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Budget: Accelerating Development through Reform and Innovation

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Mr Chan

The Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, unveiled today his 2025-26 Budget. He noted that while geopolitical situation might bring risks, technology reform and artificial intelligence (AI) development are remoulding the global landscape, leading to the emergence of new industries, new forms of business, new products and new services. He stressed that Hong Kong must seize the opportunity to make the most out of this critical window to speed up development, establishing the new before abolishing the old. He also emphasised that transformation and innovation will lead the way into the future, and the Government is poised to fast-track the high-quality development of Hong Kong’s economy.
 
The Budget presents a series of measures aimed at accelerating the cultivation of new quality productive forces. On innovation and technology (I&T), the Government will promote Hong Kong into an international exchange and co-operation hub for the AI industry. Through frontier research and real-world application, the Government will endeavour to develop AI as a core industry and empower traditional industries in their upgrading and transformation. To spearhead and support Hong Kong’s innovative research and development as well as industrial application of AI, the Government will establish the Hong Kong AI Research and Development Institute and launch the Pilot Manufacturing and Production Line Upgrade Support Scheme (Manufacturing+). On finance, the Government will continue to take forward reforms to the listing regime, host the Hong Kong Global Financial and Industry Summit, and formulate a plan this year on promoting gold market development.
 
To seize the opportunities brought about by the rapid advancement of innovation and technology, the Budget highlights the need to accelerate the development of the Northern Metropolis, which is an investment in Hong Kong’s future. The Government will continue to accord priority to providing resources for this initiative, which primarily includes providing large tracts of I&T land at the Hong Kong Park of the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Co-operation Zone, together with San Tin Technopole; adopting an innovative mindset in piloting “large-scale land disposal”; developing a data facility cluster at Sandy Ridge; as well as identifying suitable sites in the Northern Metropolis for the construction of conference and exhibition facilities.

On the promotion of tourism, funding will be allocated to pursue the concept of “tourism is everywhere” and implement the Development Blueprint for Hong Kong’s Tourism Industry 2.0. A study will be conducted on the development of the waterfront and former sites to the south of the Hung Hom Station into a new harbourfront landmark, including a yacht club.

Regarding land supply, Mr Chan announced that the Government will not roll out any commercial site for sale in the coming year in view of the high vacancy rates of offices in recent years to allow the market to absorb the existing supply. The Government will also consider rezoning some of the commercial sites into residential use and allowing greater flexibility of land use. To tie in with the relevant work, the deadline for completing in-situ land exchange for commercial sites in the town centre of the Hung Shui Kiu/Ha Tsuen New Development Area will be extended.

Mr Chan proposed a reinforced version of the fiscal consolidation programme to focus on strictly controlling government expenditure, supplemented by increasing revenue, to restore fiscal balance in the Operating Account, in a planned and progressive manner, within the current term of the Government. For 2025-26, the executive authorities, the legislature, the judiciary and members of the District Councils, including members of the civil service, take a pay freeze. The Government will step up the Productivity Enhancement Programme; compared with 2023-24, the recurrent expenditure in 2027-28 will record a cumulative reduction by 7 per cent and deliver a saving of $27.3 billion. By April 2027, about 10 000 posts of the civil service establishment are expected to be deleted within this term of Government. The Government will also deliver more efficient public services to citizens through leveraging technology, streamlining processes and driving the digital transformation of public services. In the Budget, it is proposed to adjust two transport subsidy schemes, namely putting forward the “$2 flat rate cum 80 per cent discount” in the Government Public Transport Fare Concession Scheme for the Elderly and Eligible Persons with Disabilities ($2 Scheme), and raising the threshold for receiving the subsidy under the Public Transport Fare Subsidy Scheme from $400 to $500, with the prevailing subsidy cap at $400 per month remaining unchanged. He will uphold the “user pays” and the “affordable users pay” principles as far as practicable while increasing revenue, including increasing the air passenger departure tax, and reviewing the tolls of government tunnels and trunk roads. The Government will suitably expand the size of bond issuance on the premise of maintaining healthy public finances and use the funds raised on infrastructure works in a proper and flexible manner to invest in Hong Kong’s future and create value for society.

Mr Chan concluded that he has full confidence in and high expectations for the future of Hong Kong, because Hong Kong people are intelligent, creative and tireless in contributing to the economic development. More importantly, he is confident due to the staunch and unwavering support received from the country and Hong Kong people’s profound insight into the major development trends of the future, as well as the city’s enviable and advantageous position.

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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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