October 13, 2021

Mattermost Launches New Project and Workflow Management Solutions for Developers

Open source collaboration platform delivers alternatives to tools like Slack, Trello, and Notion to help R&D teams improve productivity and accelerate digital operations

Palo Alto, Calif., Oct. 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mattermost, Inc. today announced several new additions to its open source project at KubeCon® + CloudNativeCon North America 2021, launching and integrating modern project and workflow management solutions into its popular developer collaboration platform. Built for technical teams, Mattermost now provides flexible alternatives to tools like Slack®, Trello®, and Notion® through a unified platform for increased collaboration and productivity across a wide range of software development processes — from sprint planning and release management to incident resolution and retrospectives.

With heightened awareness around the urgency for remote collaboration and modernization of enterprise processes, developers have been increasingly asked to circumvent fragile processes, talent shortages, and security risks to deliver performance, innovation, and digital operations at scale. The newest update to the core Mattermost® platform emphasizes the complexities of these staggering objectives and the need for dynamic solutions that empower R&D teams with autonomy, flexibility, and security.

The launch of Mattermost’s modern project and workflow management solutions also reflects the company’s evolution beyond secure messaging to enable team alignment and operational agility across sophisticated R&D use cases. Unlike general collaboration products, the Mattermost platform now allows developers to contribute directly to its solutions and customize their workspaces to adapt to their preferred team processes. Mattermost also provides teams with the option to deploy on-premise or in a secure cloud instance. This gives companies more control over their data and assists them in meeting stringent security and privacy compliance standards such as those found in HIPAA, FINRA, GDPR, country-specific data sovereignty, and other regulatory requirements.

“As organizations navigate the shift to always-on digital operations, teams that effectively align their people, tools, and processes across each stage of the development lifecycle are increasing their velocity, improving delivery and gaining a strategic advantage,” said Ian Tien, co-founder and CEO of Mattermost. “With developers reporting that nearly 40% of their workweek is wasted due to tool fragmentation, manual tasks, fragile workflows, and service-impacting incidents and outages, we see a huge opportunity to help every R&D team in the world improve their operations and productivity with collaboration solutions built specifically for the way they work.”

Founded in 2016, Mattermost has powered over 800,000 developer workspaces worldwide and has a community of over 4,000 open source contributors who have updated the platform over 30,000 times since its initial release. Mattermost’s commercial offerings are used by over 800 organizations, including European Parliament, NASA, Nasdaq, Samsung, SAP, the United States Air Force, and Wealthfront.

“Mattermost has been unimaginably effective for our company and continues to exceed expectations with every new release,” said Daniel Gover, IT system administrator for Crossover Health. “The platform helps us ensure that we’re staying HIPAA-compliant while letting our clinicians collaborate efficiently and seamlessly.”

“Developer velocity is increasingly essential to driving digital operations and modernization across the enterprise,” said Paul Nashawaty, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group. “Mattermost is helping to meet this requirement with a collaboration platform that reduces context switching and delivers visibility and control across the developer workflow and toolchain.”

This update to the Mattermost platform is now available to all users and features enhanced navigation and multiple tightly integrated collaboration tools, including:

Channels: The foundation of the Mattermost platform, Channels bring all of your team’s communication into one place, so you have complete visibility and control. Channels come with team messaging, conferencing, and file sharing features beyond general-purpose collaboration, including slash commands, code syntax highlighting, rich Markdown formatting, code snippets, and bot integrations.

Playbooks: Playbooks are prescribed workflows that streamline complex, recurring processes. Playbooks run side-by-side with Channels and make any structured process repeatable and predictable using checklists, triggers, automation, and tool integrations. Continuous improvement is built into each playbook with learnings and retrospectives.

Boards: Boards are Kanban-style task and project management solutions with clearly defined tasks, owners, checklists, and deadlines. Boards help teams increase transparency and keep all resources readily available, including documents, images, and links, and are used to help teams achieve project milestones and manage projects and tasks of any size.

Connections: Connections are integrations and extensions with leading developer tools, including GitHub®, Jenkins®, Circle CI®, GitLab®, Jira®, PagerDuty®, and ServiceNow®. Connections allow developers to turn any Channel into a CLI through built-in or custom commands to execute actions directly, such as posting to Channels, listening for new messages with incoming and outgoing webhooks. Developers can build Connections through custom apps, open APIs, plugins, and webhooks. The Mattermost App Framework allows developers to define custom interactive add-ons that support web, mobile, and desktop clients without changes. Apps can be written in any language, deployed on any HTTP server, or hosted as an AWS Lambda function.

Controls: Controls provide extensive data protection, information governance, eDiscovery, enterprise information archiving support, and identity/access management. Controls give administrators the ability to set granular permissions to control access to sensitive data and can be customized to meet your specific compliance requirements with fine-grained data retention, audit logs, the ability to programmatically archive and export records, and integration with Global Relay and Smarsh/Actiance for compliance, archiving, and analytics. Deployment options are available in on-prem or secure cloud environments to meet the strict requirements of GDPR, AICPA, CCPA, FINRA, HIPAA, and more.

To learn more about Mattermost’s developer collaboration platform, attendees can find the team at booth #S12 at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021, or please visit the Mattermost Blog.

About Mattermost:

Mattermost is an open source platform for secure collaboration across the entire software development lifecycle. Hundreds of thousands of developers around the globe trust Mattermost to increase their productivity by bringing together team communication, task and project management, and workflow orchestration into a unified platform for agile software development.

Founded in 2016, Mattermost’s open source platform powers over 800,000 workspaces worldwide with the support of over 4,000 contributors from across the developer community. The company serves over 800 customers, including European Parliament, NASA, Nasdaq, Samsung, SAP, United States Air Force and Wealthfront, and is backed by world-class investors including Battery Ventures, Redpoint, S28 Capital, YC Continuity. To learn more, visit www.mattermost.com.

Mattermost and the Mattermost logo are registered trademarks of Mattermost, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Jeff Benanto
Mattermost
5083619001
jeff.benanto@mattermost.com

October 13, 2021

Huawei’s Ken Hu Calls on ICT Industry to Work Together on Next Stage of 5G Development

DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei’s 12th annual Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF) kicked off in Dubai today with a keynote from the company’s Rotating Chairman, Ken Hu.

He spoke on the current state of 5G development and new opportunities moving forward. “In just five years of commercial deployment, 5G has provided a considerable upgrade in mobile experience for consumers, and it’s already starting to empower different industries around the globe. Progress was much faster than we expected, especially in terms of the subscriber base, network coverage, and the sheer number of 5G terminals on the market.”

Hu outlined three areas of opportunity that will drive the next stage of 5G’s growth, including XR services, the B2B market, and low-carbon development.

Ken Hu speaking on 5G development at MBBF 2021

The current state of global 5G development

There are currently 176 commercial 5G networks around the globe, serving more than 500 million subscribers. In the consumer space, average 5G download speeds are roughly 10 times greater than 4G, which has fueled broader adoption of applications like VR and 360º broadcasting. In the enterprise space, there are already 10,000 projects exploring B2B applications of 5G (5GtoB) around the world. 5G applications in industries like manufacturing, mining, and ports have already passed trial and are being replicated at scale.

While progress has been steady, Hu noted that there are still some areas for improvement. “Right now more than half of these 10,000 5GtoB projects are in China. We have a huge number of use cases already, but we need to build more sustainable business cases.”

He went on to speak of broader changes that will have a long-term impact on the ICT industry, including accelerated digital transformation caused by the pandemic, how cloud and AI have become must-haves for all organizations, and how the world is taking climate change more seriously. “These trends provide many opportunities for our industry,” he said. “But they also create some challenges. There are a few things we can do to get ready.”

First, the industry needs to get networks, devices, and content ready for explosive growth in Extended Reality (XR). To support a smooth cloud-based XR experience, networks need to provide download speeds faster than 4.6 Gbit/s with latency no greater than 10 milliseconds. “Last year,” noted Hu, “we released our goals for 5.5G. And we believe they will help address this challenge.”

barriers to headset adoption is critical to reaching a tipping point in virtual reality, one of the key technologies in the Extended Reality repertoire of AR, VR, and MR. “To reach [this tipping point], we have to make improvements to both headsets and content. For headsets, people want devices that are smaller, lighter, and more affordable.” To enrich the content ecosystem, Hu called on the industry to provide cloud platforms and tools that simplify content development, which is notoriously difficult and expensive.

Second, telecom operators need to enhance their networks and develop new capabilities to get ready for 5GtoB. A strong network is key to 5G applications for industrial use, so operators need to keep making improvements to network capabilities such as uplink, positioning, and sensing. As industrial scenarios are much more complex than consumer scenarios, O&M can be a real challenge. To help, Huawei is developing autonomous networks that bring intelligence to all aspects of 5G networks, from planning and construction to maintenance and optimization.

Digital transformation also requires different roles. In addition to providing connectivity, operators can also serve as cloud service providers, systems integrators, and more, and develop the requisite capabilities. To drive broader adoption of 5G in industries, developing industry-specific telecoms standards is also important. In China, operators, together with their industry partners, have begun working on standards for applying 5G in industries like coal mining, steel, and electric power, and this has helped to fuel greater adoption within these sectors.

“Beyond technology,” concluded Hu, “these are some of the intangible strengths that won’t provide immediate profit, but will be key to long-term competitiveness in the 5GtoB market.”

Third, the industry needs to get ready to go green. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030, digital technology can help reduce global carbon emissions by at least 15%. “On one hand,” said Hu, “we have a great opportunity to help all industries cut emissions and improve power efficiency with digital technology. On the other hand, we have to recognize that our industry has a growing carbon footprint, and we have to take steps to improve that. Right now Huawei is using new materials and algorithms to lower the power consumption of our products, and we’re remodeling sites, and optimizing power management in our data centers for greater efficiency.”

“We have seen so many changes in the past two years – with the pandemic, technology, business and the economy,” Hu concluded. “Moving forward, as the world begins to recover, we need to recognize the opportunities in front of us and get ready for them. Get our technology ready, get our businesses ready, and get our capabilities ready.”

The Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2021 is hosted by Huawei, together with its industry partners GSMA and the SAMENA Telecommunications Council. The forum gathers mobile network operators, vertical industry leaders, and ecosystem partners from around the world to discuss how to maximize the potential of 5G and push the mobile industry forward.

For more information, please visit: https://www.huawei.com/en/events/mbbf2021

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1659317/Ken_Hu_speaking_5G_development_MBBF_2021.jpg

October 13, 2021

Huawei’s David Wang Talks 10 Wireless Industry Trends in “Roads to Mobile 2030”

DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — During the 12th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), Huawei Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of ICT Infrastructure Managing Board David Wang, delivered a keynote speech titled Roads to Mobile 2030: 10 Wireless Industry Trends, saying “Huawei has identified 10 wireless industry trends to define future-oriented wireless networks and prepare the industry for the Intelligent World 2030.”

David Wang delivering a keynote speech at MBBF 2021

As he explained, by 2030, the digital and physical worlds will become deeply integrated, creating a near-real-life experience. The digital economy will also become a primary driver of the real economy, and industry will shift focus from device efficiency to decision-making efficiency. But these advances will also need us to achieve intrinsic network security and to improve energy efficiency to protect the environment through green growth.

Mobile networks will be an important part of Huawei’s Intelligent World 2030 concept, and so Wang summarized the 10 trends we will see in the mobile industry over the next decade.

Trend 1: 10 Gbps for Physical-Digital Integration

In the future, digital communications will be used to expand and deepen exchanges of information between people, delivering multi-sensory experiences including hearing, sight, touch, and smell. To enable these features, mobile networks will need to support 10 Gbps at millisecond latency everywhere and transmit information in ways that are more semantically organized.

Trend 2: One Network for 100-Billion All-Scenario IoT Connections

Digital society will be reshaped by the 100 billion thing-to-thing connections cellular networks will have to support by 2030. Driven mainly by all-scenario IoT, networks will have to begin offering different types of connections services, differentiated by speed and priority requirements. This means a deterministic experience with lower latency and higher reliability must be delivered and a new form of wireless IoT that features ultra-low power consumption and passive connections must be created.

Trend 3: Satellite-Ground Collaboration for 3D Coverage

Satellite-ground collaboration will plug the gaps in wireless ground coverage and achieve three-dimensional airspace coverage, enabling communications and control for future drones and aircrafts. Mobile networks, with their exiting advanced communications technologies and multi-trillion dollar market, will also likely be used to nurture the new satellite communications technologies.

Trend 4: Integrated Sensing & Communications for True Digital Replicas

Sensing and communications will be further integrated, enabling real-time digital replication of the physical world and facilitating high-level autonomous driving and drone management. Both radio interfaces and network architectures will need to be similarly integrated and sensing resolution technology will need to advance to the centimeter level using ultra-wideband with Massive MIMO to achieve these functions.

Trend 5: Intelligence in Every Industry and Connection

Wireless networks will become fully integrated with AI technologies to enable level-5 fully autonomous driving networks, which will further support automated O&M, deliver premium experiences, and minimize carbon footprints. Future radios will also be designed with native intelligence, and smart radio algorithms will further optimize the management of channel coding and radio resource.

Trend 6: Full-Link and Full-Lifecycle Green Networks

As network traffic grows 100 times over in the next few years, there will be an equal spike in demand for solutions that reduce network energy consumption. Per-bit energy efficiency will also need to improve at a similar rate. Energy efficiency must be considered in every aspect of network design, including radio interfaces, devices, and sites. This will enable the construction of these full-link and full-lifecycle green and sustainable networks.

Trend 7: Flexible Full-Band Sub-100 GHz

By 2030, nations will need an average of 2 GHz mid-band bandwidth and over 20 GHz of bandwidths on millimeter wave to accommodate growing traffic. The industry will need to facilitate the evolution of sub-100 GHz spectrum to NR and redefine spectrum utilization using multi-band integration and other innovative technologies to achieve 10-fold spectral efficiency improvement.

Trend 8: Generalized Multi-Antenna for Reduced Per-Bit Cost

Per-bit data transmission costs will be reduced as multi-antenna technologies begin to be applied to every spectrum band and every scenario. Ultra-wideband modular antennas will support flexible combinations of multiple bands and intelligent reflecting surfaces will apply multi-antenna technologies in more scenarios to enable cloud-based, higher-performance deployment.

Trend 9: Security as the Cornerstone for a Digital Future

Intrinsic device security and intelligent and simplified security at the network layer will become increasingly important as network security and resilience come more into the global spotlight. Operators will need to provide these kinds of simplified security services via cloud-network synergy for their industry customers to promote digital transformation.

Trend 10: Mobile Computing Network for Device-Pipe-Cloud Collaboration

Future mobile networks will support more diverse services, such as the Metaverse, industrial field networks, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. This means that computing will need to be integrated with mobile networks to provide uninterrupted, high-quality services on demand as a single service model will be insufficient for building new digital platforms.

Wang rounded out his presentation by reiterating how these 10 industry trends are a bright sign that the wireless industry is moving quickly in the direction of a fully intelligent world. He closed out promising Huawei will continue to work with industry partners to define these networks of the future and make their vision of the Intelligent World 2030 a reality.

For more information, see the White Paper: 10 Wireless Industry Trends.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1659364/David_Wang_delivering_a_keynote_speech_MBBF_2021.jpg

October 13, 2021

Botswana Court Reserves Judgement After State Appeals Gay Sex Ruling

Botswana’s Court of Appeal on Tuesday reserved judgement in a case in which the state seeks to overturn a 2019 ruling that decriminalized same sex relations. In a landmark case the High Court had ruled in favor of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, but the government is challenging the judgment.

Members of the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community will have to wait a little longer before they know the outcome of an appeal challenging a ruling in their favor.

Court of Appeal judge, Ian Kirby said the bench needs more time before making a determination.

“We will reserve judgement in this case. It’s obviously an important case that we need to research and debate thoroughly so we are not going to promise judgement next week as we have done with others [cases],” he said.

The respondents’ defense lawyer, Tshiamo Rantao, said the LGBT community is entitled to constitutional rights and privacy. He said the laws criminalizing same-sex relations should be expunged.

“The courts have a sacred duty which they must exercise objectively and without fear or fear to test any, we emphasize, any law passed by parliament against the imperatives of the constitution and to strike down any law including a customary law that does not pass constitutional master. That will always be so,” said Rantao.

State attorney, Sidney Pilane however, wants the earlier ruling to be overturned. He argued, the majority of people in Botswana did not concur with the 2019 judgement.

“Batswana respect the law and they respect courts. But don’t assume that they are happy when courts make decisions that courts should not make. Please don’t make that assumption. When Batswana are quiet, please don’t think that they agree. And when they watch court decisions come down, don’t think they necessarily agree with those court decisions,” he said.

Bradley Fortuin, spokesperson for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGAGIBO), says regardless of court’s eventual decision, they will continue to advocate for marginalized groups.

“This is just another opportunity for LEGAGIBO to continue doing advocacy work to ensure that there is visibility, that there is continuous awareness raising and inclusion of marginalized groups, not only the LGBTIQ community but other groups like people living with HIV, people living with disabilities who are often sidelined,” he said.

Before the June 2019 judgement, Botswana’s Penal Code criminalized “unnatural offenses” and “indecent practices” with those found guilty facing up to seven years imprisonment.

Source: Voice of America

October 13, 2021

Congolese Human Rights Advocate Wins Award for Work with Female Victims of Wartime Sexual Abuse

Human rights activist Julienne Lusenge of the Democratic Republic of Congo was recently proclaimed the winner of the 2021 Aurora Humanitarian Prize for her work with wartime victims of sexual violence. She was one of five humanitarian finalists who were up for the award, often referred to as the Nobel prize for humanitarian work.

The sixth Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity was announced Saturday (October 9) in Italy at a ceremony on the Venetian island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni.

Lusenge was awarded the one-million-dollar prize for her tireless work with women and girls abused during wartime and for her efforts in helping bring the perpetrators of rape and sexual violence to justice.

She’s the co-founder and director of the Congolese Women’s Fund.

The other nominees included Gregoire Ahongbonon, who helps people in West Africa with mental illness, Ruby Alba Castano, a Colombian activist who protects the rights of peasants, Ashwaq Moharram, a Yemeni physician who provides life-saving support to victims of starvation and Paul Farmer, an American medical anthropologist and physician.

The ceremony began with music and a special prayer in the monastery of the island of San Lazarus by a sect of Armenian monks who have lived on the island since the early 18th century.

After speeches and a performance by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, the finalists were called on an outdoor stage with a view of the Venetian lagoon.

The name of the winner was announced in what turned out to be a very emotional moment, not only for Lusenge, but for many of those in attendance, which included two women winners of the Nobel peace prize: Iran’s Shirin Ebadi and Liberia’s Leyman Gbowee.

Lusenge was in disbelief and in tears when she heard she had been chosen.

“This prize is very important for all Congolese people, Congolese women and Congolese girls because now we will have enough money to support them,” she expressed.

For many years, Lusenge said, she struggled to find funds to help these women. This prize will contribute a great deal in that regard, she said.

The Aurora prize for Awakening Humanity was established by three philanthropists of Armenian origin: Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan and Ruben Vardanyan in 2015 on the centennial of that country’s genocide. They decided that for eight years — the length of time the atrocities lasted in which one and a half million Armenians perished — the prize would be awarded to extraordinary humanitarians for their work and impact.

Afeyan described it as “a gift from the Armenian community to the world.” Their aim, he added, is to help people who are making a difference in the world in the same way as those who helped Armenians survive.

In addition to creating the annual award for those who have faced personal risk to enable others to survive, Afeyan is also the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a venture capital company focused on biotechnology. The company has “fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures” including Moderna, on which he serves as chairman. Afeyan last year was recognized as one of four U.S. immigrants leading the efforts to find a vaccine for COVID-19.

Source: Voice of America