On the second day of Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent, Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of AWS Data and Machine Learning (ML) revealed the latest innovations during his keynote.

To start, Sivasubramanian announced the launch of Amazon Athena for Apache Spark, which he said will provide organizations with a more intuitive way to run complex data analytics. He noted that Apache Spark will run three times faster on AWS.

The next product announcement was of the general availability of Amazon DocumentDB Elastic Clusters, a fully-managed solution to quickly scale document workloads of any size. Elastic Clusters integrates with other AWS services, similar to Amazon DocumentDB.

Amazon SageMaker now supports Geospatial ML, giving access to multiple new kinds of data. A demo of the updates showed how it could help save lives in natural disasters, predicting dangerous road conditions due to rising flood water levels, and demonstrated how this technology can guide

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The signing of a long-term technology agreement is certainly common enough, but according to a group of lawyers with Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, there is a myriad of legal implications that need to be considered once the physical outsourcing and procurement takes place.

Exactly what those are was outlined recently at the company’s inaugural virtual technology privacy and cybersecurity summit, during an opening panel that focused on risk management in technology contracts.

According to the firm, as “businesses continue to engage in digital transformation, they are relying more and more on outsourcing and technology procurement for additional resources and expertise.”

Moderated by Liana Di Giorgio, senior associate with Norton Rose Fulbright in Toronto, the panel consisted of Janet Grove, a partner from the firm’s Vancouver office who focuses on technology and life sciences, Fahad Siddiqui, a litigation partner based in Toronto, and Nikita Stepin, a business law partner who

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Tata Consultancy Services today launched the TCS Quantum Computing Lab on AWS, a new service designed to provide enterprise customers with insight into what it described as “one of the most promising technologies of the decade.”

The lab, it said, will allow organizations to explore, develop and test business offerings aimed at accelerating adoption.

“While still in its nascent stages, quantum computing has the potential to help solve challenges too difficult for classical computers to solve in a timely manner today, such as enhanced detection of surface anomalies or optimization problems,” the company said in a release.

The new initiative, it added, will offer a virtual research and development environment leveraging Amazon Braket, a quantum computing service from AWS. TCS said it plans to leverage the lab to design industry-leading solutions, build domain-centric performance benchmarks, and drive hackathons.

The intent, it said, is to “help customers explore and co-create new

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Accounting software provider Xero has announced a collaboration with Intel to help small business owners better manage their finances. The company’s products are included in the launch of the Intel Software Advantage Program, a global full-service program that offers complimentary software for customers purchasing a qualifying Intel device, providing customers access to a wide variety of applications. The program is a sales tool that lets participating retailers drive sales and customer relations.

Source: Intel

With the partnership between the two companies, Xero customers in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom who purchase an eligible Intel vPro PC (desktop or laptop) will receive an exclusive offer for Xero’s cloud accounting solutions.

Xero’s cloud accounting software helps businesses sync bank and financial information, monitor cash flow, reconcile transactions, send invoices and get paid faster with online payment options. The company says its platform can help eliminate the need for

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A new report from Deloitte Canada found growing gaps in Canadians’ access to digital technology and skills development, as well as an increased threat to their online privacy and safety.

The Digital Equity report reveals that the gaps have a greater impact on certain Canadian equity-denied and marginalized groups, showing that it’s more than just a rural versus urban accessibility problem. 

“The sort of demographic lines that jump out are age, ethnicity, income, and geography,” said Jamie Boyd, Deloitte Canada’s national digital government leader.

In late 2021, Deloitte conducted two surveys of almost 2,000 Canadians each to assess their access to and comfort with digital technology. The report found that Canada is falling behind when it comes to digital equity, and it drew attention to challenges related to access, affordability, digital literacy, and cybersecurity. It found these challenges disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples, people in the 2SLGBTQ+ community, racialized communities, recent

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