Tag: technolgies

CCPC – New research and guidance on tipping in Ireland

Consumer watchdog issues guidance for restaurants, cafes, hair salons and other service providers as new technologies change the landscape of tipping

New tipping research from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) has revealed that:

  • 9 in 10 consumers tip at least some of the time
  • Women and over 35s are more likely to tip
  • 2 in 3 believe tipping is becoming less voluntary
  • 3 in 4 would like to see businesses make it easier to opt out of tipping
  • 1 in 5 have recently paid a bill that included an unexpected extra charge
  • 1 in 4 consumers who have encountered standalone tipping terminals have tapped them by mistake

New guidance

The CCPC has issued new guidance based on the research to help restaurant owners and other traders decide how best to collect tips with new technologies.

Published on the CCPC website and sent to industry bodies, the guidance states:

  1. Tipping on a payment terminal should be easy to avoid
  2. Prevent accidental tipping by keeping tipping terminals separate and clearly labelled
  3. Mandatory service charges must be very clearly communicated in advance
  4. Optional service charges must never be automatically added to a bill

Simon Barry, Director of Research, Advocacy and International at the CCPC said, 

“Newer technologies like payment screens and tipping terminals are changing the way we tip for services. It’s important that businesses using these technologies do so in a way that protects the consumer’s right to decide whether and how much to tip.

“Transparency is vital. Any mandatory service charges must be flagged well in advance, optional charges must never be automatically added to bills, and tipping terminals should be placed away from payment terminals to avoid any confusion.”

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) is the statutory body responsible for enforcing and promoting compliance with competition, consumer protection and product safety law, with new and expanding roles in digital and data regulation. We make markets work better for consumers and empower consumers to make informed choices. For more information, visit ccpc.ie

Dell Technologies collaborates with Crann Centre to harness AI for social good

Dell Technologies has today announced that it has teamed up with the Crann Centre, a Cork-based charity, to develop an AI-powered solution that enhances care for children, adults and families living with neuro-physical disabilities. This collaboration has resulted in the development of a bespoke AI-powered intake application that reduces the administrative burden on Crann staff, streamlines intake processes, and enhances organisational efficiencies and service delivery.

The collaboration began as a local volunteering connection, and it has since evolved into a relationship that harnesses the power of AI to support how care is delivered to families living with neuro-physical disabilities. Dell Technologies’ Global Presales team worked closely with Crann to streamline their intake process, reducing processing time by 33%, enhancing data capture, and improving the overall experience for families.

The solution has transformed how Crann performs its client intake appointments, improving the consistency and quality of data captured. The final step, currently in progress, will be the full integration of the app with Crann’s Salesforce system to ensure a single and reliable data source.

With fewer administrative burdens, the Crann team can now devote more time to delivering personalised support, strengthening relationships, and improving care outcomes. This collaboration is a testament to how AI can be used for societal good, increasing Crann’s capacity to serve more families without requiring additional resources.

Speaking about the collaboration Des O’Sullivan, Vice President, Dell Technologies Customer Solution Centres said “At Dell Technologies, we believe innovation truly matters when it drives meaningful change in people’s lives. Through a shared commitment of making a difference, our team at Dell Technologies collaborated with Crann to develop an AI-powered solution keeping in mind Crann’s deep-rooted commitment to family-centred wraparound care.

“With the AI-powered solution that our team helped to create, Crann has increased capacity, allowing them to serve more families than requiring additional resources. The benefits extend far beyond efficiency; Crann team members now have the time and space to focus on deep, meaningful interactions with clients and their families, strengthening emotional and practical support.

“As we look to the future, we’re proud of what has been achieved. Our Dell Technologies team in Ireland and our broader Global Presales team has been at the heart of this journey, bringing Dell’s AI innovation to life in a way that delivers real and lasting value to our community partners.”

The Dell-built solution is designed with future scalability in mind, offering a framework that can be adapted across sectors such as education and customer service.

Crann, which offers wraparound services focused on improving independence and wellbeing, now has increased capacity to deliver support that spans generations underpinned by a shared commitment to personalised care and innovation.

New Dell Technologies and Nutanix solutions aim to transform hybrid cloud management

Dell Technologies today announced the expansion of its 14-year partnership with Nutanix by unveiling two new innovative solutions designed to streamline hybrid cloud environments and provide customers with greater flexibility and control.

The new offerings, sold and delivered by Dell, combine the strengths of Dell PowerEdge servers and Nutanix Cloud Platform software to address the growing complexity and cost pressures facing IT organisations.

With 90% of organisations reporting increased complexity in the past two years, the continued, explosive growth of applications and data has made it more and more critical to manage applications and workloads efficiently.

Dell XC Plus

Dell XC Plus is a turnkey, HCI-based appliance that simplifies hybrid cloud management by integrating Nutanix software on Dell PowerEdge servers. The solution offers a centralised control plane, robust automation, and the Nutanix AHV hypervisor to help enterprises:

  • Simplify hybrid cloud management: By combining user-friendly software from Nutanix and robust PowerEdge servers from Dell, IT teams can seamlessly manage their environments and focus on growth and strategic business outcomes.
  • Streamline operations: Automation capabilities create a more secure, resilient, and agile IT environment, allowing organisations to redirect resources towards innovation rather than maintenance.
  • Optimise performance: Leveraging AI and machine learning, the solution continuously fine-tunes itself to enhance performance and optimise resource planning for both traditional and modern workloads.

 

Dell PowerFlex with Nutanix Cloud Platform

Dell and Nutanix are proud to announce that Dell PowerFlex will be the first external storage supported and integrated with the Nutanix Cloud Platform. This solution natively integrates Dell’s premier software-defined infrastructure with the Nutanix AHV hypervisor and the Nutanix Cloud Platform to create an enhanced hybrid cloud experience and will provide customers with greater storage flexibility by integrating Dell PowerFlex with the Nutanix Cloud Platform.

The new solution is currently in development and will be available to customers in early access later this year. It will enable customers to manage compute and storage independently, while still benefiting from the full suite of Nutanix software features, including enterprise data protection, disaster recovery, networking, and security.

“The extended collaboration between Dell Technologies and Nutanix reflects our shared commitment to innovation, leveraging decades of combined expertise to deliver these new offerings” said Travis Vigil, SVP Product Management, Dell Technologies and Thomas Cornely, SVP Product Management, Nutanix in a blog they co-authored. “In fact, this is just the beginning. Over time, we intend to explore expanding Nutanix Cloud Platform integration with other Dell IP-based storage solutions.”

Dell Technologies Telecom Solutions Accelerate Network Cloud Transformation

Dell Technologies announces new solutions to help communications service providers (CSPs) facilitate network cloud and operations transformation to achieve improved economics and agility, while maintaining network reliability.

Dell is using its decades of experience in digital transformation and deep industry partnerships to design telecom solutions that reduce risk, so CSPs can ease the deployment, automate the operation and simplify the support and lifecycle management of disaggregated network cloud infrastructure.

“The first step in network cloud transformation is installing the cloud infrastructure platform, both architecturally and operationally,” said Dennis Hoffman, senior vice president and general manager, Telecom Systems Business, Dell Technologies. “It takes a team to successfully address the people, process and technology aspects of these programs. We’re contributing not only our technology, but our years of cloud transformation experience to ecosystem partnerships with communication service providers around the world.”

Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite accelerates network cloud transformation

As CSPs integrate a broad ecosystem of technologies to build open, cloud-native networks, they need a simple way to deploy and manage infrastructure from multiple vendors across geographically distributed areas, without compromising network reliability or adding increased costs.

Dell announces the Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite, software designed to automate the orchestration and lifecycle management of multi-vendor, network cloud infrastructure at scale. The Automation Suite, based on open standards and APIs, integrates seamlessly into the network and offers CSP’s the flexibility to deploy and manage their choice of infrastructure across distributed, multi-vendor environments.

The Automation Suite provides:

  • Days or weeks saved on configuration and provisioning using declarative automation, which simplifies server configurations and software deployment.
  • Infrastructure discovery and automation down to the network’s infrastructure layer with open APIs and Dell services to support integration with the telecom business support systems (BSS) and operations support systems (OSS).
  • Comprehensive telemetry on equipment temperature, CPU and memory utilization, to help AI operations make more informed decisions on network operations.
  • Proactive, predictive support with specialized insights from a dedicated telecom-trained team, and new services to design and build custom blueprints tailored to a customer’s unique requirements.

“The world is moving quickly toward cloudified networks while, in parallel, the network ecosystem complexity is multiplying,” said Anthony Goonetilleke, group president of technology and head of strategy, Amdocs. “Amdocs Service Management and Orchestration simplifies the complexity of a growing number of vendors and is pre-integrated with the Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite to offer zero-touch deployment of the RAN, helping customers reliably deploy and manage their disaggregated networks at scale.”

Dell Telecom Infrastructure Block portfolio adds new capabilities, supports Globe Telecom’s network cloud deployment

Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Red Hat is a fully engineered hardware and software solution available with Dell global services. The solution uses Dell servers, such as Dell PowerEdge XR8000 with Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, to simplify telecom cloud design, deployment and lifecycle management. Advancements include:

  • Support for 5G core workloads running at the edge, which builds on existing 5G core and RAN workload support, so CSPs can deploy a validated, consistent cloud platform from the core to the far edge of the network.
  • Integrations with the Dell Telecom Infrastructure Automation Suite, which provides an infrastructure management and orchestration framework to support multi-vendor environments.
  • Dell Technologies Certification on Infrastructure Blocks, to test and certify 5G Core, OSS, BSS and open RAN workloads for Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab. Certification confirms the software and workloads from various partners, beginning with 6D Technologies, Amdocs, Casa Systems, Expeto and MATRIXX Software, will be supported on Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks.

To deploy a telecom cloud across a multi-vendor network, Globe partnered with Dell, using Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Red Hat, to improve their deployment time, increase the efficiency of network operations, and provide faster validation of hardware and software compatibility. Dell collaborated with Amdocs in the Dell Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab, using Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel processors, to validate Amdocs Policy management software on Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks for Red Hat.

“We’re building an open, cloud-native network with multiple vendors, so we can deliver the best network experience for our customers,” said James Lim, vice president, core network planning, engineering and implementation, Globe. “Testing and integrating various vendors demand too much of our time and budget. That’s why we’re now partnering with Dell Telecom Infrastructure Blocks to do the validation and testing for us, so we can focus on how we can use our modern network to deliver services and benefits for our customers.”