The KIT -- Knowledge and Information Technology -- No. 287

The KIT

Knowledge & Information Technology

No. 287 - 3 May 2021

In this Issue

· Process Automation News

· CSA CISO Summit

· Requirements Engineering

· AI Explainability

· Analytics Setup Guidebook

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Process Automation News

Since the last issue, we've taken another look at workflow automation tools and found some interesting developments.

Venki, based in São Paulo, has been selling HEFLO since 2002. The process modeling tool, which follows the BPMN standard, is free for personal use. The paid version allows process execution, including data entry through forms, manager approvals, dashboards, metrics, and integration capabilties with other applications through web services. Not bad for a 10-person company!

Zoho, better known as a CRM vendor, just launched a separate brand, Qntrl (pronounced "control") to deliver "sophisticated, yet easy-to-use workflow orchestration software." The marketing effort is visible (including renaming managers "orchestrators" and implausibly claiming that the product is "the world's #1 workflow orchestration software"), but any novel capabilities that may hide (or not) behind all the hype and buzzwords n't readily apparent.

Finally, Pegasystems has launched Pega Process AI, which is about "smarter automation" of large-scale processes. This seems to combine data analytics, business rules, and some natural-language processing to process customer or user queries. The ratio of marketing to innovation seems high again.

CSA CISO Summit at the RSA Conference

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is holding a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Summit on May 18 during the RSA Conference (8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., Eastern US time). In announcing this new virtual event, CSA pointed out that it is not limited to CISOs or other C-level attendees, but is open to "all cybersecurity professionals looking to understand how their role contributes to an organization's cloud strategy." The topics will include:

C-Suite Challenges in the Cloud
Evolving Cybersecurity with the Cloud
Transitioning to the Cloud
Strengthening Cloud Operations

The event web page also includes an offer to attend the Digital Expo at the RSA Conference (May 17-20) for free, or to get a $100 discount for the full conference pass.

Requirements Engineering

In a recent mailing about its training resources (a very rich catalog, by the way), the Association for Computing Machinery listed the book Requirements Engineering for Software and Systems, by Philip A. Laplante. ACM members can read the book online here for free, but note that this is the second edition. There is third edition, which costs USD 80-$100 depending on medium and seller. For most ACM members, the free edition is probably good enough.

Adam Wenchel on AI Explainability

Adam Wenchel, CEO of Arthur AI, discussed bias, fairness, and the explainability of machine learning in an interview in TheSequence. He mentioned the steps required to maximize fairness: ensure that models and datasets are documented and understood, understand the system's impact on end users. define what fairness means for the specific application (what is it that you want to minimize?). He then described some explanation techniques that work well on blackbox models (e.g., deep learning).

Arthur AI is a product that monitors the execution of AI models to achieve performance optimization, bias detection and mitigation, and decision explanation.

TheSequence is a short, free weekly newsletter on AI core ML concepts, summarizing advances and research papers in a few paragraphs. The paid option, TheSequence Edge, describes three things each week: an AI concept, a research paper, and a new framework or tool.

The Analytics Setup Guidebook

Holistics has published a guidebook "for technical team members who are looking into setting up an analytics stack for their company for the very first time." The book is divided into four topics:

High-level overview of an analytics setup
Centralizing data
Data Modeling for Analytics
Using Data

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