Ana Lamelas

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Content and Digital Coordinator - Xpand IT

Building the Future: together we activated Portugal!

Building the Future: together we activated Portugal!

by Ana Lamelas
2019-02-18
2 min

The first edition of the event Building the Future: Ativar Portugal (Activate Portugal) took place in January (between the 29th and the 30th) and was organized by Microsoft, with the help of the agency imatch.

More than 3000 participants, 100 speakers, 60 sessions and 50 partners. These were the numbers of one of the most waited technological event, that ended up uncovering that the investment in digital transformation is, in fact, one of the main priorities for a quite significant number of companies. Xpand IT had the privilege to take part of this huge success and can confirm that along with Building the Future: together we activated Portugal!

For Paula Braz, Marketing Manager of Xpand IT, “Building the Future was an extremely interesting event, since it  allowed to create (or recreate) a vision of  not-so-far future through experiences provided by all partners in different sessions – from the most technical ones, such as our “Cognitive Lab”, in which we offered the possibility to learn to develop a bot, to the most conceptual ones, such as the talks from Gerd Lehoar (writer and founder of Futures Agency) or Jim Stolze (active leader of the TEDx community and co-founder of Aigency)”.

As Microsoft’s partner, Xpand IT had the opportunity to promote some of the topics of the event, using artificial intelligence applied to gamification applied in the Sentiment Meter, as well as by showing a Retail Bot, in the Intelligent Day area, or even with sessions by Jorge Borralho, the Project Manager, and Sérgio Viana, Digital Xperience Lead from Xpand IT.

For Sérgio Viana, Digital Xperience Lead of Xpand IT, “Embracing technology and empowering it brings value to the business, as well as to our human abilities; it is the path to build solutions that make a difference. There is no need to fear innovation, but one should use it with the right purpose, based on fundamental and structural ethical values”.

Ana LamelasBuilding the Future: together we activated Portugal!
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Xpand IT at WSO2 Con 2018

Xpand IT at WSO2 Con 2018

by Ana Lamelas
2019-02-18
2 min

WSO2 Con, the official technology conference of WSO2, took place in three places around the world this year: in the USA (San Francisco) in July, Asia (Colombo) in August and Europe (London) in November. As a certified partner and retailer of WSO2, Xpand IT took part in the European event on the 13th to 15th of November, in the Hilton London Bankside hotel.

The European WSO2Con of 2018 was focused mostly on WSO2’s opinion on Agile Integration and API-oriented business contexts, in a world where integration needs are increasing with the blooming of systems and apps.

The three days of presentations comprised the strategic vision of WSO2 on integration, their architecture and applicability definitions, technical abilities and business applications of their products, and case studies of successful WSO2 implementations, presented by the customers themselves. The morning, lunch and afternoon breaks also contributed to creating a networking environment between partners and customers.

Moreover, an “Oxygen Bar” was available, where experts from all technological areas from WSO2 were constantly available for any additional information on the products or their use.

Day 1 – Digital Transformation

The first morning was filled with various keynotes, the first being presented by the CEO of WSO2, Tyler Jewell. In this keynote, the strategic vision of WSO2 for the next few years was presented, reinforcing the trend towards integration and the reasons that increasingly justify an “API first” approach by organizations. This same vision was supported by Massimo Pezzini, Vice-President of Gartner, with view of HIP (Hybrid Integration Platform) as a digital facilitator for organizations. In the afternoon, there were parallel streams with three different contexts: the red room had Integration and Architecture, the yellow room had Stream Processing and Identity Management, and the green room had Open Banking and success stories.

Day 2 – Agility in Integration

The second day had Agility as its main theme, and it started with two very interesting keynotes from Aria van Bannekum, founder of the Agile Manifesto, and Paul Fremantle, CTO and Co-Founder of WSO2. In the afternoon, there were again three parallel sessions: the red room was focused on API Management, the green room on success stories centred on the API ecosystem, and the yellow room on complete WSO2 product demonstrations.

Day 3 – Ballerina

The last day of the conference was integrated with the event Ballerina Day 2018.

Although it was complemented by exclusive sessions for debates on subjects related to the new partnership programme, this day was totally focused on Ballerina, an open-source and cloud-native programming language that WSO2 has been developing for the last three years. This programming language aims to address flaws created by “non-agile” middleware products and by current programming languages, which are too complex to deal with in integration scenarios. Ballerina promises to simplify this level of complexity and promote agility, providing middleware abilities with the minimal possible amount of code.

It is also oriented towards cloud and DevOps environments; therefore, it allows for integration with Decker and Kubernetes.

Ana LamelasXpand IT at WSO2 Con 2018
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Advantages of implementing Big Data in your company

Advantages of implementing Big Data in your company

by Ana Lamelas
2019-01-14
4 min

Big Data is not a ‘trend’. It is a necessity associated with most large, or even medium or small, companies that can no longer get sufficient value from the data produced by more traditional Business Intelligence tools. Big Data plays an important role in boosting business, and many companies are already aware of that. According to Forbes, the global market for Big Data (software and services) will grow from 42 trillion dollars, in 2018, to 103 trillion dollars in 2027.

There are many advantages to implementing Big Data in your company, and having a well-defined strategy is a halfway house to being able to make well-informed decisions, which can be a key to success for your business.

What is Big Data?

Big Data is the ability to analyse and/or process very large amounts of data, based either on its volume or on the number of ‘data points’ generated. The concept of Big Data comes to the fore when companies face such a great flow of data that conventional processing and analysis tools cannot handle it effectively.

Data can be structured, semi-structured or unstructured. Structured data are, for example, data from purchases or sales from an organisation or information from forms or operational tables. Unstructured or semi-structured data are information generated without an established order and from sources such as, for example, social media, user logs in web or mobile apps, sharing of opinions or files.

According to data from Harvard Business Review, only 20% of the data that gets to companies is structured, while the other 80% is semi-structured or unstructured. Moreover, the percentage of that structured data that is used to support decision-making and to extract insights is less than 50%; however, for semi-structured or unstructured data, that percentage falls to 1%.

The Big Data concept can be characterised by five Vs:

  • Volume: massive amounts of data are generated and need to be stored and processed. According to the website Statista, already in 2018, 10.6 zettabytes were generated worldwide from cloud data centres.
  • Velocity: the velocity of generating, processing and analysing data can be more important than volume, since real-time or near-real time information provides great agility to companies that have a Big Data strategy implemented.
  • Variety: data can originate from various sources, such as normal data bases, social media, web pages, financial transactions, emails, sensors (IoT), audio, text or video files, archives, forums, etc.
  • Veracity: is the generated data reliable, according to its source or origin?
  • Value: do the generated data have true value for a company? It is necessary to assess if those data will, in fact, generate new opportunities, increase income or optimise costs, for example.

Advantages of implementing a well-defined strategy

So, we know that implementing a Big Data strategy has become a necessity for large organisations, and the focus has changed from “whether to use Big Data” to “how to use Big Data more efficiently”.

We also know that Big Data opens doors to better informed decision-making, based on extremely complex analysis, and that it allows the collection of important insights to optimise the information gathered. Consequently, the decision to implement a Big Data strategy must come from business teams and not from the IT departments that must ensure the technical execution of the project in the most efficient way. Basically, it is those business teams that will get value from the gathered data for their daily work and for the definition of  strategy.

However, what are the true advantages of implementing a Big Data project? What will be the advantages to the competitiveness of your business? We identify three of the main advantages of implementing Big Data in your company:

Advantage 1: Informed decision-making

With data analysis carried out by Big Data technologies, it is possible to find purchase or behaviour patterns that support decision-making from business departments. For example, if a marketing team has information that a certain family buys the same product every single month, it can send discounts for that same product through digital or physical mailing, in order to ensure that the customers stay faithful.

Advantage 2: Reduced costs

Data generated from or for a company are stored, processed and analysed, resulting in finding important business insights or the identification of gaps and errors. Working on data previously analysed and having access, for example, to constant behaviour or purchase trends, allows companies to launch more efficient campaigns that reach directly to the desired target and, therefore, can register a better ROI. This way, optimising the use of a budget will make teams more efficient – also increasing their productivity.

Advantage 3: Possibility to predict future situations

Usually, in Big Data, there are three types of analysis that can be carried out and complement each other:

  • Descriptive analytics, the type of analysis that describes what is happening, often in real-time. By the use of data aggregation and data mining, it is possible to access a picture from the past and understand the reason for a departure or a change – or just summarise a certain aspect.
  • Predictive analytics, the type of analysis that predicts what might happen in the future, relying on statistics and algorithms and providing scenarios of statistically probable situations.
  • Prescriptive analytics, based on optimisation, simulation algorithms, machine learning and computational models; this is quite a complex type of analysis, which seeks to answer the question “what should we do in a given situation?” Basically, the scenarios created will work as specifications of different actions and their expected outcomes, allowing the company to choose the scenario that represents least risk, for example.

Practical examples

Now that you know the advantages of implementing Big Data in your company and how to establish specific and measurable goals, the question is: how can you benefit from the data generated from the organisation, based on the area it impacts?

Here are a few practical examples:

  • Data from sensors in transportation systems;
  • Analysis of financial data to prevent fraud (for example, by detecting the use of a credit card from an unusual user);
  • Analysis of network traffic;
  • Monitoring mentions on social media to assess if the emotions towards a brand/company are positive or negative;
  • Information on traffic flows to predict which times will be more problematic.
Ana LamelasAdvantages of implementing Big Data in your company
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Tableau & Jira: A new way to look at your projects

Tableau & Jira: A new way to look at your projects

by Ana Lamelas
2019-01-14
3 min

Tableau is a self-service BI platform that allows the identification of valuable insights and provides advanced analysis, visualisations and the capability to share information quickly. As we all know, with the digital transformation era and with all the information surrounding our daily lives, the need to make decisions based on facts increases – this implies the ability to look at data and to be able to analyse and make decisions based on that data. Decisions taken on operational teams are no different, and in a service desk management team (and in bug fixing), having access to the numbers is the path to optimising teams and getting better results.

So, integrating Tableau and Jira is a new way to look at your projects because even though Jira offers some options to create reports or to get essential metrics, only with a tool such as Tableau will your team be able to cross-reference data with other data sources and create great looking dashboards or advanced analytics. This blog post aims to explain in detail how it is done.

Tableau is a visualisation tool, and it is divided into three modules: Tableau Desktop (allows the connection to all types of databases and enables the creation of business rules, field nomination and an overview of all data); Tableau Server (where you can publish views and share information with other team members – granting and removing access, writing comments and editing views); and Tableau Data Prep (which is an ETL tool that helps users prepare data and extract data from a variety of sources, transform that data and output it, saving much precious time).

Jira, as a project management tool, is not intended to analyse data in detail or to extract insights. It does have some features to create reports or to obtain some information: it has widgets; but if your team has different needs, for example, if your team truly needs to cross-reference data, you will need Tableau (because Jira can only access its own data). For example, to compare data from Jira with a timesheet application to see if the time registered in one app matches the time logged on the other app, you would need to install the All-In-One Tableau connector.

The All-In-One (AIO) Tableau connector is an app for Jira that implements a Web Data Connector (WDC) for Tableau. The WDC enables connections to data through HTTP when the data source does not have a Tableau native connector. The data is obtained and placed in an extract that becomes available to either Tableau Desktop or Server.

Setup

For an app to connect to Tableau through the WDC, you need to whitelist the corresponding URL available on the server. Make sure your sysadmin performs this step, and be aware that multiple keys will be generated, so the URL pattern and command need to be something along these lines:

tabadmin whitelist_webdataconnector -a  https://yourJIRAdomain/plugins/servlet/aio-tb/public/tableauconnect(.*)

Connecting to data

  1. Open Jira
    1. Obtain your AIO connector URL. Each URL provides access on behalf of a particular user, ensuring you will only have access to your own projects:
  1. On Tableau Desktop:
    1. Select the WDC connection type
    2. Paste the URL and click enter
    3. Define a name for this connection – perhaps the project name – and a JQL Query (to get all issues from a project, use: project = PROJECTID)
    4. Choose the fields or subjects of fields to retrieve, and click continue
    5. Depending on your selection, the WDC makes available multiple labels that you can now join as normal Tableau data sources
    6. Start your analysis
    7. Publish if you want to share

The result

You can now explore Jira data, create powerful dashboards, extract the most valuable insights and increase your team performance – all with a fantastic tool called Tableau!

Ana LamelasTableau & Jira: A new way to look at your projects
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Sentiment Meter: the perfect mix between Gamification and Artificial Intelligence

Sentiment Meter: the perfect mix between Gamification and Artificial Intelligence

by Ana Lamelas
2019-01-10
2 min

The Sentiment Meter is an artificial intelligence (AI) solution conceived, developed and designed by Xpand IT and combines two components: gamification and artificial intelligence. It is a game of emotions in which, after the user fills in a small form, the software randomly selects an emotion that the user has to try to express to the best of their ability. After photographing this moment, the Sentiment Meter evaluates the user’s performance and gives the user a score. In fact, this game has turned out to be a real success, and it can be said that the Sentiment Meter is the perfect mix between gamification and artificial intelligence.

This game was born from the need to create something that would not only show Xpand IT’s technical abilities – ­from our new AI Solutions Centre – but also that would be able to entertain people coming to our stands in the countless events in which we take part. IDC Directions 2018 and Web Summit were the first conferences we took the Sentiment Meter to, and we can say that it did not go unnoticed. Here are some pictures of those moments:

The technology

The logic is very simple: the player spins the wheel of emotions, the computer selects an emotion/facial expression and the player simply has to express that emotion with his/her face. Finally, the interface scores to the player and he/she wins a prize. It seems quite simple; but, actually, what is behind this analysis of emotions is an intelligent algorithm from Microsoft: Azure Cognitive Services. In this case, we use the Face API, which allows processing and recognizing faces and identifies which emotion a person is expressing. This algorithm is fueled by each use and by the pictures taken all over the world.

The whole infrastructure is based on the cloud, in Azure. Some other Microsoft tools were also used, such as SignaIR, which manages interactions in real time between the screen that presents the game and the tablet that gives the commands to the person playing. Moreover, a .NET Core open source framework was used as the basis for this project, allowing for the development of web and cloud apps. The project’s front end was developed on the web with HTML, CSS and Javascript, also relying on some extensions, such as JQuery, Ajax and p5.js.

The team

This whole project would not have been possible without the teamwork of members from our Digital Xperience, UX/UI and Marketing teams, who were able to design and mastermind this solution: Francisco Correia, Senior Project Manager, and Ricardo Duarte, Developer, both from the Digital Xperience department; Marina Mendes, UX/UI Designer, and all the other members of the Marketing team who ensure its proper functioning during events.

 These are the screens of the game:

The Sentiment Meter sets the direction for what it is possible to do today by using artificial intelligence and good ideas born in simple conversations!

Ricardo Duarte, Developer at Xpand IT

With this project we were able to show that integrating Artificial Intelligence services can, even today, set the bar high, whether it concerns interactivity or decision-making.

Francisco Correia, Senior Project Manager at Xpand IT

We were able to bring the user closer to the interface by thinking in emotions and conveying them to technology in a fun and relaxed way.

Marina Mendes, UX/UI Designer at Xpand IT
Ana LamelasSentiment Meter: the perfect mix between Gamification and Artificial Intelligence
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Xpand IT’s new Artificial Intelligence Center

Xpand IT’s new Artificial Intelligence Center

by Ana Lamelas
2019-01-07
2 min

The US Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Artificial Intelligence (AI) as:  a field of computer science that works on the simulation of intelligent behaviour in computers; the ability of machines to copy intelligent human behaviour. In fact, this is exactly what Xpand IT seeks to achieve with the new Artificial Intelligence centre: to incorporate an intelligence component in all areas of our society.

AI is a trend that is here to stay, and it will not be long before all companies have incorporated at least one solution simulating human intelligence in their systems, in order to accomplish basic tasks on a daily basis. However, let’s take it easy – we still are not at the level of The Matrix, or Ex Machina! The main focus of Xpand IT is to find real use cases and make  prototype solutions that can ultimately be presented to the end customer. There are plenty of examples of the use of AI that are meant to reduce effort in certain tasks, improve performance and speed in the solving of certain problems, or just gather valuable information that can be used by some departments inside a company. We present a few examples of the use of AI:

Development of a conversational interface (chatbots)

Chatbots are increasingly important in the global technological scene, and it does not take much thought to name several websites that have conversational interfaces trained to help visitors. This type of bot can be a big help to perform simple tasks, such as setting an appointment or buying a movie ticket, and can be applied to countless industries: banking, education, health, retail, and others. The main goal is to have a chatbot that is truly useful for users.

Text analysis and emotion analysis

Currently, we exchange a huge amount of information in text format. Therefore, text analysis ability is expected to improve as the amount of information improves. However, human beings have limits in their ability to process and analyse information, and that is why we have artificial intelligence. By taking advantage of specific techniques and more advanced technologies, it is possible to process all information in record time and to simultaneously gather other types of information, such as the mood of a person who wrote a certain message.

Image or video processing

Another case in which human limits are an opportunity to introduce AI is image (or video) processing. Being able to learn from a large dataset, an artificial intelligence solution can be taught to identify elements in an image or video, a task that would take a lot more time if it was done by human eyes. We can refer to facial recognition for app authentications, or even finding people or specific products in a live video. An AI solution can be an answer to these challenges.

In essence, Xpand IT has gathered specialists from various teams – such as Digital Xperience, Big Data and Data Science – to form a unit of true experts in Artificial Intelligence experiments and solutions, capable of developing projects completely out-of-the-box!

Ana LamelasXpand IT’s new Artificial Intelligence Center
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Context Marketing: what is it?

Context Marketing: what is it?

by Ana Lamelas
2018-11-19
3 min

Marketing has an essential role in the building of a consistent and long-lasting relationship between customers and a business or brand. Every day, we talk about how important Digital Marketing is, but what is Context Marketing?

Focused on the relationship between customers and a business (or brand), Context Marketing is nothing more than delivering the right content to the right individual, at the right moment and through the most appropriate channel, based on previous behaviours (interactions) and needs.

Considering these aspects, we may say that Context Marketing works like an evolution of Content Marketing, since the latter’s mission is to bring that content to the right person, at the right moment.

Basically, Context Marketing is a new approach in Digital Marketing which needs, in order to work 100% effectively, a symbiotic relationship between tools such as a blog, social network or SEO optimization. To be able to build a Context Marketing campaign, a business first needs to know its audience, its customers, its target. To know its audience, their first name is not enough. Data such as the industry and business where they work, their area of interest, their preferred content, their country and even through which channel they enjoy content are essential to be able to deliver highly customised content.

In order to know your audience, there are two actions you may want to:

  1. Insert forms on your website (for example, completing the form gives access to premium content; this way you can get information on the leads to which you will effectively be delivering relevant content);
  2. Develop personas based on existing customers in order to attract prospects.

To be able to build an efficient Context Marketing campaign, you should provide:

Adequate content and workflows

Emails sent have to be highly segmented, and approach interesting subjects that can relate to the right person. Workflows will help deliver all this content, since the decision of which content to send is automated.

Smart forms

It is important to make sure that a person who has already completed a form on your website is not asked to complete it again. This way, the conversion rate is improved, and visitors are not annoyed.

Communication at the right moment

Take advantage of time periods, trends and hottest topics to communicate relevant content at the right moment.

Content optimisation

Choose the most researched keywords at the given moment and incorporate them in your content. An invisible website will never be discovered.

We know that, in marketing, “content is king”. However, the fact is that context is, right now, the jewel in the crown.

Sitecore: the tool for omnichannel marketing

“Real-time is the only time that counts” is a Sitecore statement. According to data from Microsoft Corporation, our max attention span period has fallen from 12 seconds (in 2000) to just 8. This means that, to always be ahead of the competition and for a brand to keep being relevant, it has to deliver the right content, to the right person, at the right moment.

The number of existing devices, the amount of current information and the growing needs of individuals transform today’s customers into extremely demanding people. It is necessary to include a Context Marketing strategy to keep customers interested in the business or brand, by building a relationship based on interactions between the two parties. One interaction builds the next, and so on.

Sitecore is a very comprehensive marketing tool, since it reconciles a Content Management System (CMS) and omnichannel Marketing Automation, allowing businesses to manage all their content on their website and social networks, and to reach customers when and where necessary.

Moreover, Sitecore also has Context Intelligence systems, which allow gathering important data such as behavioural patterns about customers, therefore providing important insights to define future strategies.

Ana LamelasContext Marketing: what is it?
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Web Summit 2018: an overview of the most technological week of the year

Web Summit 2018: an overview of the most technological week of the year

by Ana Lamelas
2018-11-19
3 min

The 10th edition of Web Summit – “The best technology conference”, according to Forbes – has ended and, as promised by the organising committee, it was the biggest edition ever!

Lisbon was, for the third year in a row, the main stage for the exhibition of the most innovative start-ups, most inspiring lecturers and some of the best worldwide companies acting in the fields of technology, sports, fashion or even social media. In total, it was 3 days completely focused on nowadays’ most divisive issues, but also on the hottest trends for the future: this is the overview of the most technological week of the year!

Web Summit in numbers

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Countries

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Lecturers

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Investors

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Visitors

For Xpand IT, participating in Web Summit 2008 was a success not only for the networking with partners and current customers, but also for the doors that have been opened to new projects. Most of the success we achieved was also a result of the presentation of the Sentiment Meter, an app developed by Xpand IT, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), specifically, Azure Cognitive Services of Microsoft. Its aim is to show the relatively simple way the role an AI can have in everyone’s daily lives. In this case, the gamification component helped achieving this success, since whoever were able to perform the raffled emotion with a facial expression, would win a prize.

More than 800 participants tried their luck at the Sentiment Meter, and, on the course of the three days, there was always a line to try the game! Even the media present showed interest in this Artificial Intelligence solution. We had a visitor from the magazine Visão, and even from Lourenço Medeiros, from Sic! Here are some pictures:

Web Summit

Main topics

One of the main topics that marked  Web Summit 2008 was, without a doubt, Artificial Intelligence (and machine learning). AI was present in talks and in the dynamics presented on stands from various companies. For example, Google brought a solution based on facial recognition, that would match the faces from people in pictures and a painter, or a figure in an old painting. On the other hand, Microsoft, using their cognitive services and also based on pictures, would match our faces with the face of a celebrity.

However, Artificial Intelligence goes way beyond entertainment. According to Brad Smith, President of Microsoft Corporation, it can actually help cure diseases, such as cancer, in the upcoming decade. This thought seems to be shared by Young Sohn, President of Samsung, who states that AI can have a very positive role in society and life, therefore being possible to be applied to fundamental areas such as Biology and Medicine.

Sustainability was also one of the main subjects talked about throughout this week, where the policy on zero plastics was thoroughly followed and accomplished by the organization. Reusable metal bottles were distributed amongst participants – an offer from Mirpuri Foundation – and plastic cups were replaced by paper cups. In various talks, the need to create a better and more sustainable world was supported, even in technology. Apple, for example, promised to cut down on aluminium when manufacturing its products.

And if technology is the main focus of this world conference, web safety starts to be a point of honour, transversal to all sectors. Tim Berners-Lee, considered to be the father of the internet and current director of the World Wide Web Foundation – an international association that promotes safety on the web – came up with the idea of creating a Magna Carta for the World Wide Web. This idea fell right into place with Garry Kasparov, ambassador for Avast safety, that said that technology “needs to start being in accordance with Human rights”. This is evidence that the subject on data protection and online privacy is trendy, or the most offered goodies by the companies would not have been webcam covers for laptops.

Long story short, this was definitely one of the most interesting editions of Web Summit so far, not only because of the topics covered, but also because the event is going to be staying in Lisbon for the next 10 years and promises to get bigger and bigger! This is an excellent opportunity to present new ideas and projects, just like it happened with Sentiment Meter. We are looking forward for taking the next steps.

Here are some of the pictures from this week!

Web Summit
Ana LamelasWeb Summit 2018: an overview of the most technological week of the year
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5 reasons to visit Xpand IT’s stand at Web Summit

5 reasons to visit Xpand IT’s stand at Web Summit

by Ana Lamelas
2018-11-02
3 min

Web Summit is back to Lisbon from the 5th and 8th of November! As one of the biggest worldwide summits on technology, the number of participants, lecturers and partners increases every year. In 2018, the organizers are waiting for over 70 thousand participants and they promise this one will be the “biggest and better” edition ever.

For the third year in a row, Xpand IT will be present as an exhibition booth. The goal is to reinforce its position as an IT leading company not only in Portugal, but also in the United Kingdom, highlighting its competences and specializing in Nearshore services. Similar to last year, Xpand IT will be on Pavilion 1, stand E144. However, if you are asking yourself why you should pass by our stand at Web Summit, we give you 5 good reasons to convince you:

1. Xpand IT’s new AI Solutions Center

The subject of Artificial Intelligence is, in fact, the center of our priorities to countless companies and organizations throughout the world. And, for Xpand IT, it could not go any different. Therefore, we launched an Artificial Intelligence center that seeks to work in proximity with the customers, in order to create truly useful solutions for the users. Come meet us, talk to our experts and get to know everything about the new AI Solutions Center and about the solutions that can be implemented in your company. If you got curious, we suggest you jump to point 5.

2. The best job opportunities

In order to deliver the best projects, we need the best experts. If it was already on your plans to take advantage of the networking that Web Summit provides to find new job opportunities, Xpand IT stand is the right place. Here, you can talk to our recruitment team and know which offer better applies to what you are looking for. We are waiting for you!

3. Our Success Cases

If, on the other hand, you are at Web Summit searching for the right partner to begin a project in your organization, you can also visit us. In our booth, you can find the answers and advice you are looking for through networking with one of our experts. Xpand IT has countless examples of success cases from leading companies, national or international, and you can get to know them better by coming to our stand E144.

4. Our team

Besides being highly specialized in all technologies we work with, we are also very nice. Come visit us to talk about possible projects, ask technical questions, clarify any doubt about our business areas or just to say hi and win one of our prizes!

5. Sentiment Meter

Last but certainly not least (quite the contrary)! If you came here directly from no. 1, we assure you that you will not be disappointed. If you got to this point by the natural flow of the article, welcome.

Sentiment Meter will be the main focus on our stand and it is one of the simple examples of how Artificial Intelligence can be implemented in many different solutions.

Sentiment Meter is a game in which an emotion is taken at random and the participants only have to make that same emotion, using facial expressions. According to their effort, each player gets a score and the player wins the correspondent prize.

We do not know how you feel about acting, but the only assurance we can give you is that you will always win!

For more information on Microsoft’s Cognitive Services and on Sentiment Analysis, check out this blog post.

Ana Lamelas5 reasons to visit Xpand IT’s stand at Web Summit
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Microsoft Cognitive Services: the potential of the main APIs

Microsoft Cognitive Services: the potential of the main APIs

by Ana Lamelas
2018-10-22
2 min

Microsoft Cognitive Services is a set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits) which are available in Azure, and that allow developers to create apps that are more intelligent and dynamic, as well as to perform enriching actions for the user’s experience.

Basically, and according to Microsoft, “they are intelligent algorithms that allow their apps, machines and bots to see, listen, talk, understand and perceive users’ needs with natural communication methods”. These algorithms, which develop and enhance their own potential through Machine Learning, use background data which, in turn, is gathered through the use of mobile apps.

So, is it possible to talk about the democratisation of artificial intelligence? Yes. With Microsoft Cognitive Services, developers can implement facial or voice recognition features with just a few lines of code, without the need to develop algorithms from scratch. Therefore, Cognitive Services enable in depth readings and insights for a personalised understanding of the profile, through services such as:

  • Vision: includes image processing algorithms capable of identifying images in an intelligent manner. They can be used for facial recognition in order to work as a security mechanism with Face API, which gives the probability of an image being of a given person and identifies features such as age or sex.

It can also perceive emotions with Emotion API, detecting facial expressions of happiness, sadness, surprise or fear, for example.

  • Voice: converts spoken audio into text (with Bing Speech API) and verifies or recognises the speaker in a given app. With Translator Speech API, the user can have a translation in real time, written or spoken.
  • Knowledge: provides monitoring of information and complex data, in order to perform actions such as intelligent recommendations or semantic research (through Recommendation API or Custom Decision Service).
  • Language: processes natural language, through ready-made scripts and assessing emotions, and learns to identify the user’s needs. The ex-libris of language services is Language Understanding Intelligence Service (LUIS) which, by using intelligent voice recognition, allows the user to develop their own language models and bots to understand commands and perform actions according to what is requested.
  • Search: allows actions such as word suggestions, image or video search and actions that can be performed by APIs like Bing Web Search or Bing Custom Search.

How can Cognitive Services be used in different sectors? 

Retail: cognitive services enable the extraction of detailed insights, which will help understand the needs of your existing customers and attract new ones. For example, you will be able to understand what difficulties your customers have when buying online and address these, support your sellers in presenting the right product to the right customer, or simplify the payment process.

Education: you can find the interests of each student and modernise your teaching style with cognitive services and machine learning, or you can manage suggestions on how to improve the classroom experience.

Insurance: you can give your customers a better experience with mobile apps by using cognitive services such as facial or voice recognition. You can also use them to detect possible fraud.

Finance: they help to customise specific campaigns based on customer features or behaviours, leading to increased sales and ROI.

Health: you can develop a more personalised assistance to your clients with a bot. It can help, for example, with selecting a specialist to schedule an appointment. Another huge potential is the assistance cognitive services will be able to provide to doctors, by conducting a more detailed diagnosis.

Watch a real time demonstration of cognitive services at the 2018 Xamarin Experience event here.

Ana LamelasMicrosoft Cognitive Services: the potential of the main APIs
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