by Gary Mintchell | May 12, 2025 | Enterprise IT, Generative AI
We have passed through the valley of the shadow of Large Language Models version of AI. Now we have moved a level to the gorge of Agentic AI. I’ve written about three posts I believe on that subject. Here is another company unveiling Agentic AI solutions.
Akka, the leader in helping enterprises deliver distributed systems that are elastic, agile, and resilient, announced new deployment options for its Akka solution, as well as new solutions to tackle the issues with deploying large-scale agentic AI systems for mission-critical applications. Already the standard for building resilient and elastic distributed systems with industry leaders like Capital One, John Deere, Tubi, Walmart, Swiggy, and many others, Akka now also gives enterprises unprecedented freedom to deploy Akka-based applications on the infrastructure of their choice. For the first time, developers now have two new options that enable them to leverage Akka to build distributed systems at scale and self-host their application or deploy their application across multiple regions automatically.
“Agentic AI has become a priority with enterprises everywhere as a new model that has the potential to replace enterprise software as we understand it today,” said Tyler Jewell, Akka’s CEO. “With today’s announcement, we’re making it easy for enterprises to build their distributed systems, including agentic AI deployments, without having to commit to Akka’s Platform. Now, enterprise teams can quickly build scalable systems locally and run them on any infrastructure they want.”
The agentic shift requires a fundamental architectural change from transaction-centered to conversation-centered systems. Traditional SaaS applications are built on stateless business logic executing CRUD operations against relational databases. In contrast, agentic services maintain state within the service itself and store each event to track how the service reached its current state.
As a result, developer teams experience very unpredictable behavior, limited planning and memory impacting agent effectiveness, hard failures at scale, opaque decision-making with zero transparency, and, perhaps most importantly, significant cost and latency concerns.
Today, Akka has introduced two new deployment capabilities:
- Self-managed Akka nodes – You can now run clusters of services that were built with Akka SDK on any cloud infrastructure. The new version of the Akka SDK includes a self-managed build option that will create services that can be executed stand-alone. Your services are binaries packaged in Docker images that can be deployed in any container PaaS, bare metal hardware, VMs, edge nodes, or Kubernetes with any Akka infrastructure or Platform dependencies. Your nodes have Akka clustering built from within.
- Self-hosted Akka Platform regions – Teams can now run your own Akka Platform region without any dependency on Akka.io control planes. Services built with the Akka SDK have always been deployable onto Akka Platform, with Akka providing managed services through the company’s Akka Serverless and Akka BYOC offerings. Akka Platform provides fully automated operations, alleviating admins from more than 30 maintenance, security, and observability duties. Both Serverless and BYOC federated multiple regions together by using an Akka control plane hosted at Akka.io.
In contrast, self-hosted regions are Akka Platform regions with no Akka control plane dependency, which teams will install, maintain, and manage on their own. Self-hosted regions can be installed in any data center with orchestration, proxy, and infrastructure dependencies specified by Akka. Since Akka Platform is updated many times each week, the installation of self-hosted regions is executed in cooperation with Akka’s SRE team to ensure stability and consistency of a customer environment.
Akka, formerly known as Lightbend, is relied upon by industry titans and disruptors to build and run distributed applications that are elastic, agile, and guaranteed resilient.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 28, 2025 | Cloud, Enterprise IT
I wrote about a company new to me from The Netherlands thanks to a media relations person I’ve known for quite some time. Leaseweb Global provides cloud services and Infrastructure as a Service. They are back with an announcement regarding adding NVIDIA L4, L40S and H100 NVL GPUs to its infrastructure portfolio.
Through this offering, Leaseweb notes it is meeting the compute needs of a wide variety of sectors – including the Artificial Intelligence (AI), Media & Entertainment and Gaming industries – at a price point that enables significant cost savings when compared to the wider marketplace.
Available across Leaseweb’s entire global network, spanning the European, North American and Asia Pacific regions, the expanded GPU offering supports customers with a scalable, efficient deployment framework optimized for high-performance computing (HPC), ranging from AI model training and video analytics to graphics processing and video rendering functionality. Leaseweb’s new NVIDIA GPU solution aims to help customers improve their operations, reduce costs, and enhance computational speed for demanding workloads. The announcement also underlines Leaseweb’s commitment to meeting the demand for powerful infrastructure solutions with industry benchmark performance chips that can be deployed within hours to ensure high availability service provision.
This marks the next step in Leaseweb’s journey to providing a complete AI offering for its customers, which will include integration into Leaseweb’s public cloud and broader set of infrastructure solutions. By providing a comprehensive, scalable solution for a wide variety of workloads, Leaseweb is reinforcing its position as a trusted partner for organizations focused on balancing price with performance and availability. With further plans to integrate this offering into its broader solutions suite, the company is strongly positioned to become a leading provider of GPU infrastructure, supporting customers as they invest in these transformational technologies.
“This announcement represents an important step for customers where GPU availability is increasingly important and will give organizations around the world the price/performance flexibility they need, as soon as they need it,” commented Liat Mendelson Honderdors, Principal Product Manager, AI and GPU at Leaseweb.
“Our customers value Leaseweb’s extensive industry expertise as they plan and deploy infrastructure for their most processor-intensive workloads. With considerations ranging from price and performance to data sovereignty and compliance, Leaseweb’s solutions and state-of-the-art global network means we are ideally suited to helping our customers grow their business and expand into new markets, even at hours’ notice. By incorporating best-in-class NVIDIA technology into our infrastructure portfolio, we’re laying the foundation for a broader solution set that will continue to evolve with customer needs,” Mendelson Honderdors concluded.
by Gary Mintchell | Jan 15, 2025 | Cloud, Enterprise IT, Operations Management, Technology
Technology advancements and innovations plus applications solving bigger problems have led my work, research, and writing from virtual PLCs to virtual servers. That’s why I have loved technology ever since I was 14 and soldering resistors, capacitors, and coils into circuits.
Here is a Dutch company (the product is available globally, of course) that has launched a “highly efficient” Virtual Private Server (VPS) solution.
Some of the year-end prognoses sent my way (many sort of self serving) predicted les reliance on cloud and a return to more on prem solutions. Perhaps this company provides help both ways.
Their blurb touts, “Powered by High Performance CPUs, Local NVMe Storage and Lightning-fast 10 Gbps Uplink Speed, Packages Start at Just €3.99/month.”
Leaseweb Global, a cloud services and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, January 14 announced the launch of a new highly efficient Virtual Private Server (VPS) solution. Designed for businesses that need a combination of exceptional price-performance, fast local storage and easy deployment, Leaseweb VPS packages start at just €3.99/month to deliver affordable solutions that don’t compromise on quality.
Leaseweb’s new VPS solution provides customers with the flexibility to expand their infrastructure as their business needs grow. Delivered via a low-touch, self-service portal, it requires limited technical expertise for setup or management, enabling users to configure their server, monitor resources and manage snapshots with ease. This makes it ideal for businesses seeking a straightforward, scalable and efficient hosting service, as well as those looking for an entry-level solution to Leaseweb Public Cloud.
Technical specifications keep advancing.
With lightning-fast 10Gbps uplink speed, and powered by high performance processors and local NVMe storage, the Leaseweb VPS solution provides ample compute, RAM and generous traffic across all packages. In addition, built-in security and reliability features, including firewalls, DDoS protection and ISO-certified data centers, offer peace of mind and comprehensive protection for all customers. For those customers wanting to include backup, this is available as an add-on service.
“Our new VPS solution has been designed from the ground up to offer the ideal balance of performance, usability and cost,” said Mathijs Heikamp, Director Product Management at Leaseweb Global. “By combining the latest hardware, advanced automation and an intuitive self-service portal, we’re delivering a cloud infrastructure solution that can effortlessly adapt to customer requirements.”
Here is information about Leaseweb since this company is new to me—and perhaps to you.
Leaseweb is a leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider serving a worldwide portfolio of 20,000 customers ranging from SMBs to Enterprises. Services include Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Dedicated Servers , Colocation, Content Delivery Network , and Cyber Security Services supported by exceptional customer service and technical support. With more than 80,000 servers, Leaseweb has provided infrastructure for mission-critical websites, Internet applications, email servers, security, and storage services since 1997. The company operates 28 data centers in locations across Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America, all of which are backed by a superior worldwide network with a total capacity of more than 10 Tbps.
Leaseweb offers services through its various Leaseweb Sales Entities which are Leaseweb Netherlands B.V., Leaseweb USA, Inc., Leaseweb Singapore PTE. LTD, Leaseweb Deutschland GmbH, Leaseweb Australia Ltd., Leaseweb UK Ltd, Leaseweb Japan KK, Leaseweb Hong Kong LTD, and Leaseweb Canada Inc.
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 6, 2024 | Automation, Enterprise IT, Industrial Computers
I think this is the last of the meetings I had at Automation Fair last month. The team at Stratus discussed the ztC Endurance platform. Stratus is know for high availability, redundant server and compute technology. This new platform enables organizations to run critical applications without downtime or data loss, in edge or data center environments, using intelligent, predictive fault tolerance based on Stratus’ redundant hardware architecture, hardened drivers, and Stratus Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange.
Both OT and IT teams face the challenge of delivering reliability to both centralized and distributed locations across their operations. They also may lack on-site technical staff needed to maintain complex infrastructure. Platforms running critical applications must be easy to deploy, easy to manage, and easy to service—and not just in data centers, but at the edge of corporate networks.
Stratus ztC Endurance provides continuous availability and ensures data integrity for mission-critical applications running at the edge, operations center, and data center. Delivering seven nines (99.99999%) uptime, its Automated Uptime Layer with Smart Exchange provides continual proactive health monitoring and automatically takes action to maintain system availability and protect against data loss when needed. Coupled with the platform’s modular design of hot-swappable customer replacement units (CRUs), ztC Endurance makes it easy for OT and IT teams to manage and support. ztC Endurance delivers the processing power and performance to host dozens of software applications as virtual machines (VMs), dramatically reducing the number of PCs or servers required for OT and IT teams to manage and maintain.
Key Benefits
- Seven nines availability for critical applications: Built-in computing fault tolerance delivers 99.99999% availability to run critical applications.
- No loss of data: Redundant computing architecture combined with intelligent automated management prevents in-flight data loss and ensures data integrity.
- “Zero touch” management and support: Modular design plus pro-active remote health monitoring and self-healing simplifies system management and serviceability for both IT and OT teams.
- Rapid modernization and workload consolidation: Modernize infrastructure and streamline operations by leveraging virtualization to consolidate multiple software workloads onto a single platform.
- Multi-layered security: Supports multi-layered defense-in-depth approaches, with focus on both process and product security guidelines to ensure maximum protection.
- Lower TCO: Reduce IT footprint and purchase fewer software licenses on a highly reliable platform with an expected 7-10 year lifespan, twice that of traditional servers.
by Gary Mintchell | May 28, 2024 | Data Management, Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management
Seeq is one of a few newish software companies that I am watching while I try to determine the health of the industrial technology infrastructure. Despite that, I was not invited and did not attend their recent user conference. There was one announcement from the conference that looks intriguing. The Seeq platform is seeking (I’m sorry) an enterprise outlook.
Seeq announced the launch of the Seeq Industrial Enterprise Monitoring Suite with the release of Seeq Vantage, the company’s first industrial enterprise monitoring app.
The Seeq Industrial Enterprise Monitoring Suite provides a comprehensive, automated view into operational performance—past and present. This broader view enables better decision making and continuous improvement across today’s complex, industrial ecosystems. The Seeq Industrial Enterprise Monitoring Suite leverages the combined power of the Seeq Industrial Analytics and AI Suite and the context that only teams of experts can provide—all at the scale needed to drive truly impactful results across the operational footprint.
Through the Seeq Vantage app, industrial organizations can tailor, deploy and automate enterprise-level use cases, such as asset and process monitoring, condition-based maintenance, reliability and downtime tracking and more. Coupled with the Seeq Industrial Analytics and AI Suite, customers now have an integrated ecosystem to capture, analyze, aggregate, monitor, triage, investigate, and document insights and actions at the local level and the enterprise level. The app provides proactive and automated enterprise surveillance for daily operational decisions, and comprehensive assembly of operational effectiveness and utilization understanding to prioritize longer-term investment decisions.
by Gary Mintchell | Apr 5, 2024 | Enterprise IT, Manufacturing IT, Operations Management, Software
The beginnings of a trend in manufacturing software has appeared on my horizon about mid-way through last year. This would be the use of low-code software for application development. I first noted it with some acquisitions in my market space. Recently I have begun working with a company called Quickbase who has a platform built with low-code application development in mind.
[Note: In my work with Quickbase, I’m sometimes compensated for what I do. They do not dictate what I write or say.]
I recently had the opportunity to talk with two users of Quickbase’s platform for their manufacturing software needs. You can hear them plus me at the Quickbase Empower Virtual Customer Conference on May 8 (our session is at 11:30 am EDT immediately following the keynotes). Their stories verified what I was beginning to hear from my first encounters. Listening to their tone of voice, what really perked them up was the ability to be rapidly responsive to requests from users for modifications to screens and reports.
That discussion spurred me on to some additional research on the topic. Following is a list of benefits I uncovered on my research. This is not a list specific to Quickbase, but a more generic list that you might find with applications in a variety of areas. But check out Quickbase for your specific needs. I’m sure I’ll have more interviews in the future to take a deeper dive into Quickbase specifically. For now, I was interested in this new feature. Feel free to contact me with additional thoughts. Or stories about how you have used low-code in engineering or manufacturing operations software.
- Faster Development: Low-code platforms enable rapid application development by providing pre-built templates, drag-and-drop interfaces, and visual development tools.
- Reduced Costs: With low-code development, you can save on development costs by eliminating the need for hiring expensive developers with specialized coding skills. Additionally, the time saved in development translates to cost savings.
- Increased Productivity: Low-code platforms allow both professional developers and citizen developers (non-technical users) to build applications. This democratization of app development increases productivity by enabling more people within an organization to contribute to development efforts.
- Flexibility and Customization: While low-code platforms provide pre-built components and templates, they also offer the flexibility to customize applications according to specific business requirements. Developers can extend functionality by writing custom code when needed.
- Streamlined Maintenance: Low-code platforms often include built-in features for application monitoring, debugging, and performance optimization. This simplifies maintenance tasks and reduces the time required for ongoing support and updates.
- Integration Capabilities: Many low-code platforms offer out-of-the-box integrations with popular third-party services, databases, and APIs. This makes it easier to connect your applications with other systems and data sources.
- Scalability: Low-code platforms can scale with your business needs, allowing you to quickly add new features or expand functionality as your requirements evolve. This scalability helps future-proof your applications.
- Accessibility: Low-code platforms often come with intuitive user interfaces and guided development processes, making app development accessible to a wider range of users, including those with limited technical expertise.
- Faster Time-to-Market: By accelerating the development process and enabling iterative development cycles, low-code platforms help bring applications to market faster. This can give your business a competitive edge by allowing you to respond quickly to changing market demands.
- Risk Reduction: Low-code platforms often come with built-in security features and compliance standards, reducing the risk of security vulnerabilities and ensuring regulatory compliance.
Overall, low-code application development software offers a compelling solution for businesses looking to rapidly build, deploy, and maintain applications with greater efficiency and flexibility.
