The new game drive has been meticulously designed with the gamer in mind and features built-in active cooling technology to help maintain thermal conditions and reduce failure risk. It comes equipped with two 7.5W USB Type-A charging ports to make charging gaming gear or accessories even easier and is carefully crafted to stand either vertically or sit horizontally so as to keep devices charged and prepared for battle at a moment’s notice.

The drive comes with a 3-year limited warranty.

This number is five times higher than 2015’s demand and represents a growth of 56 per cent compared to last year. TopDev’s data also showed this is the highest growth rate in the recruitment need for IT personnel since 2015.

Manpower demand is rising fast in areas like artificial intelligence, data science, big data, and cybersecurity.

“Viet Nam’s technology community is facing two waves,” said Nguyen Huu Binh , TopDev’s CEO.

First, foreign investment funds are flocking to Viet Nam and following more new openings of start-ups with innovative technological solutions to serve rising social demands. Second is the wave of digital transformation of enterprises which need to apply advanced technology to enhance competition and wish to hire more IT staff.

“The wave of tech start-ups and the increase in projects from big companies have contributed significantly to the surging demand for IT personnel,” Binh said and added that “when the market is in short supply, IT engineers know their value, so retaining them is a headache for many businesses”.

The thirst for IT workers is also shown in the results of the 2019 university entrance exam when admission scores for the IT major at universities exceeded other “traditional top majors” such as medical and pharmaceutical.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Mạnh Hung said Viet Nam needed to develop new 50,000 ICT enterprises to accelerate the country’s digitalisation process as the country is building a strategy of transitioning to a digital economy.

The hiring demand for IT engineers has been growing stronger than ever and at this rate, it will need to fill 400,000 jobs by the end of 2021, but until now, only about 200,000 people are qualified for the work requirement, according to the report.

Short supply

Despite rising salaries and benefits, Viet Nam will face a shortage of 90,000 IT workers in 2019, 100,000 by 2020 and 190,000 by 2021.

IT workers may be offered salaries of up to US$18,000 per year but many businesses still struggle to find suitable staff. The top five highest-paying jobs include machine learning/artificial intelligence, data scientist, dev-ops specialist, full-stack developer and embedded developer, with monthly salaries ranging between $1,120 and $1,497.

According to data from the Ministry of Education and Training, the country has a total of 235 universities nationwide, including 153 IT training colleges with annual output of 50,000 IT graduates. However, only 30 per cent of them are able to work right after graduation while the other 70 per cent require additional training.

“The issue of training high quality IT personnel is becoming a focus of both the education sector and IT businesses to satisfy work demand,” the report said.

HA NOI Viet Nam jumped from fifth to third in the list of most active start-up ecosystems in the six largest ASEAN economies in only two years.

The change was from the first half of 2017 to the corresponding period of 2019, with the country trailing only Indonesia and Singapore.

According to the Vietnam Tech Investment Report released recently by Singapore-based venture capital firm Cento Ventures and Viet Nam’s early stage venture fund ESP Capital, the amount of invested capital and the number of technology deals done in the country have grown six-fold in the period.

The report showed local start-ups raised a total of US$246 million during the first half of 2019. Of which, the three largest investments, including Tiki, VNPay, and VNG, captured 63 per cent of the funding. In terms of sectors, key blocks of the digital economy such as retail and payment accounted for almost 60 per cent of investment.

Multi-vertical companies are growing well and have captured a 12 per cent share of capital, while emerging sectors such as fintech, real estate and logistics are only just beginning to pick up in Viet Nam, collectively taking a 10 per cent share of total capital.

According to the report, 2018 and 2019 have seen a new wave of Vietnamese start-ups that raised $50 million to $100 million rounds for the first time. If this trend progresses, more Vietnamese companies could approach the $500 million and eventually $1 billion valuation mark in the years to come.

Between 2017 and 2018, most deals came from Singapore and Japan-based investors. This year, Korean venture capital firms led as one of the most active investors during the year’s first half, having participated in almost 30 per cent of deals. Notably, many of the Korean financiers invested in Vietnamese start-ups for the first time. Local investors were also active, with participation in some 36 per cent of deals. The number of deals grew from 13 during the first half of 2018 to 21 deals in the same period of 2019.

Enterprises also play an active role in Viet Nam’s start-up ecosystem. For example, FPT has long provided investment support to local start-ups. Last year saw Vingroup set up its corporate ventures capital (CVC), while other prominent corporations such as Masan and VietjetAir are considering similar initiatives, the report noted.

Banks like VPBank and TPBank provide preferential lending programmes for start-ups, while VPBank and UP Coworking offer free facilities for qualified companies. Viettel, the largest Vietnamese State-owned corporation, has run and sponsored numerous start-up events such as Viet Challenge, IOT Hackathon, and Viettel Advanced Solution Track.

Viet Nam has experienced a surge in both the amount of capital invested and the number of deals done since the beginning of 2018, with the 2018 fiscal year totalling $444 million, whilst the 2019 fiscal year is expected to reach $800 million.

Cento Ventures believes the amount raised during the second half of the year will be significantly higher than that of the first as several later stage companies that raised funds in 2018 and early 2019 are in the process of closing another sizable investment round or expanding their current round.

The country shares similar trends with other Southeast Asian markets. Online retail attracts a large portion of funding, while sectors such as financial services, real estate, and logistics are also gradually growing. Multi-vertical companies are being formed as mature digital companies seek to expand outside their core business and are likely to attract an increasing share of funding in the coming years.

Simultaneously, differences exist. Education is among the country’s better-funded sectors. Payment firms continue to attract the majority of fintech investment as Viet Nam continues to develop the necessary digital payment infrastructure.

Dubbed as “DeX In-Vehicle,” the solution will provide police officers the ability to dock their Galaxy smartphones and access policing applications on a dash-mounted display and keyboard.

The officers in the pilot — taking place across the city’s 11th District this year — will be able to access computer-aided dispatch and other Chicago Police Department systems to conduct background checks and complete reports, according to Samsung.

Photo and video evidence captured on the smartphone will also be immediately accessible to attach to reports.

To announce the piloting, the Chicago Police Department held a press conference on Wednesday, local time.

“Nearly half of all Chicago Police officers have a department-issued Samsung smartphone already,” said CDP Superintendent Eddie Johnson. “The idea is to give officers everything they need to process a scene or respond to an incident in the palm of their hand.”

First introduced in 2017, Samsung DeX enables users to connect their smartphone to a display via an HDMI cable and access a PC-like experience, complete with paired monitor and mouse.

Users can multitask by accessing multiple apps with resizable windows and typical desktop features like drag-and-drop and keyboard shortcuts.

Beyond the vehicle, DeX can also be leveraged to replace computing terminals in the police station.

Returning to the report center, officers can connect their smartphone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to complete paperwork.

“The solution will provide a seamless digital transition for police officers from the street, to the vehicle and to the station,” a Samsung official said.

Google Lens’ OCR – previously already able to identify objects in photos – now allows users to search their photos based on text embedded in the image or even convert that text into editable digital text. — Google

With the feature, users no longer have to memorise tricky cafe WiFi passwords and can simply deploy OCR to make short work of copying and pasting the password into their phones, for example.

The feature is useable within the Google Photos backup service, which now also lets users search their collections for a specific photo based on text found in the image, such as those found in signboards, posters or business cards.

Previously, Google Photos was already able to identify objects like people, pets or food and leverage the embedded GPS data to make location queries.

Former Google staff Hunter Walk noticed the otherwise unannounced feature and tweeted a step-by-step on how to use it.

Google Photo’s official Twitter account confirmed the find, tweeting that the feature was introduced early August and is meant to help users search for photos based on text embedded in the image.

9to5Googlereports that Google Photos is able to search even when the words are relatively small in the image or when the photo is taken at an angle. The feature performs better with screenshots.

The feature is already live and works on Android, iOS and its web client versions.

By doing so, Zong has become “the first and only operator to officially test 5G services in the country”, the statement added.

An official from Zong while speaking to DawnNewsTVexplained that while 4G speeds cover a bandwidth of 50-100mb/s, 5G will deliver at least 1GB/s. He said that in today’s trials, a speed of 1.14 GB/s was achieved.

“This success marks an important milestone in Pakistan’s telecom sector,” said Zong CEO Wang Hua at an event in Islamabad held to conduct the test.

“5G will herald a new era in Pakistan’s social and economic sectors,” he added.

According to the company’s handout, “Zong believes that 5G will bring more profound and long-term changes to Pakistan’s economic transformation, social progress, and people’s livelihood improvement in future. It is expected that 5G will have an impact on health care, agriculture and education.”

The Zong CEO also announced that the company will establish a 5G innovation centre in Pakistan in collaboration with Huawei, for which a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was also signed at the event.

He reminded the audience that five years ago, it was CMPak that had first brought 4G technology to Pakistan. Hua said that the introduction of 5G services is an important pillar to meet future technological needs.

PTA chairman retired Maj Gen Amir Azeem Bajwa also spoke on the occasion. “The country will soon be able to enjoy 5G services which will be introduced for commercial purposes,” he said.

He said that the Authority was making efforts in this regard and recognises that the introduction of 5G services would bring in a technological revolution.

Telecommunication Division Secretary Shoaib Siddiqui lauded the efforts by PTA and congratulated CMPak on becoming the first to have the achievement under their belt.

“I would like to take this moment in congratulating Zong for becoming the first Pakistani telecommunications operator to have successfully conducted the 5G trial and putting Pakistan on a short-list of countries which are 5G ready,” he said.

“Zong is an important part of the ties that bind the two countries together,” added Siddiqui.

The IT secretary said that the government aims to bring in other major developments via the Information Technology sector as well. “It is the right of every Pakistani to be able to compete in terms of technology with the developed countries of the world,” he added.

The company recently conducted the first assessment of its material suppliers, in which it evaluated the suppliers’ sustainability by examining working conditions, human rights of employees, safety of the work environment, management of material supplies and renewable energy use.

Sustainability accounts for 20 percent of the total evaluation score, which is equivalent to the proportion for product quality and development capabilities.

“As the importance of sustainable management of material supply chains, including ethics in purchasing battery materials, is on the rise globally, the company will value sustainability of suppliers as much as their product quality,” a company official said.

LG Chem had previously offered additional scores to suppliers with constant activities related to sustainable management.

The Korean battery firm will now demand improvements from suppliers that do not meet the sustainable management evaluation factor, it said.

In a bid to help underrated suppliers, LG Chem will provide educational programs and activities.

The move is in line with the growing global trend of prioritizing ethicality and sustainability.

Germany-based automaker Volkswagen has said it will introduce a sustainability rating system for assessing its contractors starting July. Under the assessment system, Volkswagen suppliers are rated through the whole process of manufacturing parts, ranging from purchasing raw materials in the initial stage to the final stage of finishing up their products.

Meanwhile, LG Chem has adopted a blockchain-based system in a consortium with IBM, Ford and Huayou Cobalt this year for a transparent evaluation and management system.

In 2016, the company enacted 10 assessment items in the fields of human rights, labor rights, ethical management and safe environment. It also banned use of unethically purchased raw materials in 2017.

“Sustainable innovation is the foremost aspect of the battery business throughout the entire process of securing raw materials to disposing the products,” said Shin Hak-cheol, vice chairman of LG Chem. “LG Chem’s solution will contribute to creating a circular economy.”

According to the Red Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook 2019, 30 per cent of the organisations surveyed have a hybrid cloud strategy, and 45 per cent of them are already using two or more cloud platforms.

Offering the flexibility and speed needed to address changing business demands effectively, hybrid cloud can help enterprises gain business agility and better compete in the increasingly volatile business environment.

Hybrid cloud provides a mixture of public and private (on-premises or managed/hosted) cloud environments that are connected and managed by a single management strategy.

With hybrid cloud, enterprises can choose the type of cloud that best suits each workload, as well as move workloads across IT environments as necessary. For instance, a retailer can host its e-commerce website on a public cloud but process payments made on the site in a private cloud to better protect customer data and comply with regulations.

Even though hybrid cloud can help organisations to become more agile, some are still hesitant to adopt it. Here are four common myths that hinder hybrid cloud adoption:

Myth 1: Hybrid cloud may cause organisations to lose visibility and control over their IT infrastructure

Since hybrid cloud is made up of more than one IT environment, it may be difficult for enterprises to have complete visibility of their entire IT infrastructure. The lack of visibility can make it challenging for organisations to monitor and control their environment for security and compliance, especially if this is conducted manually.

Organisations can counter this by ensuring that the foundation of their hybrid cloud provides predictive IT analytics capabilities. By using tools that provide ongoing in-depth analysis of the IT infrastructure, they can proactively identify vulnerabilities that could threaten the security, performance and stability of their hybrid cloud so as to stay ahead of them.

Myth 2: Adopting hybrid cloud may lead to a security headache

Traditionally, IT security focuses on fortifying, maintaining and policing the data centre perimeter. However, perimeter security is less effective in securing hybrid cloud. The highly connected multiple cloud environments open more doors to attackers and can bypass traditional perimeter defences. It can also be tedious to manually patch or configure systems from the mixed environments of hybrid cloud.

Another challenge here is that the need for security policies and plans does not end when an application is retired. Coupling this with the increased role that large numbers of short-lived “immutable” application instances play in a hybrid cloud environment, manually monitoring for configuration drift and correcting it as needed is no longer an option.

However, these challenges can be mitigated with the right tools in place, including automation tools to protect IT infrastructure. With automated patching and remediation, critical security risks can be resolved in a controlled manner and without delays.

Myth 3: Organisations that embrace hybrid cloud will be more vulnerable to supply chain risks

Just as in the saying “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, an organisation is only as secure as its weakest link. Since the hybrid cloud environment may include cloud platforms from multiple vendors, it can be challenging to ensure that all those solutions were built with security in mind and that the respective vendors will continue to update and patch them.

To address this concern, organisations should ensure that their hybrid cloud comes with a console that allows them to understand the IT risks they are facing, at a glance. It should list the critical issues prioritised by an overall risk assessment rating, and display the probability and potential impact of each issue to help companies focus on the issues that most impact risk reduction. It should also offer tailored resolution steps to help IT teams quickly and confidently address risks to avoid downtime.

Myth 4: Hybrid cloud will make it challenging to comply with regulations

Although most companies today are using cloud technology to a certain degree, those in highly regulated industries are still required to ensure that their distributed environments meet custom or regulatory security baselines for compliance and auditing requirements. Making changes to configurations manually can be a time-consuming, complex and error-prone process.

Those changes may also go undetected, which may prevent the organisation from passing a security audit.

As such, companies should look to enhance their hybrid cloud with tools that can provide centralised visibility across the entire heterogeneous infrastructure. Tools that automatically scan the IT environment for non-compliant configurations and remediate them can help too.

Adopting hybrid cloud may seem like a daunting task as it can introduce additional risks and complexities. However, organisations can overcome those challenges by moving away from being reactive to issues to taking a more proactive and intelligent approach to infrastructure management.

One way of achieving this is by ensuring that the foundation of their hybrid cloud provides them with knowledge about their infrastructure to accurately predict potential issues and pinpoint existing technical risks.

It should also offer tailored remediation steps along with automated resolution so that critical and configuration problems can be resolved quickly and before business operations are affected. With these capabilities, organisations can spend less time keeping the lights on, and instead sustain business success with hybrid cloud by developing and delivering innovation on a flexible and secure platform to meet business goals.

Brendan Paget is director of portfolio management in the APAC Office of Technology, Red Hat

The joint venture between Nomura Holdings Inc. and Line Financial Corp., a unit of Line Corp., lets users trade shares of 100 major companies and nine types of exchange traded funds, starting from buying one share worth only several hundred yen, for example, according to the company’s announcement on Tuesday.

Line Securities aims to win over beginner investors, such as young workers, by making the service available until 9 p.m. on weekdays.

Payments in the service can be made through the Line Pay online payment service, in addition to via bank accounts.

The service is currently available only on smartphones running on Google LLC’s Android operating system.

“We want even beginners to accumulate experience and knowledge in investing,” Line Securities Co-Chief Executive Officer Yoshikazu Yonenaga said at a press conference.

Line Financial has a 51 percent stake in Line Securities, while Nomura owns 49 percent.

This junior camp, held for five consecutive years, aims to provide young people in the Asean region an opportunity to learn about different cultures and build a sustainable youth network. In a press statement, PTTOR stated that it believes in the potential of young people as they are the seeds for a sustainable and powerful future for their nations.

“The OR Seeding the Future Asean Camp is open to undergraduate students majoring in engineering, business and other related fields,” the press release said.

This year’s theme is “Digital Aspiration”, which will help applicants gain new experiences and network with their Asean friends. The participants will also get a chance to visit different OR businesses in Thailand for seven days and six nights from November 3 to 9 free of charge.

To qualify, interested students are required to:

Click “like” on the ORSeedingTheFuture Facebook fanpage;

Create a 2-minute-long introducing themselves, stating the reason for joining the camp and answer the question: “As a new-age leader, how will you apply digital technology to marketing?” Completed video clips can be posted on the page;

The deadline for posting videos is September 20;

Results will be announced on October 3.