By Adam Mikulski, Managing Director at Medical Air Service

Most people think that the work of medical air ambulance services begins with the aircraft.

A jet, a helicopter, the need to get somewhere quickly. That is the picture that most people have in mind when they think about medical air ambulance services. The truth is that the most important part of the process is almost always far earlier than that. The most important part is the time when the first telephone call is made.

That first call is rarely easy. Emotions run high. Information is limited. Medical information is still being gathered. Everyone is under time pressure, even if they are not yet clear about the course of action needed. In those moments, the conversation is not about airplanes. The conversation is about helping people understand the need to slow down and understand the reality of the situation.

That is what Medical Air Service is all about.

What the call from the family is about

Families do not call medical air ambulance services and ask if they have a jet or a helicopter available. They call because they do not know what to do next.

They need to understand what is possible, what is realistic, and what must be done before they can even think about making decisions. They need to slow down and face the reality of the situation. They need to understand that they need someone to talk to who is calm and not making promises they cannot keep.

This is why the first call is the most important, not the aircraft itself.

Before any transportation solution is discussed, there are questions to be answered, permissions to be considered, and risks to be evaluated. In some cases, the safest response isn’t “yes, we can start the transportation right away.” In some cases, the safest response is “we need to know more first.” Saying this, and saying this as early as possible, is the key to avoiding problems down the line.

Guidance before action

There is a natural instinct to discuss the work of medical air ambulance services as a speed-based, mobilization-based activity. In reality, however, the process is much more a function of judgment.

The coordination teams are not there to diagnose the patient’s condition, nor to reassure the patient’s family with optimistic language. They are there to discuss the process as it is, to be honest about what we know and what we don’t yet know. To discuss the available options without leading families down a path to a specific solution.

This is not easy. It requires confidence, as well as restraint. It is sometimes harder to slow down the process than to speed it up, especially when families are at their most emotional. It is not helpful to speed up the process without a clear picture of the situation to begin with.

Honesty is the key to this. It is not unhelpful to say, “we don’t yet know” or “we cannot yet advise transportation.” Openness and certainty build trust throughout the conversation.

How independence changes the conversation

Companies like Medical Air Service are not tied to any particular platform, therefore the process doesn’t start with the solution and work backwards. We start with the patient, the situation, and work our way out from there. Sometimes that means a long-range air ambulance flight, sometimes a helicopter transfer, sometimes ground transportation, or sometimes waiting until further assessment is complete.

Most of the time, the simple solution is the right one.

This is what shapes how we talk to families from the very first phone call. It’s not about getting a plane filled or achieving a timeline. It’s about recommending a solution that makes sense medically and practically, even if it’s not what the family was expecting.

The people who answer the phone matter

It’s worth noting that none of this works without the right people.

It’s not easy to recruit medical air ambulance coordinators. It’s not about finding people who can read a script. It’s about finding people who can think on their feet, listen effectively, and communicate without adding to the stress of the situation.

Emotional intelligence is not a buzzword here. It’s a necessity. We need people who can understand emotional distress without becoming overwhelmed by it. We need people who can communicate effectively without being blunt. We need people who can be empathetic without being intrusive. We need people who know how much to explain and how much to keep to themselves.

It’s not easy to recruit people who can do this job. It’s not simple to explain what this job entails. It’s not easy to describe how important emotional intelligence is nor to explain how important judgment and temperament are. But they are. The first phone call is a family’s first experience with a system they don’t understand. It’s how they feel during this process that will stay with them.

Moreover, medical emergencies don’t occur during business hours. Being available to take a call, return a call, or stay on the line longer than originally anticipated is not an extra; it is part of the responsibility. Things change, new information is received, decisions must be re-evaluated, and so on.

Continuity is an important factor. People want to talk to someone who understands their situation and has been paying attention. Giving the same information to several people only adds to overall stress.

Support without promises

In essence, this industry is not about making promises. There are some situations in which transport is not an option. There are some situations in which moving the patient too early will increase risk, not reduce it. These are not easy conversations to have, especially for families who are desperate for something to be done. However, not having these conversations does no one any good.

These conversations need to be had during the first call, and that is not always easy. Nevertheless, it is necessary for the overall process, so that families can understand what is happening and why certain decisions are being made.

That first call is not simply the beginning of the process. It is where trust is established and help truly begins.

About Medical Air Service

Medical Air Service provides worldwide medical evacuation and medical repatriation services, transporting patients who cannot be treated where they are and transferring them to the required destinations on board fast and medical jets or with medical escorts on commercial flights.

The post The first call: How medical air ambulance teams guide families before the flight appeared first on Technology Innovators.

Dubai, UAE (February 25, 2026) – KnowBe4, the world-renowned platform that comprehensively addresses human and agentic AI risk management, today announced the launch of AIDA Orchestration, the eighth AI-powered agent in KnowBe4’s suite of AI agents for human risk management known as AIDA (Artificial Intelligence Defense Agents).

The AIDA Orchestration agent is an autonomous, AI-powered system for human risk management. It independently creates, schedules and manages personalized phishing security tests (PSTs) and security awareness training (SAT) at a user level that dynamically adapts to each person’s risk profile. This eliminates manual campaigns, reduces administrative burden and efficiently lowers organizational risk.

By reducing the time required to create personalized training from hours to seconds, the Orchestration agent frees security teams to focus on strategic initiatives while ensuring every individual receives the right training at the right time to reduce organizational risk.

The agent brings the following to organizations:

• Individual-Focused Personalization: Departing from group-wide campaigns, the agent delivers unique phishing tests and training experiences based on real-time user performance.
• Always-On Operations: The system continuously monitors evolving threat landscapes and user engagement, dynamically adjusting strategies without human intervention.
• Intelligent Ecosystem Integration: AIDA Orchestration leverages the full suite of AIDA agents, including Template Generation and Remedial Training, to create a cohesive, data-driven security culture.
• Plan-Based Oversight: While the agent handles tactical execution, administrators maintain strategic control through “Plans,” which define high-level constraints and guardrails for specific user groups.

This year marks ten years of the beta version of AIDA. With eight specialized agents available in-market, KnowBe4’s position of training humans and agents is reinforced as the only agentic human risk management provider in the industry.

According to the KnowBe4 State of Human Risk Report 2025, cybersecurity leaders rank AI-powered threats as their top security risk, with 45% citing constantly evolving AI threats as their greatest challenge. AI enables adversaries to remove traditional indications of an attack, generate realistic language at scale and craft messages tailored to specific roles, industries and even individuals.

“The launch of AIDA Orchestration represents a fundamental shift in how organizations approach human risk,” said Bryan Palma, CEO at KnowBe4. “By moving from static, one-size-fits-all campaigns to an always-on, autonomous system, we are enabling security teams to deliver the right training at the right time. This saves hours of administrative work and it reduces organizational risk by treating every employee as an individual with unique security needs.”

An anonymous customer who has already been using KnowBe4’s AIDA Orchestration highly recommends the agent saying, “AIDA Orchestration is a game changer and time saver!”

For more information on the AIDA Orchestration Agent visit https://www.knowbe4.com/products/aida/orchestration/.

About KnowBe4

KnowBe4 empowers workforces to make smarter security decisions every day. Trusted by more than 70,000 organizations worldwide, KnowBe4 builds security culture and helps teams manage both human and agent risk. The company delivers a comprehensive, agentic best-of-suite platform for Human Risk Management, creating an adaptive defense layer that reinforces secure behavior against evolving cybersecurity threats. The HRM+ platform includes awareness training, integrated cloud email security, real-time coaching, crowdsourced anti-phishing, AI Defense Agents, and more. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in business operations, KnowBe4 prepares the modern workforce by training both humans and AI agents to recognize and respond to security risks. Through this unified approach, KnowBe4 leads workforce trust management and defense strategies. More info at knowbe4.com.

Follow KnowBe4 on LinkedIn, X, TikTok and Instagram.

Contact:

knowbe4@activedmc.com

The post KnowBe4 Launches AIDA Orchestration as the First Fully Autonomous Agent for Human Risk Management appeared first on Technology Innovators.

Dubai, UAE,. – February 26, 2026 – At VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data, the AI Operating System company, announced an end-to-end, fully CUDA accelerated AI data stack, delivered through an expanded collaboration with NVIDIA. With the VAST AI Operating System now running directly on NVIDIA-powered servers, customers can eliminate data bottlenecks across the AI pipeline and deliver ingestion, retrieval, analytics, and inference in a single unified platform.

By accelerating both data services and the compute layer as one coherent system, the VAST AI OS eliminates the operational complexity of stitching together separate storage, database, and AI infrastructure stacks. The result is a simpler and faster path from experimentation to production for RAG pipelines, agentic systems, and continuous AI workloads.

Designed in collaboration with NVIDIA, the VAST CNode-X introduces a new generation of NVIDIA-Certified Systems that transform how AI infrastructure is built and operated. In addition to providing high-performance storage services to NVIDIA GPU-accelerated clusters, the VAST AI OS now runs directly on NVIDIA-powered servers, making these systems first-class infrastructure citizens inside the VAST platform. This architectural shift enables VAST to orchestrate AI pipelines, high performance analytics, vector search, RAG functions, and agent runtimes as a single, unified software stack.

New CNode-X servers provide the computing foundation for the VAST AI OS to leverage a wide variety of NVIDIA software libraries and APIs directly within core VAST software services, including the VAST DataEngine and VAST DataBase. These accelerations are embedded deep inside the platform, delivering higher performance, lower latency, and improved efficiency across real-time SQL analytics, vector search and retrieval, as well as a wide-range of AI inferencing workflows.

“Ten years ago, we set out to build a system that could continuously refine data into intelligence and action,” said Renen Hallak, Founder & CEO of VAST Data. “That future is here. By accelerating both compute and the data paths inside the VAST AI OS with NVIDIA, we’re giving customers a faster, simpler way to operationalize retrieval, analytics, and agentic workflows as one coherent pipeline so AI can move from pilot to durable, production systems.”

“NVIDIA is reinventing every pillar of computing for AI. With VAST Data, we’re transforming the storage of AI infrastructure,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO, NVIDIA. “CNode-X is CUDA-accelerated at every layer to give AI agents persistent memory so they can work on complex problems over days or weeks, and eventually years, without forgetting — opening the world to the next frontier of AI.”

Watch this video with Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO, NVIDIA at VAST Forward on the Future of Data Infrastructure.

With new GPU-accelerated VAST CNode-X servers as the foundation, VAST is bringing together broad support for NVIDIA-accelerated capabilities inside the VAST AI OS and deploys them within a full-stack software platform that runs and orchestrates AI pipelines, vector search services, and production AI pipelines. New capabilities include:

• GPU-Native SQL Engine Acceleration For VAST DataBase Analytics Pipelines: VAST is advancing the VAST DataBase to accelerate modern analytics workloads across the full query lifecycle by pairing storage-side intelligence with GPU-accelerated execution. The VAST DataBase query engine combines intelligent data layout, pushdown, and filtering that reduce unnecessary I/O, while using Sirius, an open-source query engine based on NVIDIA cuDF, for GPU-accelerated SQL execution at the compute layer. NVIDIA cuDF is a library for accelerating structured data analytics. This complementary approach accelerates both what happens before data reaches compute and the compute itself, delivering a database that is simultaneously storage-optimized and GPU-accelerated. Early benchmarking of Sirius shows up to a 44 percent reduction in query time and up to an 80 percent reduction in query cost.
• NVIDIA cuVS for Accelerated Vector Search and Retrieval: By embedding NVIDIA cuVS library, VAST’s CNode-X brings GPU acceleration to vector search and data clustering for organizations using VAST for scalable vector database services and VAST InsightEngine, built on the NVIDIA AI Data Platform reference design, for the production RAG pipeline, improving retrieval latency for real-time, context-rich AI applications.
• NVIDIA Nemotron Models and NVIDIA NIM Microservices for Scalable DataEngine Pipelines: VAST will now deploy and support NVIDIA NIM microservices across CNode-X for scalable AI pipelines, and is open-sourcing production-ready VAST DateEngine blueprints for AI pipelines targeting video intelligence, enterprise document RAG, and genomics research use-cases.
• NVIDIA CMX to Accelerate Inference At Scale: VAST supports NVIDIA Context Memory Storage (CMX) Platform, with cluster configurations that support NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs and Spectrum-X Ethernet networking to accelerate access to shared KV cache and lower time-to-first-token for long-context, multi-agent inference. This gives agents access to memory across the entire pod. VAST’s Disaggregated Shared Everything (DASE) architecture provides the additional advantage of enabling customers to optionally add in enterprise data services out of band without compromising on KV retrieval time.

Hardware Choice for Accelerating the VAST AI Operating System

VAST plans to bring CNode-X servers to market through leading OEM partners, including Cisco and Supermicro, enabling customers to procure GPU-accelerated infrastructure through their preferred vendors while maintaining a consistent VAST software, support, and operational experience.

Through certified configurations delivered with OEM partners, VAST provides a faster and more supportable path to production AI. As enterprise AI pipelines become continuous systems, VAST combines its data platform with full-stack NVIDIA accelerated computing to deliver high-performance retrieval, analytics, and vector search that keep GPUs productive across RAG, real-time analytics, and large-scale AI workloads.

“AI doesn’t scale on isolated components. It scales through integrated systems,” said Jeremy Foster, SVP and General Manager, Cisco Compute. “Customers need infrastructure that keeps data secure and tightly aligned with intelligent networking and GPU-accelerated compute for an efficient, production-ready platform. Cisco’s collaboration with partners like VAST and NVIDIA is delivering the enterprise-ready foundation organizations need to help securely scale AI with performance, resilience, and control.”

“Production AI demands a new level of integration across compute, acceleration, and the data platform,” said Charles Liang, President and CEO, Supermicro. “Together with VAST Data and NVIDIA, we’re delivering a truly integrated AI Data Platform that removes complexity from enterprise AI. By bringing high-performance compute, scalable data infrastructure, and intelligent software together as one solution, we’re enabling organizations to move from experimentation to production faster and unlock real business value from AI.”

Additional Resources:

• VIDEO: Future of Data Infrastructure with Jensen Huang, Founder & CEO, NVIDIA
• SOLUTION BRIEF: CNode-X Accelerated Computing Platform
• VAST DataEngine Blueprints:
  • Video Intelligence
  • Enterprise Document RAG with Reasoning Assistant

About VAST Data

VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI. Learn more at vastdata.com and follow VAST Data on LinkedIn, YouTube and X.

For any further details, please reach out at: vastdata@activedmc.com

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Dubai, UAE., – February 26, 2026 – Building on its long history as the leader in high-speed connectivity – and marking the first product introduction following its acquisition of Nubis Communications – Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is unveiling Vesta 200 6.4T CPX, the industry’s highest-density, lowest-power pluggable CPO solution. Designed to reduce power consumption by up to 70%, the solution helps hyperscalers, cloud providers, and data center operators evolve their architectures to reliably address AI workloads in both scale-out networks as well as next generation scale-up networks.

“We’re delivering the industry’s first truly flexible, open pluggable optical engine, removing barriers to CPO adoption and giving our customers exactly what they’ve been asking for: greater density, power efficiency, and reliability – all in an open, multi‑vendor ecosystem,” said Dino DiPerna, Senior Vice President of Global Research & Development at Ciena. “We continue to innovate in response to evolving customer needs, allowing operators to scale AI clusters more efficiently, using less energy and space, while lowering overall infrastructure costs.”

Vesta 200 6.4T CPX provides more power-efficient optical interconnect and delivers the chip-
edge density required for massive scale-up and scale-out networks on 200G/lane switches, XPUs, and NICs.

Key features include:

• Ultra-high density: Achieves highest density pluggable CPO through Ciena’s internally developed co-optimized design, combined with unique 2D fiber interconnect technology. This enables compatibility with the smallest co-packaged copper connectors such as Samtec’s CPX and supports high-performance 200G/lane deployments in space-constrained NICs, XPU servers, and leading-edge 100T and next-generation 200T switches.
• Power reduction: Features retimer-free linear-drive operation, supporting a robust electrical loss budget of up to 20 dB from the host ASIC, enabling more flexible CPO architectures and saving up to 70% power versus traditional, retimed options.
• Superior reliability: Designed with ultra-high availability in mind, from high volume external light source to internally developed SiGe drivers and TIAs co-optimized with temperature-stable silicon photonics Mach-Zehnder–based transmitters, and high density standard CPX compression-free electrical connectors.
• New optical networking ecosystem: Provides access to an open, standards-based CPO ecosystem featuring a pluggable, CPX electrical interconnect and an IEEE802.3dj compliant optical interface enabling a flexible and diverse supply chain by promoting interoperability across multiple ASIC, optical, and electrical interconnect vendors.

Industry Comments:

• “Adoption of CPO has started. The next priority for operators is development of a competitive CPO ecosystem. Ciena’s solution offers a path for establishing such an ecosystem,” said Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting. “An open, standards-based CPO ecosystem that creates a flexible and diverse supply chain, removing vendor lock-in and enabling interoperability across multiple ASIC, optical, and electrical interconnect vendors – is exactly what the customer would like to see.”
• “As a leading provider of network infrastructure equipment for AI networks in the world, it is critical to align with our customers’ demand for higher performance, lower power, and higher reliability,” said Michael KT Lee, Senior VP of R&D and Technology, Accton Technology. “To meet these constraints, we adopt new innovative optical technologies – whether CPO, NPO, or new pluggable form factors. We expect the use of CPO to accelerate dramatically over the next few years, and the availability of products like the Vesta 200 6.4T optical engine from Ciena will help address growing needs for next-generation scale-out and scale-up networks.”

• “The unrivaled growth in XPU scale-up networks demands low-latency, low power, high-density optical interconnects at the signal source,” said Brian Vicich, CTO at Samtec. “The combination of Ciena’s Vesta 200 6.4T CPX optical engine and Samtec’s Si-Fly® HD CPX System offers AI system architects a dense interconnect solution to route 200G PAM4 data links directly from the substrate to the front panel.”

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About Ciena

Ciena is the global leader in high-speed connectivity. We build the world’s most advanced networks to support exponential growth in bandwidth demand. By harnessing the power of our networking systems, interconnects, automation software, and services, Ciena revolutionizes data transmission and network management. With unparalleled expertise and innovation, we empower our customers, partners, and communities to thrive in the AI era. For updates on Ciena, follow us on LinkedIn, or visit the Ciena Insights webpage and Ciena website.

Note to Ciena Investors
You are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, forecasts, information and assumptions. These statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties.  Actual results or outcomes may differ materially from those stated or implied, because of risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in our most recent annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding our  expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies and can be identified by words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “should,” “will,” and “would” or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For any further details, please reach out at: ciena@activedmc.com

The post Ciena Unveils the Industry’s Highest-Density, Lowest-Power Pluggable Optical Engine to Meet Data Center AI Demands appeared first on Technology Innovators.

By Lisa Jane Wheaton, Maestro PMS

For years, the hospitality industry has been talking about personalization. Today, personalization is no longer optional; it is a critical differentiator that drives loyalty, revenue, and long-term competitive advantage. Hotels that deliver experiences tailored to each guest are outperforming the market, while those relying on generic messaging increasingly risk irrelevance.

The next era of guest engagement isn’t about sending more messages. It’s about delivering the right message, at the right moment, shaped by meaningful guest insight. Hotels are moving away from automation for automation’s sake and toward something far more powerful: predictive, intelligence-led experiences driven by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) intelligence.

This is where a personalized hotel CRM solution becomes more than a technology investment. It becomes a strategic foundation for both guest experience and revenue performance.

Not long ago, the industry’s definition of guest communication was fairly simple. Confirmation emails, pre-arrival reminders, post-stay surveys. Automated workflows helped hotels scale communication, and that was an important step forward.

But today’s guests expect more than efficiency. They expect recognition.

They want the hotel to understand who they are, anticipate what matters to them, and create experiences that feel curated rather than generic. The difference between “automated” and “personalized” is subtle on the surface, but transformational in practice.

Automation distributes messages on a schedule. True personalization is informed by guest intelligence and shaped by preference and behaviour.

In many ways, this shift reflects a broader hospitality CRM strategy evolution: hotels are no longer simply communicating with guests — they are learning from guest behavior and preferences over time.

Where Many Hotels Still Fall Short

The challenge is not intent, its infrastructure.

Guest data exists everywhere: in the hotel property-management system (PMS), in booking channels, in loyalty systems, in email platforms, in on-property interactions. Yet too often, it remains fragmented, underutilized, or locked away in silos.

As a result, personalization becomes superficial.

A guest might receive a “welcome back” email, but the hotel doesn’t remember their room preference; or a family traveler gets pushed a couples’ package, or a high value repeat guest is treated the same as a first-time OTA booking. Without a CRM that unifies guest profiles and supports segmentation, hotels risk delivering experiences that feel automated rather than intentional.

And today, guests notice.

The real opportunity lies in moving beyond surface-level personalization into intelligence-driven personalization that is rooted in insight, not assumptions or incomplete data.

How Smarter Personalization Starts with the PMS

The future of guest experience personalization depends on having systems that do more than just store guest information but activate it across the entire operation. That’s why personalization cannot live only in marketing tools or disconnected CRM databases. The richest opportunities come when guest intelligence is rooted in the PMS, where reservations, preferences, stay history, spending patterns, and on-property interactions all come together.

In many ways, the PMS evolved into one of the most strategic personalization platform within the hotel technology ecosystem. When guest data is unified at the core, hotels can move beyond surface-level outreach and begin delivering experiences that feel seamless and genuinely tailored from pre-arrival through post-stay. A modern hospitality CRM strategy works best when it is powered by operational insight, not just promotional messaging.

With the right PMS foundation, hotels can build richer guest profiles, track meaningful preferences over time, and support segmentation that drives smarter engagement, not just marketing.

This is where data-driven personalization becomes actionable. It is no longer about sending blanket campaigns or automated reminders. It becomes about shaping offers, service delivery, and communication based on who the guest is, what they value, and where they are on their journey.

Guest profile segmentation for hotels becomes far more impactful when it reflects real stay behavior rather than assumptions. Whether identifying repeat corporate travelers, leisure guests who consistently upgrade, or families who return seasonally, personalization strategies for hotel CRM become much more achievable when the data is connected through the PMS.

And importantly, this intelligence supports not only marketing, but the on-property teams delivering hospitality in real time. It helps hotels create consistency, recognition, and personalization across every department.

The Revenue Impact of Personalized CRM

Personalization is often framed as a guest experience initiative, but in reality, it is equally a revenue strategy. Hotels investing in CRM personalization are better positioned to strengthen direct relationships, reduce reliance on third-party channels, and deliver offers aligned with demonstrated guest intent

When communication is personalized, conversion improves. When offers align with guest intent, ancillary spend increases. When guests feel known, loyalty deepens.

In short, the revenue impact of personalized hotel CRM is real, measurable, and growing.

Leading hoteliers increasingly recognize that CRM is not merely a marketing utility. It’s a revenue engine that connects guest insight to smarter commercial decisions. It supports smarter forecasting, stronger retention, and more meaningful guest lifetime value. And perhaps most importantly, it helps hotels move from reactive engagement to proactive experience design.

That is the future of hospitality.

The Takeaway

Hospitality is entering a new chapter where personalization is not defined by automated touchpoints, but by intelligence-driven experiences. Hotels that succeed in this next era will be those that treat CRM as a strategic foundation, not an add-on. They will unify guest data, segment thoughtfully, and deliver communication that feels human, relevant, and predictive.

The question is no longer whether personalization matters, but whether your systems and strategy are equipped to deliver it consistently and at scale.

At Maestro, we believe that the most powerful guest experiences come from understanding guests deeply and using technology to support hospitality, not replace it. The future belongs to hotels that can turn data into connection, and connection into loyalty and revenue.

That is what CRM-driven personalization truly represents.

# # #

About the Author

Lisa Jane Wheaton is the Senior Product Strategist of Maestro, the preferred Web Browser based cloud and on-premises all-in-one PMS solution for independent hotels, luxury resorts, conference centers, vacation rentals, and multi-property groups. Maestro’s enterprise system offers embedded payments and 20+ integrated modules on a single database, including mobile and contact free apps to increase profitability, drive direct bookings, centralize operations, and enable operators to engage guests with a personalized and safe experience. Maestro’s Support Service provides unparalleled 24/7 North American based live support and education services.

The post CRM Driven Personalization: Moving Beyond Automated Messages to Predictive Guest Experiences appeared first on Technology Innovators.

Siemens, a long-standing XenomatiX customer and neighbour, has collaborated with XenomatiX since early 2020. Over the years, the collaboration has expanded across multiple initiatives in autonomous driving (AD), ADAS, smart city solutions, and mobility projects, including joint research on self-driving vehicles within the Simcenter environment.

As a global leader in design and simulation solutions for markets such as automotive, aerospace, aviation, industrial equipment, test laboratories, and wind tunnels, Siemens plans to deploy the awarded Xavia solid-state lidar system to further support its work in autonomous driving and ADAS projects. ‘By integrating solid state lidar technology in our testing environment, we can in parallel increase performance in our simulation and validation results,” comments Gert Sablon, Senior Director Testing Solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software.

“Siemens has been a valued partner for many years,” adds Kris De Meester, VP Sales and Business Development at XenomatiX. “Xavia is fundamentally superior from conventional lidar systems. Xavia is a true solid-state lidar with advanced features like advanced reflector handling and complete camera integration, which are especially important for autonomous driving applications.’’

XenomatiX also collaborates with Altair on road data for multi-body dynamics simulations. “With Altair’s recent acquisition by Siemens, the broader partner ecosystem – including XenomatiX – continues to strengthen.” confirms Peter De Clerck, Senior Director Marketing at Siemens Digital Industries Software.

The XenomatiX free lidar contest reflects the company’s ongoing focus on supporting research and development initiatives by providing access to advanced lidar technology.

About XenomatiX

XenomatiX is the first company to develop true solid-state LiDAR with edge AI, powering applications in automotive, smart cities, drones, and pavement inspection. Its XenoTrack system, iCART- and NCART-certified, delivers accurate, cost-effective pavement measurements and integrates into any vehicle, with turnkey solutions like the XenoVan and XenoBike. For 3D perception, Xavia combines LiDAR and camera to provide high-quality 6D data for security, crowd analytics, and smart cities. XenomatiX products have won international awards, including CES Innovation and Geo Week Game Changer, and the company operates globally from its Belgium, Europe, and U.S. offices.

The post Siemens Wins XenomatiX Free Lidar Contest, Expanding Collaboration on Autonomous and Smart Mobility Projects appeared first on Technology Innovators.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates – March 2, 2026 – Today at VAST Forward 2026, VAST Data, the AI Operating System company, announced the VAST Data PolicyEngine and VAST Data TuningEngine, two new computing services that will allow the next generation of the VAST AI Operating System to deliver key requirements for organizations looking to scale their mission-critical AI initiatives.

Specifically, PolicyEngine and TuningEngine work in tandem to create AI systems and interactions that are trusted, explainable, and continuously learning. PolicyEngine governs agentic activity and TuningEngine manages model tuning, working in conjunction to power automatic learning loops that remain aligned with organizational expectations.

“Just as people are always learning, so should tomorrow’s applications,” said Jeff Denworth, Co-Founder at VAST Data. “With the introduction of PolicyEngine and TuningEngine, the VAST AI Operating System has become a thinking machine that customers can deploy wherever they compute – a machine that safeguards every interaction and learns from every outcome, bringing the power of AI within reach of every organization.”

Introducing the VAST Data PolicyEngine

AI workflows and agents are increasingly accessing organizational data, using it to produce more information in the form of generated responses, agent-to-agent communications, event logs, and more. Without fine-grained controls on what agents can access and how they communicate with other agents, tools, and remote data products, the chance for data spillage and leakage rises greatly. Without strict controls on how data is accessed and how services communicate, and without tools to log every aspect of an agentic workflow, AI cannot be fully trusted.

The VAST PolicyEngine resolves these concerns via an inline policy enforcement engine to safeguard every aspect of agentic interaction and communication. PolicyEngine governs agents’ access to shared memory, external tools, knowledge bases, or other agents by permitting access, actions, and communications according to fine-grained, explicit permissions, as well as AI-derived context. Because enforcement occurs before actions execute, and because the system maintains extensive, tamper-proof traces and logs, the system maintains a zero-trust operating posture to ensure that decisions and actions remain observable, explainable, and auditable.

Introducing the VAST Data TuningEngine

VAST AgentEngine is the agentic runtime of the AI OS. It’s a serverless computing environment that’s simple to program and coordinates multi-agent workflows, model invocation, and agentic tool usage within the VAST AI OS. While AgentEngine has been suitable for the deployment of static models, the completeness of the AI OS stack allows the platform to also support “learning loops” that use all of the system’s telemetry, as well as agent and model feedback, to support fine tuning and reinforcement learning pipelines.

The VAST TuningEngine captures outcomes from agentic pipelines and utilizes curated feedback to enhance model performance over time. Using popular methods such as LoRA fine tuning, supervised fine tuning, and reinforcement learning, TuningEngine pipelines automatically ingest that data, process it, and suggest new candidate models. Each new candidate can be evaluated and benchmarked within the VAST AI OS, and then manually or automatically deployed into the platform. This will kick off a new learning loop that uses future interactions to improve on the newly deployed, updated model.

TuningEngine will serve as a natural extension of VAST’s partnership with NVIDIA by integrating with NVIDIA’s NeMo Data Designer to train and fine-tune NVIDIA Nemotron open models.

A Big Step Toward VAST’s Thinking Machine Vision

These new capabilities represent a massive step toward building systems that automatically evolve as they interact with data from the natural world. VAST Data has been working on building such a system since 2016, and unveiled the full extent of its vision in 2023. With today’s announcement, VAST AI OS finally creates a closed operational computing loop that observes, reasons, acts, evaluates, and improves — all while fortifying security and explainability by unifying and safeguarding all activities in one unified system.

The VAST PolicyEngine and TuningEngine are slated for release by the end of 2026.

Additional Resources:

• WEBINAR: Making AI Agents Trustable, Secure and Self-Learning

About VAST Data

VAST Data is the AI Operating System company – powering the next generation of intelligent systems with a unified software infrastructure stack that was purpose-built to unlock the full potential of AI. The VAST AI OS consolidates foundational data and compute services and agentic execution into one scalable platform, enabling organizations to deploy and facilitate communication between AI agents, reason over real-time data, and automate complex workflows at global scale. Built on VAST’s breakthrough DASE architecture – the world’s first true parallel distributed system architecture that eliminates tradeoffs between performance, scale, simplicity, and resilience – VAST has transformed its modern infrastructure into a global fabric for reasoning AI. Learn more at vastdata.com and follow VAST Data on LinkedIn, YouTube and X.

For any further details, please reach out at: vastdata@activedmc.com

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How Critical Infrastructures are Forcing Cybersecurity’s Evolution

By Alain Sanchez, EMEA CISO, Fortinet

Meeting after meeting, keynote speech after keynote speech, I realize that the pursuit of 100% prevention has become an anachronism. The combination of systemic complexity, the exponential acceleration of AI-driven threats, and the sophistication of nation-state-level attacks make the total avoidance of incidents not only an impossibility but a dangerous concept.

For the modern Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and the executive leadership they serve, this is a sobering truth that necessitates a fundamental shift in strategy: the evolution from a singular focus on security to a comprehensive commitment to resilience.

Security, in its traditional sense, creates a false sense of protection—a fortress mentality designed to keep the adversary out. Resilience, by contrast, is about ensuring operational continuity when the walls have been, even slightly, breached. It carries a bit more modesty beyond the acknowledgment that the breach is inevitable, and the true measure of success lies in the speed and efficacy of the recovery.

More pragmatic, this new paradigm of resilience is defined by three core capabilities, which move the focus from the perimeter to the core mission:

1. Anticipatory Response: This isn’t just about spotting bugs; it’s about learning from a live attack as it happens. The idea is to use the attacker’s own moves to understand and respond to their attack in real-time. By connecting the dots, this posture can predict where the system might fail next and have recovery tools ready to go before the damage spreads.
2. Managed Degradation: This is the ability of an organization to maintain a limited, well defined set of critical services while assuming that other parts of the network might be compromised. It is the strategic decision to operate in a “degraded state,” ensuring that the most vital functions—be they financial transactions, power grid control, or patient care—remain operational, even if at reduced capacity.
3. Rapid Restoration: The focus shifts from “if we are ever hit” to “how fast can we bounce back.” This capability is measured by the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and is underpinned by immutable data backups and robust, tested recovery playbooks.

The Critical Infrastructure Imperative: From Choice to Legal Obligation

While the shift to resilience is a trend for most organisations, it is rapidly becoming a legal and regulatory obligation for those operating Critical Infrastructure (CI). Critical Infrastructure encompasses the assets, systems, and networks—whether physical or virtual—that are considered so vital to a government that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, public health, or safety. (3)

Historically, governments have set security standards for CI. However, the new resilience mandate represents a profound shift in the social contract between government and private entities that manage these vital systems. Governments are now declaring that the ability to withstand and recover from disruption is a matter of national security, thereby assigning the obligation to be resilient to the private operators.

Cloud Sovereignty and Local Control

The concept of resilience is now inextricably linked to technological independence and the definition of “Local Control”(5) To meet the stringent requirements of the DNA and CSA2, new infrastructure models are emerging:

– Sovereign Cloud Partitions: Cloud providers are launching environments that are physically and logically isolated as well as having a governance structure shielded from foreign jurisdictions, such as the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC), where the management console, Identity and Access Management (IAM), billing, and executive management team are guaranteed to be located 100% within the EU. This ensures that the control plane for critical data remains within the required legal and physical boundaries.

– Sovereign Edge Computing: Telecommunications companies are integrating security and processing directly at the network edge. This model ensures that sensitive industrial data is processed locally before it ever reaches the public internet, thereby enforcing the principles of Managed Degradation and data sovereignty simultaneously5

Global Drivers and the Market Response

The regulatory push is mirrored by a powerful economic consensus. At the WEF annual meeting in Davos, Fortinet executives discussed this new deal, and in the very WEF’s 2026 report, we read that 92% of CEOs now prioritize “cyber recovery capabilities” over traditional “perimeter defense spending”1. This recent shift in executive focus is about to translate into market changes:

• Insurance Transformation: Major cyber-insurers have begun implementing “Resilience Audits.” Premiums are no longer calculated solely on the occurrence of a breach but are heavily weighted by a company’s RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and the immutability of their data. This financial incentive is forcing organizations to invest in recovery frameworks that can be quantitatively measured and validated both in terms of what they recover but also how fast.
• The OECD Governance Framework: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has emphasized that ensuring CI resilience requires new governance models that limit service disruptions and promote cross-sector collaboration(4). This has the merit of defining national-level frameworks that incentivize redundancy, incident reporting, and infrastructure sharing.

The Technological Frontier: Autonomous Resilience

The technological response to the resilience mandate is manifesting in the rise of Autonomous Resilience Agents and “Self-Healing Networks.” These tools move beyond simple blocking mechanisms. They are designed to allow a suspected attack to proceed in a sandbox environment to automatically generate and distribute immunity signatures across the entire infrastructure.

This AI-driven approach embodies the resilience philosophy: instead of failing to prevent the attack, the system uses the attack itself as a data point to rapidly learn, adapt, and restore. It is the ultimate expression of the Managed Degradation principle, turning a localized compromise into a global defense advantage.

Conclusion: The Architect of Continuity and Control

The evolution from security to resilience, now compounded by the mandate for sovereignty, is a profound philosophical and operational pivot. For critical infrastructure operators, it is the new cost of doing business, enforced by government mandate and economic reality. Crucially, this shift cannot succeed through regulation alone; it relies on deep public-private partnerships.

By aligning the government’s security intelligence with the private sector’s operational expertise, these collaborations ensure that sovereignty mandates are both technically feasible and economically sustainable, turning a top-down requirement into a shared defense strategy.

The resilience approach can be understood through a medical analogy: immunization. Just as an organism is exposed to a weakened virus to learn and build a controlled, informed immune response, the resilient enterprise uses the very essence of an attack to its advantage. Far from being a weakness, this approach turns an actual compromise into a learning event, allowing the system to understand the threat more deeply and trigger informed, controlled recovery scenarios.

The CISO’s mission is transforming from being the gatekeeper of the fortress to the architect of continuity. The focus is no longer on the impossible task of preventing every single attack, but on building systems that are inherently adaptive, capable of absorbing shocks, and designed for rapid, assured recovery within legally defined sovereign boundaries. In this new, “war-grade” environment, the resilient and sovereign organization is the one that can take the hit, learn from the experience, maintain what matters most, and move forward with minimal disruption.

1.World Economic Forum. (2026). Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026.

2.Global Policy Watch. (2026, January 23). European Commission Proposes Cybersecurity Act 2: New EU Supply Chain Rules and Certification Reforms.

3.The White House. (2013, February 12). Presidential Policy Directive — Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience.

4.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2025, June 19). Ensuring the resilience of critical infrastructure. (Except from Government

at a Glance 2025).

5.Sanchez, A. (2026, January 30). Summary of Sovereignty Posture for European Telcos. (Internal Memo).

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Why improving existing assets, not chasing forecasts, may offer the most durable path forward

By Andrew Carey

It’s that time of year again. Crystal balls are out and pundits are busy predicting whether hospitality transactions will rise or fall. No one knows for certain, though everyone seems to have an opinion.

I’m not a forecaster. I’m an operator with a bad habit of investing when I see a good situation. For the past several years, those situations have been scarce.

At a fundamental level, hospitality economics have been out of alignment: interest rates remained elevated, cap rates stubbornly low, and RevPAR growth anemic. Those conditions made it difficult to justify new investment, let alone generate attractive risk-adjusted returns.

That said, I believe 2026 may mark an inflection point.

Over the past 18 months, rates have moved meaningfully off their peaks. Debt constants remain high often in the 7% to 9% range depending on structure, but the door to positive leverage is beginning to reopen. The remaining challenge lies with sellers. Cap rate expectations have yet to adjust meaningfully, reflecting a lingering attachment to the era of ultra-low interest rates. These two realities cannot coexist indefinitely. Transaction volume will remain constrained unless interest rates continue to ease or sellers accept modestly higher cap rates.

In other words, the math is improving but pricing hasn’t. So where does that leave investors?

Given today’s construction costs, which generally require RevPAR north of $150 to pencil, few markets can support new supply. As a result, I see three viable investment paths for private capital:

1. Developing a well-located, soft-branded hotel capable of sustaining RevPAR above $250;
2. Repositioning a neglected or obsolete hotel; or
3. Reinvesting in an existing asset to drive higher ADR and RevPAR.

Each path requires a different kind of skill and a different tolerance for uncertainty.

Development: High Risk, High Reward
High-end, small-scale development is not for the faint of heart. It demands exceptional design, thoughtful branding, and operational precision. When executed well, these projects can command meaningful rate premiums that offset higher development costs.

The challenge lies in finding the right location and calibrating the finish level precisely. Success requires a strong design team, a disciplined operator, and, above all, patient capital.

Repositioning: Compelling, But Rare
Repositioning a “forgotten” hotel may be even more compelling, but it’s akin to hunting unicorns. Most markets have been thoroughly scrubbed for underutilized assets in acceptable locations. Still, when such opportunities do surface, they can generate significant value.

While the physical plant may require extensive reinvestment, you’re starting with two invaluable advantages: an existing structure and a viable location.

The common thread across both strategies is the need for realism. Too often, investors talk themselves into overly optimistic narratives assuming margin expansion where none exists or projecting rate growth unsupported by demand. While a well-run hotel can achieve RevPAR indices approaching 200, this performance is typically driven more by stronger occupancy than outsized ADR gains.

Reinvestment: The Most Reliable Path
The third path reinvesting in an existing asset offers the highest probability of success and the most attractive risk-adjusted returns. After years of deferred maintenance and operational shortcuts, many hotels are overdue for renewal, both physically and operationally.

In three decades of hotel management, I’ve learned that hotel performance isn’t usually limited by strategy it’s limited by discipline. Too many owners underinvest in guestrooms, constrain payrolls, and defer maintenance slowly eroding both the guest experience and the asset’s long-term value.

Given the broader market constraints, reinvesting in existing assets is often the most compelling strategy. This advantage will only grow over time as demand continues to outpace supply and fewer hotels step forward to improve their product. The result will be a widening gap: fewer well-run hotels serving an increasingly mobile and discerning guest base. Not tomorrow, but the demographic trajectory is clear.

Where should owners begin?
If 2026 is the year operational reinvestment becomes the most reliable strategy, it starts with clarity. Owners should begin by answering three questions:

• What experience are we trying to deliver and what will it cost to sustain it?
• Where has the asset quietly fallen behind the comp set?
• Do we have the discipline, systems, and leadership to execute the plan not just approve it?

A well-run hotel can generate strong returns for decades. A starved hotel, by contrast, has numbered days.

There is no single right investment strategy only the one that aligns with your capabilities and discipline. Development and repositioning can deliver outsized returns, but are constrained by opportunity and execution risk. Reinvestment, while less glamorous, offers broader availability and more reliable outcomes.

The challenge is not finding assets but rather finding teams willing to do the work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andrew Carey is the Chief Executive Officer at Newport Hospitality Group, overseeing the management firm’s new growth opportunities through equity ventures and new acquisitions as well as the general operations of the company. Earning his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, Andrew started his career 20 years ago by structuring and investing limited partnerships in a variety of real estate environments. Shortly thereafter, he joined Paine Webber where he helped to source and invest $200 million in real estate investments across the United States. Andrew now strives to ensure that every property in Newport Hospitality Group’s portfolio receives the best possible hotel management expertise.

The post Where to Invest: A Pragmatic View of Hospitality in 2026 appeared first on Technology Innovators.

Before the implementation, the manufacturer relied on three legacy systems that handled distinct organizational data. Managing and making changes led to segregated use of the three systems. This workflow caused issues such as delayed data processing, operational process disruptions, and scalability limitations. In addition, the lack of data migration capabilities was a concern for the security of crucial information. Overall, managing three systems made it difficult for the team to access consistent and up-to-date information.

eLuminous Technologies stepped into the picture to address these critical challenges. A team of dedicated .NET developers and a Project Manager proposed combining three data sources into a single source. The offshore developers designed and implemented a centralized IT management platform that consolidated multiple data streams into a single system. With the API at its core, the solution could integrate with existing and new third-party software, ensuring scalability, security, and long-term operational reliability. In phase II, a team of mobile app developers built a cross-platform application that displayed the required data on smartphones. Notably, the team took time to understand the requirements and explain the system to the manufacturing company’s new Chief Technology Officer.

Following implementation, the manufacturer reported a 40% increase in overall operational efficiency. This impact was a direct result of efficient data handling via a single, unified API platform. The administrators can now modify stakeholders, reduce redundancies, and improve scalability without the hassle of accessing three different systems. Furthermore, the auxiliary mobile app led to a twofold increase in team collaboration across all departments. The combination of a .NET-based web app and a lightweight cross-platform mobile application solved data access, handling, and management challenges for the heavy machinery manufacturer.

“Manufacturing organizations mostly struggle with fragmented data environments that limit efficiency and decision-making,” said Hrushikesh Wakadkar, Co-Founder and Director at eLuminous Technologies. “This project shows how a centralized, API-driven platform can bring clarity and measurable operational improvements without disrupting ongoing operations.”

eLuminous Technologies is a Clutch-verified offshore software development company that builds practical, stable, and reliable digital solutions. With a track record of working with 7+ Fortune 500 companies and 940+ successful projects, the team focuses on building future-ready web applications, mobile apps, and portals. The software company has more than 180 dedicated developers handling web development for manufacturing companies, healthcare, logistics, and enterprise clients.

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Website: https://eluminoustechnologies.com/

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