Tech
Tata Communications unveils self-healing network | Computer Weekly
Tata Communications has launched a self-healing network platform called IZO datacentre Dynamic Connectivity, which is designed to eliminate costly datacentre downtime and support the demands of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven world.
In explaining the rationale for the launch, Tata Communications said that in the current digital economy, disruptions from cable cuts, route failures or sudden AI workload spikes can bring business to a standstill.
Specifically, that is every enterprise depends on the ability to always be connected with an uninterrupted data flow. From financial transactions, information technology-enabled services (IT-ITeS) and manufacturing to streaming platforms and online retail, the connections between datacentres keep the modern world running. Tata Communications added that when those connections are interrupted, businesses do not just slow down, they are brought to a complete standstill.
The company warned that the networks connecting many enterprise datacentres were built for a different era. Traditional datacentre (DC)-to-DC links were designed for predictable workloads and stable traffic patterns. It stressed that the current reality is far more dynamic. In this, enterprises operate across global locations and cloud environments, moving massive volumes of data in real time to support AI workloads and business needs.
In an environment shaped by increasing geopolitical constraints, cable outages, route failures or sudden spikes in demand, these can quickly cascade into service disruption and operational risk, leading to a costly downtime. In such scenarios, the response is often reactive and manual, consuming valuable time when business need certainty and speed.
The IZO datacentre Dynamic Connectivity platform is designed to address these issues by creating an intelligent network that covers key global datacentres across five continents.
Tata Communications, said that unlike conventional architectures, the new platform uses deterministic multi-path routing to deliver predictable latency and performance. It said this transforms resilience from a reactive process into an autonomous capability, changing how enterprises connect their datacentres in an increasing AI-driven and distributed world.
This means the platform is smart enough to automatically re-route traffic within seconds without manual intervention during disruptions. This is said to enable enterprises to achieve >99.99% service availability across mission-critical infrastructure that supports business-critical applications, “turning resilience from a contingency into a default state”.
The platform is also attributed with giving enterprises access over their connectivity. Through a unified digital interface and APIs, enterprises can monitor performance, receive proactive alerts and dynamically scale bandwidth as workloads evolve.
Tata Communications said the result is that business impact is a shift from crisis management to strategic growth with business leaders no longer having to guess their future needs or over-pay for “just in case” bandwidth. Instead, leaders have access to Al-driven predictive insights allowing them to forecast their capacity requirements in advance. If a sudden workload demands more capacity or choice of route, users can instantly scale their bandwidth or add route through self-service feature.
Tata Communications calculates that by moving to a flexible, consumption-based pricing model, enterprises can reduce the need for idle backup capacity and save up to 30% on operational costs. Enterprises can activate resilience and bandwidth when required, helping to optimise costs while maintaining deterministic performance across geographies.
“Datacentres are the core engines of today’s digital economy, and the connections between them must be as resilient as the networks that connect them,” said Genius Wong, chief technology officer and executive vice-president of core and next-gen connectivity services at Tata Communications. “They must be just as dynamic as the applications they support.
“With IZO DC Dynamic Connectivity, we are shifting resilience from a reactive process to an autonomous capability. By combining global reach, deterministic routing and intelligent automation, we are enabling enterprises to build a digital foundation that scales with confidence and operates without disruption.”
Tech
Greg Brockman Officially Takes Control of OpenAI’s Products in Latest Shakeup
OpenAI told staff on Friday that it would reorganize the company as part of an ongoing effort to unify its product offerings, WIRED has learned. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman will now lead the company’s product strategy, in addition to his work on AI infrastructure, OpenAI confirms to WIRED. Brockman was previously assigned to oversee OpenAI products on an interim basis while CEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, was on medical leave; the change is now official.
“We’re consolidating our product efforts to execute with maximum focus toward the agentic future, to win across both consumer and enterprise,” Brockman said in a memo to staff seen by WIRED. Brockman added that OpenAI’s products are naturally converging, and that the company has decided to merge ChatGPT and Codex into one unified experience.
OpenAI says it’s folding ChatGPT, its AI coding agent Codex, and its developer-facing API into one core product team. The company says that Codex is increasingly powering its consumer and enterprise offerings, which are gaining the ability to perform digital tasks autonomously on behalf of users.
Two other OpenAI leaders are also taking on larger roles at the company as part of the changes. OpenAI’s head of Codex, Thibault Sottiaux, has been tapped to lead the core product and platform across consumer, enterprise, and developer surfaces. Sottiaux was a key leader in building Codex into one of the company’s fastest-growing products of all time. OpenAI’s longtime head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, is moving to a new role at the company that aims to revamp enterprise products. OpenAI says Turley will continue his work on ChatGPT, which he has helped grow to more than 900 million weekly active users since he took over in 2022.
The changes are the latest shakeup for OpenAI as leadership aims to refocus the company on a few key product areas, including ChatGPT, Codex, and its forthcoming “everything app.” Last month, OpenAI announced many executive changes, including that CEO of AGI dDeployment, Fidji Simo, was taking a medical leave to focus on her health. OpenAI previously said Brockman would oversee product strategy in her absence. The company tells WIRED that Simo remains on medical leave, and worked directly with Brockman on these organizational changes and product strategy.
In the last year, OpenAI has faced increasing pressure from competitors, including Anthropic in coding domains and Google in consumer chatbots. OpenAI leaders are hoping to simplify product offerings ahead of its plan to file for an IPO, which could happen later this year.
Other OpenAI executives left the company entirely last month, including the head of its AI workspace for scientists, Kevin Weil; head of Sora, Bill Peebles; and its chief technology officer of enterprise applications, Srinivas Narayanan.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Tech
Companies Keep Slashing Employees’ Benefits for the Worst Reasons
Employee benefits are in the spotlight this week, and that’s because of three recent stories about US companies cutting back on non-wage compensations for workers.
A Texas tech consulting firm with a forgettable name—TTEC—suddenly became a lot more memorable when it suspended its discretionary 401(k) match program for 16,000 employees through at least the end of 2026. According to Business Insider, which viewed an internal TTEC memo, the company plans to invest in AI certifications, AI tools and training, and automation, among other things.
The auditing and consulting giant Deloitte is also reportedly slashing benefits for some workers starting next year. This includes reducing PTO, halving parental leave, and eliminating a $50,000 reimbursement for family planning services such as adoption, surrogacy, and IVF. San Francisco-based Zoom, meanwhile, has made a smaller-scale change and reduced its parental leave for employees from 22 weeks to 18 weeks for birthing parents.
So what’s the driving force behind this? And are there more cuts to come? The latter is impossible to answer, and the former is unfortunately more complicated than “corporate ghouls go AI.”
First off, “what Deloitte did is completely unconscionable,’” says Joan C. Williams, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, the author of several books on work culture and class dynamics, and an oft-cited scholar on these topics. The consulting firm is cutting the benefits of a specific class of internal workers—in admin, IT support, and finance—while leaving intact benefits for people in client-facing roles. An affected worker will see their parental leave cut from 16 weeks to just eight weeks.
“It treats people differently based on the type of job they’re in, and cutting any mother down to eight weeks of paid leave is just outlandish,” Williams says. “When labor is tight, employers are more generous. But once the power shifts, the benefits contract.”
AI certainly is a convenient excuse these days for any corporate decision that harms workers. But the impetus here is also the cost of the benefits themselves. Earlier this year subsidies from the Affordable Care Act lapsed, and people began dropping out of health care plans entirely. Insurers have cited this as one reason they’ve raised premiums.
Sarahjane Sacchetti, a former top executive at benefits administration companies Cleo and Collective Health, who is working on a new health care initiative, told me that the costs of employer-sponsored health plans have increased significantly over the past five years. A survey last year of over 1,700 US employers by the Mercer health care consulting group found that the health care cost per worker was expected to rise on average 6.5 percent in 2026, the highest since 2010. And this was after factoring in cost-reduction measures; otherwise, the cost of a plan would go up by nearly 9 percent.
“This just starts to eat into how you think about total compensation as an employer,” Sacchetti says. That doesn’t mean the corporation is the ‘good guy,’ she says, but the poor state of American health care policy and lack of safety net are responsible for a lot of the stress that plagues undercompensated or laid-off workers.
Williams points out that the US is one of the few countries that doesn’t offer a federal paid maternal leave—putting it in league with Papua New Guinea and Suriname. “This just shows how crazy it is to provide employee basics like pension and paid parental leave through private employers rather than how other industrialized countries do it,” Williams says. Her proposed solution? “The US needs to join the rest of the universe.”
The irony, of course, is that the US government professes to be obsessed with women having more babies. If women in the US are—as celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz put it this week in the Oval Office—“underbabied,” a comprehensive paid federal leave policy would be the obvious place to start. (Oz also said that “making babies” is “the most creative thing the universe knows.” Don’t tell the AI CEOs.)
Tech
Gantri’s 3D-Printed Lamps Are Going Wireless
Gantri, a San Francisco-based company known for making soft, stylized 3D-printed lamps, is going wireless. That’s thanks to a new partnership with the design firm Ammunition.
Gantri 3D-prints its lamps using plastics made from corn-based polylactic acid (PLA) in its Bay Area facilities. The result is a collection of carefully designed light fixtures with gentle curves that aim to make luxury-style lighting feel somewhat affordable. (Prices range from $200 to $500.)
Last year, the company introduced a program called Gantri Made, which allows shoppers to customize their lights and gives third-party designers the ability to build their own designs using Gantri’s foundational pieces.
Courtesy of Gantri
Gantri first partnered with Ammunition in 2020, developing a line of stylish lamps aiming to highlight what premium light pieces could look like. You’ve almost certainly seen something built with Ammunition’s flair. The firm designed Beats by Dre headphones, the Square point-of-sale tablets you see in shops everywhere, and many other projects, from robot coffee machines to Jay-Z’s failed weed vape cartridges.
This Gantri new collab is a range of lamps that include floor lamps, table lamps, and ones small enough to hold in your hand. (Those are rectangular, with designs inspired by piers around San Francisco.) All the lights are wireless and can be removed from charging ports to run for what Gantri says is 10 or more hours of battery life. Gantri is also developing an app to control the lights. They will work with Matter, the connectivity standard that aims to make smart home tech from different companies work together, but that compatibility isn’t expected until next year.
Gantri CEO Ian Yang points out that for most of human history, light sources were something people carried with them—torches, candles, lanterns. Lights staying in fixed places has become the norm, but he wants these wireless lamps to show there’s another way.
“I really think this product is going to change the way that people think about lighting, but also think about the power of digital manufacturing, about this new material that’s plant-based,” Yang says.
The lamps have a custom charging port, which allows them to stand upright and face any direction while still receiving a charge. They also require a custom charger and cannot be charged via USB-C or another cord in a different room. That may inhibit the mobility the lamp promises, as you won’t be able to move them from room to room and plug them in with any USB-C cord lying around—you’d have to bring that proprietary cable with you. But Yang says this was a deliberate choice, even though it was much more difficult than finding a spot for a USB-C connection. He wanted the lamps to feel portable while also having a place for them to become a fixture in a home.
-
Tech1 week agoA new frontier: Identity stack evolves for agentic systems | Computer Weekly
-
Tech1 week ago‘Orbs,’ ‘Saucers,’ and ‘Flashes’ on the Moon: Pentagon Drops New UFO Files
-
Fashion1 week agoNew orders in German manufacturing up 5% MoM in Mar 2026: Destatis
-
Tech1 week agoNick Bostrom Has a Plan for Humanity’s ‘Big Retirement’
-
Tech1 week agoWhat Microsoft Executives Really Thought About OpenAI in 2018
-
Sports1 week agoShaheen Afridi achieves landmark feat during opening Test against Bangladesh
-
Fashion1 week agoUS’ Carter’s taps retail veteran Sharon Price John as new CEO
-
Entertainment7 days agoRihanna embraces new tattoo given by children
