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How Connected Data Ecosystems Are Unlocking New Business Growth

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Cloud data ecosystems are the way forward for both industrial enterprises and the technology providers that support them, says Rónán de Hooge, Executive Vice President, Cloud Platform Business, AVEVA. An industrial environment where machines anticipate their own maintenance needs, supply chains innovate in response to real-time demand and resource shifts, and industries operate with unparalleled efficiency and minimal waste—all orchestrated by human experts?

That vision is fast becoming a reality as industries organize in response to the evolving business landscape. Disrupted supply chains, resource scarcity, changing customer needs and increasing regulation are all now commonplace in our integrated, digital-first economy. Success in this challenging environment depends on collaboration. When suppliers, distributors and other chain partners share business information, insights and best practices, they can create combined value that exceeds what each can achieve individually.

Businesses aren’t just connected to each other—they’re interdependent. In industry and elsewhere, the future of business increasingly relies on a connected data ecosystem. Data ecosystems represent the next wave of digital transformation. They leverage a trusted network of technologies to connect people with data from industrial operators and their partners.

With industrial data ecosystems, companies gain access to new capabilities or expertise they may not have in-house. More importantly, a unified view across the value chain, enables companies to discover crucial new insights and leverage broader expertise that enhance their abilities amid a changing business environment. When this industrial intelligence is unified and shared in the cloud, every value chain participant – including partners, regulators and customers – can visualize routes to better efficiency, productivity and sustainability.

Data is the bedrock of growth for the industrial enterprise

Businesses everywhere are now using connected data ecosystems with customers, suppliers, partners and operators. Such integrated networks may even straddle two or more formerly separate sectors. In all cases, they carry value for each player within the ecosystem, including for technology developers.

At the core of this collaboration is data. Industrial organizations now collect data in greater quantities and from a wider variety of sources than ever before. Too often, however, this strategic asset remains siloed at the point of collection because of technology, security and governance barriers, rendering it inaccessible to even internal departments.

Sharing data across an organization—as well as with external partners—gives every player within the ecosystem a contextual understanding of how to optimize their role in the value chain. Industrial organizations are therefore catalyzing digital transformation to create seamless collaboration across the lifecycle and unlock greater value and sustainability gains for all stakeholders.

Around the world, many players are already leveraging these platform services to drive positive outcomes on several fronts:

  • Drive efficiency through collaboration: Sharing data from a single source of truth empowers experts—regardless of location or technical background—to make better decisions faster.
  • Achieve environmental, social and governance (ESG) targets: Viewing unified value chain data in context helps surface the interdependent areas where sustainability action can have the greatest impact, such as greater circularity, improved efficiency, reduced emissions and better regulatory compliance.
  • Enhance individual and joint innovation: The competitive advantages gained from secure data-sharing communities strengthen trusted supplier and partner relationships. By adding context to real-time data, companies can expedite R&D, innovate together and mutually enhance competitive advantages.
  • Improve decision-making: Seamlessly connecting diverse data sources and extensible applications within an ecosystem gives businesses richer and more complete insights that can reduce operational costs and improve revenue outcomes.
  • Transform business for faster revenue: An industrial data ecosystem delivers value within hours instead of days or weeks. Accordingly, companies can achieve faster adoption, expand their market reach, and leverage economies of scale—all while reducing costs through lower software investments upfront and lower ongoing IT and maintenance expenses.
connected data ecosystems

How ecosystem building works for technology companies

As industries begin strategizing for the outcomes enumerated above, data ecosystems are helping them meet their needs. This kind of ecosystem thinking also supports innovation for technology providers and developer partners.

Such digital platforms bring together a multitude of complementary solutions and applications that can be tailored to specific business needs. At their core, such an industry data community is a network of interconnected software applications, services, and platforms that integrate seamlessly to enhance process efficiencies while uncovering new value for end customers.

With an open and neutral platform, partners can expedite the development of emerging technologies and services, driving agility and value for customers. The ability to securely share specific data streams within a standardized format and with granular control supports the development of new applications and value-added services – without compromising intellectual property.

This adaptability is a game-changer at a time of increasing cross-domain innovation, when developments in one field, such as artificial intelligence, can support progress in another area. Connected data ecosystems provide the advantages developers need in an ever-evolving industrial landscape.

Industry appetite and the flywheel effect

Different industrial sectors have either already added to, or are accelerating, their investment in connected data ecosystems. The vast majority (90%) of respondents in IDC’s 2023 Future of Industry Ecosystems global survey said they plan to maintain or accelerate their investment into such data ecosystems this year and next. Principal motivations included increasing business agility, better process automation, improved systems integration, and increased data-sharing with partners, including for ESG reasons.

The survey interviewed 1,288 C-suite and business line executives decisionmakers across energy, construction, process manufacturing, government and other industries around the world. Overall, the appeal of the connected data ecosystem could lie in its ability to accelerate the flywheel effect, a concept familiar to engineers.

With the flywheel effect, small wins accumulate over time to create a momentum that keeps the business growing. Likewise, within the kind of integrated data community described here, every player can expect to be able to recalibrate for resilience in real-time, driving incremental gains for all stakeholders on a continuous basis.

Whether for industrial enterprises, technology companies or developers, the whole truly then becomes worth more than the sum of its parts. The value of connected data ecosystems—and the potential exponential growth they promise—will be the foundation of our sustainable future.

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NETSCOUT STRENGTHENS OPERATIONAL RESILIENCE OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AGAINST AI-DRIVEN, INTERNET-SCALE DDoS ATTACKS

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NETSCOUT® (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of observability, AIOps, cybersecurity, and DDoS attack protection solutions, today announced continued investments in infrastructure and technology to double its Arbor® Cloud DDoS attack mitigation capacity to 33 Tbps, which is aimed at keeping critical digital services available during DDoS attacks, protecting revenue-generating digital operations, supporting always-on AI-driven businesses, and maintaining customer trust.

This capacity enhancement, coupled with NETSCOUT’s recent acquisition of DDoS network and infrastructure, reinforces the company’s commitment to delivering industry-leading cloud-based DDoS defense at global scale. By fully owning and securing end-to-end control over the platform, NETSCOUT has a clear path to scale innovative, resilient services for customers worldwide. Unlike cloud mitigation services that merely add bandwidth, Arbor Cloud combines global mitigation capacity with global threat intelligence, drawing on NETSCOUT’s unparalleled visibility into real-world internet attack activity. Spanning 16 global scrubbing centers, this significant increase in capacity equips customers with the ability to defend against the growing scale, frequency, and sophistication of DDoS attacks by consistently balancing mitigation capacity across all attack vectors in their environments.

According to Markets and Markets, the DDoS protection market size is expected to continue to grow, driven by increasingly sophisticated attacks and accelerated cloud adoption. Today, multi-vector attacks are the norm. Bad actors are launching more simultaneous attacks as well as quick hit and run attacks, forcing shorter response times from defenders. In addition, mega-botnets like Aisuru and Kimwolf have raised the ceiling on attack sizes with a few attacks approaching or exceeding 30 Tbps. Enterprises and service providers have a compelling need right now to improve the protection levels of their critical digital infrastructure.

“With the increased use of AI, threat actors are targeting organizations whose defenses are vulnerable to the new, more complex DDoS attacks designed to take down critical infrastructure,” stated Carlos Morales, SVP and general manager, Arbor Cloud, NETSCOUT. “As enterprises increasingly rely on AI-powered applications and cloud-native services, while at the same time, attack size and complexity continue to rise, implementing automated and proactive defenses for uninterrupted availability has become a business risk imperative. Arbor Cloud plays a key role in achieving that objective.”

Increasing Arbor Cloud capacity provides significant advantages, including:

  • Greater intelligent mitigation capacity – absorbs and blocks larger volumetric and more sophisticated attacks without losing effectiveness.
  • Multiple threat mitigation – handles multiple concurrent targets (e.g., from carpet bombing attacks) or multiple attack vectors simultaneously.
  • Consistent operational performance – protects critical infrastructure, ensuring capacity does not become a constraint as attack size and frequency increase.
  • Faster stabilization post spikes – acts as a shield wall preventing attacks from reaching customer infrastructure and creating collateral damage that lasts well beyond when the actual attack subsides.
  • Operational confidence – provides added assurance for mission-critical sectors, like financial services, hospitals, retail, and the public sector, which require that protection remains available when legitimate traffic surges and cyberattacks occur simultaneously.

Arbor Cloud plays a critical role as part of NETSCOUT’s multi-layered, adaptive DDoS protection, combining on-premises DDoS defense with cloud-based traffic scrubbing services that are tightly integrated via automated cloud signaling. This hybrid design stops attacks as close to the source as possible while seamlessly absorbing loud volumetric attacks in the cloud. Offering comprehensive global protection, Arbor Cloud is supported by a 24×7 Security Operations Center staffed by NETSCOUT’s DDoS protection experts. The capacity expansion is expected to be fully completed by the end of August 2026.

This investment reinforces NETSCOUT’s long-standing leadership in DDoS protection by combining one of the world’s largest dedicated DDoS mitigation networks with decades of cyber defense expertise, industry-leading threat intelligence, and global Internet visibility. As digital infrastructures continue to evolve rapidly, and AI accelerates both innovation and cyber threats, NETSCOUT remains committed to providing organizations with the scale, intelligence, and operational resilience required to confidently protect what matters most.

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Dynatrace Brings Autonomous Operations to Enterprise AI, Moving from Insight to Action

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Dynatrace (NYSE: DT), the leading AI-powered observability platform, announced major advancements to Dynatrace Intelligence that help automatically resolve incidents, prevent disruptions, and accelerate operations while maintaining the human oversight and governance enterprises require.

Building on the introduction of Dynatrace Intelligence earlier this year, Dynatrace is adding new autonomous agents for incident triage and remediation, and no-code custom agent creation capabilities. The platform is also expanding its ecosystem of integrations, bringing insights directly into the tools and workflows teams already use.

AI systems typically lack the real-time context and controls to make reliable decisions, with most AI initiatives promising automation but often unable to deliver on production goals. Dynatrace addresses this by combining agentic AI with deterministic, real-time understanding of complex environments, creating AI that acts on facts, not guesses.

“Our operations teams are under constant pressure to manage increasingly complex environments while maintaining reliability and speed,” said Angel Marchena, Director of Technical Operations at Western Governors University. “Dynatrace helps us reduce manual effort by providing automation that is grounded in real-time context, which allows our teams to focus on higher-value work while improving operational outcomes.”

How Dynatrace Intelligence Works

Dynatrace Intelligence goes beyond providing answers to acting on them automatically. The release introduces:

  • Autonomous SRE Agent: Triggers autonomously on newly detected problems to determine whether they are part of an existing investigation. If confirmed, the agent enriches the investigation with additional insights and updates the detected problem with a reference to the ongoing investigation.
  • Cloud SRE Agent: Coordinates remediation activities and integrates with agents across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud environments, centralizing findings to provide a single auditable record for autonomous operations.
  • Agent Builder: Enables customers to create and deploy custom AI agents without code, extending autonomous operations to workflows unique to their environments.
  • Enhanced Dynatrace Assist: Newcapabilities bring natural-language investigation and agent-ready workflows to even more users.
  • Expanded Integration Ecosystem: New integrations with hyperscalers like AWS, Azure and Google; enterprise platforms like ServiceNow, Atlassian, and PagerDuty; developer tools and leading AI technologies enable teams to resolve and remediate across the systems they already use.

AI That Acts on Answers, Not Guesses

Unlike approaches that rely primarily on probabilistic outputs, Dynatrace Intelligence grounds every action in deterministic, real-time system understanding. Every action is rooted in environment-specific context and designed to be transparent, auditable, and governed – giving enterprises the confidence to automate increasingly complex operational workflows.

“Most observability platforms stop at data – leaving humans to find answers, determine what to do, and execute,” said Steve Tack, Chief Product Officer at Dynatrace. “With these advancements to Dynatrace Intelligence, we’re helping organizations move from understanding problems to resolving them automatically. By grounding agentic AI in deterministic context, Dynatrace enables enterprises to automate operations with confidence while maintaining governance and control.”

“Enterprises investing in AI-driven observability have an opportunity to turn data into intelligence that translates into trusted, autonomous action,” said Stephen Elliot, Group VP, IDC. “The gap between AI-generated insight and safe, governed execution is one of the biggest concerns; customers need a deterministic, real-time context with automation and auditability to drive trusted and reliable outcomes.”

Cloud SRE Agent, Enhanced Dynatrace Assist, and the expanded integration ecosystem are available to SaaS customers on DPS today. Autonomous SRE Agent and Agent Builder are expected to be available in August.

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GCC Mega Developments Could Generate Up to a Third of Electricity Demand with On-Site Solar, BCG Finds

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Large-scale urban developments across the Gulf could generate up to approximately one-third of their electricity demand while reducing costs by a similar margin, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on renewable-powered cities.

The report, titled Mega-Projects Powered by Renewables: A Practical Playbook for Saudi Arabia, highlights how integrating solar energy directly into development design can unlock significant economic, environmental, and operational benefits. The findings are based on modelling of large-scale developments in high-irradiance Gulf markets and reflect conditions increasingly common across the region.

While the underlying analysis draws on conditions observed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), the implications are relevant across GCC mega-developments where high solar irradiance, large master-planned footprints, and evolving self-consumption frameworks create similar opportunities.

As GCC countries accelerate investment in new cities, mixed-use districts, and economic zones, the report identifies on-site renewables as one of the most underutilized levers in shaping cost-efficient and future-ready urban infrastructure. Analysis of large-scale developments in the region shows that up to 35% of electricity demand can be met through on-site solar, depending on design, density, and local regulatory frameworks. These findings suggest that electricity costs could be reduced by a comparable margin, particularly where developers leverage power purchase agreements or energy-as-a-service models requiring no upfront capital investment.

“The region’s mega developments represent a generational opportunity to reshape how we think about urban energy infrastructure,” said Edoardo Geraci, Managing Director & Partner, BCG. “Developers in the region who integrate renewables from the master planning stage are not only reducing their operational costs but also future-proofing their assets against evolving carbon regulations and energy price volatility. The economic case has never been stronger.”

The report reveals that individual assets can achieve meaningful levels of self-sufficiency, a single family villa can meet about 50% of its annual electricity needs, while a mid-rise building with higher load density typically achieves about 15%, depending on design and orientation. These results show that even without additional land, rooftop solar alone can deliver 35 MWh/year for single-family villas and 190 MWh/ year for mid-rise buildings, with substantial gains in both cost efficiency and emissions reductions. Early deployment is already underway across the GCC, with multi-megawatt installations in residential, commercial, and industrial assets demonstrating both technical and commercial viability.

The report challenges three common misconceptions: that solar is too space-intensive for dense urban environments, that it requires prohibitive upfront investment, and that implementation is too complex. In practice, rooftop systems, building-integrated photovoltaics, carports, and shaded structures can be incorporated without additional land, while third-party financing models can remove upfront capital requirements.

“What makes this moment particularly compelling is that the perceived barriers to adoption have largely been dismantled,” said Peter Jameson, Managing Director & Partner, BCG. “Modern solar solutions can be seamlessly integrated into rooftops, facades, and shade structures without compromising architectural vision. Financing innovations have removed upfront capital requirements entirely for many developers. The projects that act now will define the benchmark for sustainable urban development across the region.”

The report emphasizes that beyond economic advantages, renewable energy infrastructure can serve a dual purpose in Gulf developments: generating power while shaping a distinctive urban identity. Solar canopies, building-integrated photovoltaics, and interactive energy features offer developers the opportunity to transform sustainability from background infrastructure into a signature urban asset, enhancing appeal for residents, visitors, and investors. The playbook urges developers to size opportunities early, orchestrate stakeholder alignment from the outset, and embed renewable considerations into master planning to avoid costly retrofits and maximize long-term value.

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