Digital Transformation

WASHINGTON – October 29, 2026 -- Seven Letter, a bipartisan strategic communications firm, launched Engine, an "Answer Intelligence" service that audits how seven AI platforms describe a brand, executive or issue and then builds a plan to change that portrayal.

Engine audits ChatGPT, Claude and five other AI platforms

Each Engine report draws on custom prompts run through ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude. It quantifies brand visibility, mentions, sentiment, top sources cited, top journalists cited and frequent prompts. A separate score measures narrative favorability, mention and citation rates, frequency and intensity, and prominence and placement.

The audit also benchmarks clients against competitors and flags AI-generated answers that contain negative themes or possible inaccuracies.

IRVINE – October 29, 2026 -- Seventy percent of K-12 parents worry their children are not learning future-ready skills, up 17 points from 2023-24 and 63% higher than in 2020, according to the 23rd Annual Speak Up Report from education nonprofit Project Tomorrow.

The 2026 Speak Up Research Project gathered input from more than 95,000 students, educators, administrators and families in rural, urban and suburban schools.

85% of parents tie their child's future success to effective classroom technology

The report, titled What's Tech Got To Do With It?, finds that classroom infrastructure is largely in place. The main opportunity now is helping teachers use technology to build the skills families want. Project Tomorrow CEO Dr. Julie Evans said students and families want classrooms that prepare them for 2027 "and not for 1977."

MILWAUKEE – October 29, 2026 -- Food and beverage manufacturers effectively use only about 45% of the data they collect, even though nearly 90% already use AI and machine learning or plan to do so soon, according to Rockwell Automation's 2026 State of Smart Manufacturing Report.

Data gaps stall AI projects at the pilot stage

Rockwell (NYSE: ROK) says the 45% data-utilization rate is a significant barrier to scaling AI beyond isolated pilots. Many manufacturers lack connected data, standardized processes and integrated systems, which limits enterprise-wide results.

Greg Schmidt, Vice President, CPG Global Industry at Rockwell, said the question is no longer whether AI delivers value but "how to scale successful pilots across the enterprise."

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Only 5% of enterprises say their data is ready to support AI, although 97% are running active AI initiatives, according to figures cited in Snowflake's new ebook "Break the Sequence."

The ebook targets what Snowflake calls the biggest brake on enterprise AI: the belief that data transformation must be complete before AI work can begin. Snowflake argues that "finished" is an impossible standard, because new applications, regulatory changes, acquisitions and evolving AI models continually reshape the data estate.

Düsseldorf – October 29, 2026 -- Germany scores 5.1 out of 10 on the Educate to Empower Index, a measure of how well schools balance new technology with traditional learning tools, according to a study commissioned by Epson. The result reflects a gap between classroom hardware and its teaching value: 59% of surveyed teachers and 67% of school IT leaders say investment in digital devices and applications moved faster than schools could find sensible pedagogical uses for them.

NEW YORK – October 29, 2026 -- Broadridge has made Kalshi event contracts tradable through the front ends and APIs of its CQG unit. Access also extends to more than 1,700 buy-side clients on the NYFIX network through the CQG-NYFIX integration.

Brokers and futures commission merchants (FCMs) can offer clients direct trading access and market data for the contracts. Traders can fold event contracts into broader portfolio and hedging strategies alongside futures, options and equities on a single platform. CQG's trading, risk management and portfolio monitoring tools cover the new contracts.

Broadridge extends its multi-asset offering to prediction markets

The launch expands Broadridge's multi-asset trading offering and extends Kalshi's reach among CQG technology users. Broadridge ties the rollout to client demand in the United States and EMEA. Access is subject to applicable eligibility and jurisdictional requirements.

BENGALURU – October 29, 2026 -- Qorus and Infosys Finacle named 37 financial institutions as winners of the 13th Banking Innovation Awards, selected from 538 projects submitted by 206 institutions in 68 countries.

Winners selected across ten categories by peer vote and 81-member jury

The awards span ten categories: Business Model Innovation, Product and Service Innovation, Business Banking Innovation, Predictive, AI-led Value Creation, Operational Transformation and Customer Experience Innovation. They also cover Social, Sustainable & Responsible Banking Innovation, Modern Tech Innovation of the Year, Neobank and Fintech Innovation, and Transformative Innovator of the Year.

Selection combined voting by a community of industry peers with evaluation by a jury of 81 senior global banking executives.

Global – October 29, 2026 -- Historians that stamp MQTT messages with broker arrival time can display an old pressure reading as a new process condition, distorting aggregates, alarms and event order during outage replays.

Plain MQTT defines no process-time field

MQTT specifies only the transport of an application message. It prescribes no timestamp field, industrial clock model or time semantics. The publisher's application contract decides whether a payload carries a time, in what format and with what quality.

OPC UA's SourceTimestamp and ServerTimestamp concepts do not carry over to ordinary MQTT payloads. Broker receipt time and connector receipt time are useful operational observations, but they do not prove when a machine produced a measurement.

CUPERTINO – – October 29, 2026 -- Constellation Research named seven winners of its 16th annual SuperNova Awards, with ABB Ltd, Lumen Technologies and Picarro, Inc. among the honorees for technology-led business results.

Winners span seven enterprise technology categories

The awards were revealed at Connected Enterprise, Constellation Research's flagship executive conference. The winners by category:

Las Vegas – October 29, 2026 -- Guidewire (NYSE: GWRE) named Beazley, Definity and RCIS winners of its 2026 Innovation Awards at its Connections conference. The wins include Beazley's consolidation of more than 200 marketable products and Definity's first production agentic AI tool for claims intake.

Beazley consolidates 200-plus products on a Guidewire Cloud platform

Lloyd's syndicate and global specialty insurer Beazley implemented Guidewire PolicyCenter and BillingCenter with Capgemini. The European solution was delivered in approximately eight months.

The program rationalized more than 200 marketable products into a condensed, streamlined set, which cut complexity and improved speed to market. Capgemini's AI-enabled delivery model and Guidewire's Advanced Product Designer (APD) established a repeatable "Product Factory" approach for rapid development.