It’s a wrap: News this week (Jan 20 – Jan 26)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From TCS-Oxford University alliance to Genesys’ new acquisition, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

Oxford Univ ends contract with TCS

Oxford University has ended its partnership with Tata Consultancy Services as its admission test provider. The former cited “technical problems" following feedback from candidates, test centres and parents. Less than a year back, TCS had replaced Cambridge Admissions Assessment Testing in providing technical services for the university’s admission tests. The tests were conducted by TCS iON—the company’s learning, development and assessment focused unit. While the deal size is not known, experts who spoke to Mint, pegged it to the $5 million range.

ACM Fellows list unveiled

The Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) has named artificial intelligence (AI) pioneers Geoffery Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Yann Lecun, worldwide web inventor Tim Berners Lee along with 64 others have been named ACM fellows for ‘transformative contributions’ to computer science and technology in 2023. 

An ACM fellow is the recognition accorded to the top 1% of the association’s members. Individuals with five years of continuous prfessioal membership in ACM, along with outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology are eligible for being appointed as a fellow. 

Oracle introduces managed services for genAI

Cloud computing firm Oracle has made its fully managed service for generative artificial intelligence generally available. Called the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service offers large language models from Cohere and Llama 2 from Meta to address business use cases via APIs. The platform also includes multilingual capabilities that support over 100 languages, an improved GPU cluster management experience, and flexible fine-tuning options. This service can be either used through Oracle Cloud or on-premise through OCI Dedicated Region.

Tech Mahindra’s financial results

Tech Mahindra, on Wednesday, reported a net profit of ₹510 crore for the third quarter ended December 31. This marks a decline of 60.6% year-on-year (YoY) from ₹1,296.6 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year. 

The company's YoY net profit saw a decline of 41%, reaching ₹763 crore. Sequentially, the profit increased by a mere 3% from ₹494 crore in the previous September quarter. Consolidated revenue for Q3FY24 declined 5% YoY at ₹13,101 crore. The decline is attributed to a further slowdown in demand in key verticals, including hi-tech, telecom, and financial services. The company's EBIT margin or operating margin was at 5.4%, which is an improvement compared to the previous quarter's 4.7%.

Genesys’ new acquisition

Genesys, a cloud service provider, has announced its plan to acquire Radarr Technologies, an AI-based firm specializing in social and digital listening, analytics, and consumer engagement. The agreement aims to merge Radarr Technologies' public social media capabilities with Genesys Cloud platform, enabling organizations to enhance customer experience (CX) and foster proactive, prescriptive engagement in the AI economy. 

As per the company, the acquisition, set to conclude in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, positions Genesys to leverage Radarr Technologies' social media insights for a comprehensive 360-degree customer view that fuels Genesys AI.