects under Royal Patronage; Ikatan Arsitek Indonesia; the University of Architecture Ho Chi Minh City; the Australian Chamber of Commerce Singapore; and Malaysia’s ACG Media Group.

Award entries will be judged on their Design Excellence, Innovation and Sustainability, whereby judges will assess multiple areas of building design, from aesthetic merit to functionality and efficiency, among others.

Judging for the ASEAN Award winners takes place in October, with the winners announced in November.

-- BERNAMA

FreedomPay-Stripe Partnership To Facilitate Businesses Unify Commerce

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 (Bernama) -- FreedomPay, an innovative leader in Next Level Commerce technologies has partnered Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, to make it easier for enterprises to unify commerce.

According to FreedomPay, the partnership makes it possible for virtually any enterprise to use Stripe for online and in-person payments alongside their existing commerce tools.

“Many of the largest businesses in the world already use FreedomPay and they have been telling us they would love to see Stripe join our growing ecosystem of connectivity.

“We are excited that our merchants can now modernise their systems and grow their revenue with Stripe,” said FreedomPay President, Chris Kronenthal in a statement.

FreedomPay aggregates hundreds of different point of sale (POS) systems and dozens of payment devices and commerce integrations onto a single platform.

Meanwhile, Stripe helps businesses process payments online and in person; offers advanced fraud protection powered by machine learning; optimises authorisation requests for issuers to boost revenue; and maintains industry-leading reliability.

Together, FreedomPay and Stripe will provide enterprises with flexibility and modularity, the ability to add Stripe to an existing set of commerce tools, without requiring significant development resources.

With this partnership, enterprises including hotels, retailers, and food & beverage providers, can now take advantage of Stripe’s platform, including those that already use FreedomPay.

Furthermore, in one place, they will be able to manage payments, loyalty programmes, and customer analytics, among others.

-- BERNAMA

H2O.AI PARTNERS SINGTEL’S DIGITAL INFRACO TO DELIVER GENAI-AS-A-SERVICE

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 (Bernama) -- H2O.ai, the leader in open-source generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has announced a strategic partnership with Singtel’s Digital InfraCo to bring GenAI-as-a-Service (GenAIaaS) to organisations across Asia Pacific (APAC).

This partnership brings together H2O.ai's best-in-class GenAI and Predictive AI with Singtel AI cloud’s powerful and secure graphics processing unit (GPU) infrastructure to deliver a sovereign GenAI platform for private and public sector organisations with strict data protection needs.

“With our open source community, partnership ecosystem and unique mindset of co-creation with customers we are transforming large banks, telcos and public sector by leveraging their data, upskilling their people, and building custom GenAI and Predictive AI for solving problems and bettering life of citizens globally,” said H2O.ai Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sri Ambati in a statement.

Meanwhile, Singtel Digital InfraCo CEO, Bill Chang said: “As organisations move toward AI-driven solutions, our partnership with H2O.ai ensures that they have access to state-of-the-art GenAI solutions developed on RE:AI’s cloud platform.

“Together, we are enabling businesses to innovate faster, enhance customer experiences, and optimise internal operations with the power of AI.”

H2O.ai GenAI software suite will be integrated with Singtel’s Paragon platform that powers Singtel AI Cloud, to enable customers to reduce time to develop and deploy AI use cases with optimal total cost of ownership (TCO).

An existing customer of H2O.ai, Singtel is expanding to offer H2O.ai full stack AI service to be integrated with Singtel Paragon platform to offer an “AI as a service” offering on Singtel GPU cloud.

The unified AI as a service solution that bundles the needed GPU infrastructure will offer customers a cost-efficient full stack AI platform for GenAI and Predictive AI to address a wide range of robust Document AI business use cases.

This collaboration between H2O.ai and Digital InfraCo marks a major step forward in bringing secure, scalable GenAIaaS to organisations across APAC while ensuring data sovereignty and compliance.

-- BERNAMA

ice’s Network Slicing For Norwegian Armed Forces Powered By Mavenir 5G Core

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 8 (Bernama) -- Mavenir, the cloud-native network infrastructure provider building the future of networks, has delivered the full 5G core network for ice to enable a network slicing service.

Norway’s third largest mobile operator, ice, is utilising its new 5G standalone (SA) network to provide a dedicated network slice for the Norwegian Armed Forces, designed to deliver the specific service levels required by military communications.

Essentially an isolated network-within-a-network, the Armed Forces will have exclusive use and control over their slice nationwide. It will be able to establish secure end-to-end communications across the network.

Mavenir President of Core Networks, Ashok Khuntia said the flexibility of network slicing powered by 5G is a game-changer for mobile operators.

“We are enabling 5G use cases in practice, proving that the long-promised monetisation of 5G is a reality. With security, reliability and low latency, 5G is a massive opportunity for the industry,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, ice Vice President Service Delivery Platforms, Tore Kristoffersen said: “This deployment of network slicing is realising the true value of 5G. We now have myriad possible new business cases to present to our enterprise customers, which can be tailored to precise service level agreements, ensuring the best and most cost-effective use of resources.

“We are also testing solutions for use in Public Safety services, highlighting the value of 5G and its network slicing capabilities for secure critical communications.”

Mavenir’s 5G mobile core is designed ready for network operators to enable network slicing for providing disruptive services to business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C) or public organisations. 

Dedicated network slices can be designed to meet specified needs and applications, quickly and easily deployed and managed, and used to deliver new and innovative services and applications.

Mavenir’s cloud-native 5G SA network is fully containerised, runs on any cloud service and designed with a microservices approach, giving the flexibility to address evolving customer needs in a scalable way.

-- BERNAMA

MYTHERESA TO ACQUIRE YNAP FROM RICHEMONT

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 7 (Bernama) -- MYT Netherlands Parent B.V. (Mytheresa) and Richemont announced they have entered into binding agreements for the acquisition of 100 per cent of the share capital of YOOX Net-a-Porter (YNAP) by Mytheresa.

At transaction closing, Richemont will sell YNAP to Mytheresa with a cash position of 555 million euros and no financial debt, subject to customary closing adjustments, in exchange for shares to be issued by Mytheresa representing 33 per cent of its fully diluted share capital at closing following issuance of the consideration shares. (1 euro = RM4.62)

According to a statement, the transaction aims to create a leading, global, multi-brand digital luxury group offering a highly curated and strongly differentiated edit of the most prestigious luxury brands and products to luxury enthusiasts worldwide.

“With this transaction, Mytheresa aims to create a pre-eminent, multi-brand, digital, luxury group worldwide. Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter will offer differentiated but complementary multi-brand luxury edits based on curation, inspiration and outmost customer service,” said Mytheresa Chief Executive Officer, Michael Kliger.

Meanwhile, Richemont Chairman, Johann Rupert said: “Mytheresa is ideally placed to build on YNAP’s assets to further delight customers and brand partners alike across the world by harnessing both companies’ respective strengths.”

In the medium term, the deal entails the integration of YNAP’s Luxury division into Mytheresa to form one group with three distinct storefronts, namely Mytheresa, Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter.

The separation of the off-price division, comprising YOOX and The Outnet, from the luxury division to allow for a simpler and more efficient operating model driving higher growth and profitability.

Also, YNAP’s white label division will be discontinued once the Richemont Maisons’ online stores powered by YNAP migrate to their own chosen platforms.

Richemont will make available a six-year revolving credit facility of 100 million euros to finance YNAP’s general corporate needs, including working capital. Closing of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the first half of calendar year 2025, is subject to customary conditions, including the receipt of antitrust approvals.

-- BERNAMA

BUSINESSNEXT AND MONGODB TEAM UP TO ACCELERATE AUTONOMOUS OPERATIONS IN FINANCIAL SERVICES

Collaboration will enable banks to create hyper-scalable digital solutions, delivering cutting-edge technology, AI-driven customer journeys and experiences

NEW DELHI, Sept 30 (Bernama-GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BUSINESSNEXT, a global leader in composable enterprise solutions for financial services, has partnered with MongoDB to accelerate autonomous operations powered with specialized predictive and generative AI for banking and insurance. Headquartered in New York, MongoDB empowers innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries with the power of software and data.

The collaboration between BUSINESSNEXT and MongoDB will empower banking and financial services with the technology needed to deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive autonomous operations.

By combining BUSINESSNEXT’s deep expertise in financial services with MongoDB’s flexible, scalable database platform that has industry-leading encryption, access controls, and data protection protocols, the partnership will deliver innovative solutions that address the evolving needs of the industry. BUSINESSNEXT’s suite of solutions to drive autonomous banking includes real-time AI at the core powering modern CRM, digital journeys, lending platforms, risk-rating platforms, workforce assistants, customer chatbots and more.

MongoDB’s document-oriented data model, with its flexible schema, nicely complements BUSINESSNEXT’s AI-driven capabilities. The partnership will enable banks to harness the power of their data to create personalized customer journeys, optimize lending processes, and make data-driven decisions.

“We are excited to partner with MongoDB to deliver cutting-edge solutions to our financial services clients,” said Sushil Tyagi, Executive Director at BUSINESSNEXT. “MongoDB’s industry-leading data protection protocols and our ability to handle complex data structures and scale effortlessly aligns with our vision of providing a modern, agile platform for banks.”

“Independent software vendors are an integral part of the enterprise software stack in India, and BUSINESSNEXT is a great example of the kind of ISV we want to work with,” said Sachin Chawla, Vice President, India and South Asia at MongoDB. “This partnership will help a large number of financial services organizations to accelerate their modernization initiatives and use AI to drive differentiation,” added Chawla.

Key benefits of the partnership include:

· Autonomous Banking operations
· Enhanced customer experiences
· Accelerated lending processes
· Improved operational efficiency
· Strengthened risk management
 
This partnership marks a significant milestone for both BUSINESSNEXT and MongoDB, and it is expected to drive significant value for financial institutions worldwide.

For more information,

visit BUSINESSNEXT website https://www.businessnext.com/

and MongoDB website https://www.mongodb.com/.

For Media Inquiries:

Ajay Joshi

ajay.joshi@businessnext.com

SOURCE: Acidaes Solutions PTE. Ltd.

--BERNAMA