Industry news

The virtual conference room needs to die. VR is better used for fun and building relationships.

“Welcome, welcome!” My guide, Philip, waves at me from his seat in a virtual conference room, where he’s wearing a green shirt and sitting at a desk. I’m at Facebook’s Reality Labs headquarters in Burlingame, California, wearing Meta Platform Inc.’s Quest 2 headset. Philip is in another room there as his cartoonish-looking avatar hops to another seat using a button on his virtual dashboard.

Read the full article here.

Britain has dropped behind India to become the world’s sixth largest economy, delivering a further blow to the government in London as it grapples with a brutal cost-of-living shock.

The former British colony leaped past the UK in the final three months of 2021 to become the fifth-biggest economy. The calculation is based in US dollars, and India extended its lead in the first quarter, according to GDP figures from the International Monetary Fund.

Read more on Bloomberg UK here.

Research firm pinpoints standardisation and uniform practices as key to unlocking the full potential of 5G slicing.

Read more on ComputerWeekly here.

Deloitte survey shows the ways in which people are using connected devices and technology to improve and enhance their lives, in particular dealing with the balance of hybrid work.

Read more on ComputerWeekly here.

Indonesian e-commerce unicorn Bukalapak’s multicloud strategy, underpinned by the use of microservices and DevOps, has enabled it to meet the diverse needs of its users while addressing business requirements

Read more on ComputerWeekly here.

Cognizant UK’s winning streak continues in the shape of a large deal with AXA UK & Ireland. The multi-year transformational managed services contract will see the offshore-centric major help to consolidate, modernise and manage part of the insurer’s IT operations.

Read more on TechMarketView here.

The Co-operative Bank (The Co-op) has selected cloud-based technology from banking specialist Finastra as it looks to modernise its treasury infrastructure. The Co-op is implementing Finastra’s Kondor solution which is available via Microsoft Azure and will help the bank to automate manual processes and provide access to ongoing upgrades and innovation.

Read more on TechMarketView here.

Sopra Steria has boosted its capabilities in the transport space with the acquisition of Graffica, a Worcestershire-based provider of simulation products and services to the transport industry. No deal financials have been released.

Read more on TechMarketView here.

New York-listed Robotic Process Automation (RPA) player UiPath has acquired London-based natural language processing (NLP) start up Re:infer for an undisclosed sum.

Read more on TechMarketView here.

Biotech startup iLoF (intelligent Lab on Fiber), has secured c.$5m (£4.1m) to help develop its intelligent drug development platform. The funding includes $4m in equity investment led by Faber, with additional participation from M12 (formerly Microsoft Ventures), Quiet Capital, Lunar Ventures, Alter Venture Partners, re.Mind Capital, Fluxunit, and angel investors. The company also secured an €880k grant from the European Regional Development Fund. The latest investment takes total funding to date to over $8m.

Read more on TechMarketView here.