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Todd Maddox Reveals How PTC’s Vuforia Expert Capture Speeds Time to Productivity While Reducing Training Costs

The brain science of learning suggests that the most effective workforce training tools engage the worker in a way that directly and naturally maps onto the relevant learning and memory systems in the brain.

PTC’s Vuforia Expert Capture uses augmented reality technology to meet these needs by curating subject matter experts’ knowledge and presenting that information to workers in a way that minimizes cognitive load while simultaneously engaging experiential and behavioral skills learning systems in the brain.

This speeds time to productivity, trains subject matter and behavioral skills expertise, all while reducing training costs. To describe how this works, I’ve recently written a Market Milestone describing the brain science and use cases that Expert Capture is best suited for. To access this report, which has been licensed by PTC, at no cost, please visit https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/ar/report/brain-science-behind-augmented-reality

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Amalgam Insights Publishes Highly Anticipated SmartList on Service Mesh and Microservices Management

Amalgam Insights has just published my highly anticipated SmartList Market Guide on Service Mesh. It is currently available this week at no cost as we prepare for KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 where I’ll be attending.

Before you go to the event, get prepared by catching up on the key strategies, trends, and vendors associated with microservices and service mesh. For instance, consider how the Service Mesh market is currently constructed.

To get a deep dive on this figure regarding the three key sectors of the Service Mesh market, gain insights describing the current State of the Market for service mesh, and learn where key vendors and products including Istio, Linkerd, A10, Amazon, Aspen Mesh, Buoyant, Google, Hashicorp, IBM, NGINX, Red Hat, Solo.io, Vamp, and more fit into today’s microservices management environment, download my report today.

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Todd Maddox Explains Why Extended Reality (xR) Technologies Will Disrupt Corporate L&D

Research Fellow Todd Maddox, Ph.D. has just published a new Analyst Insight: Leveraging Learning Science: Why Extended Reality (xR) is Poised to Disrupt Corporate Learning and Development.

In this Analyst Insight, Todd Maddox, Ph.D. provides guidance on why Augmented and Virtual Reality are set to disrupt corporate learning. This report focuses on a learning science evaluation of the potential for extended reality (xR) technologies to disrupt corporate L&D and show how xR technologies have the potential to improve the quality and quantity of training, to accelerate learning and enhance retention in all aspects of corporate learning to provide the following benefits:

  • Faster learning and stronger retention
  • Reduced training time
  • Time-effective, cost-effective and scalable training across a variety of hard skills, soft skills and situational awareness
  • Ability to train expensive, dangerous and rare situations in total safety and to expertise.
  • Improved understanding of the learning process through subjective, objective, attention, and engagement metrics built from xR Big Data.
  • More effective, efficient, and valuable learning environments.

To learn more about the key aspects of augmented and virtual reality that will change coporate learning environments, download this Analyst Insight, which is available at no cost through April 10th: Leveraging Learning Science: Why Extended Reality (xR) is Poised to Disrupt Corporate Learning and Development.

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Tom Petrocelli Releases Groundbreaking Technical Guide on Service Mesh

On April 2, 2019, Amalgam Insights Research Fellow Tom Petrocelli published Technical Guide: A Service Mesh Primer, which serves as a vital starting point for technical architects and developer teams to understand the current trends in microservices and service mesh. This report provides enterprise architects, CTOs, and developer teams with the guidance they need to understand the microservices architecture, service mesh architecture, and OSI model context necessary to conceptualize service mesh technologies.

In this report, Amalgam Insights provides context in the following areas: Continue reading “Tom Petrocelli Releases Groundbreaking Technical Guide on Service Mesh”

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Coming Attractions: Groundbreaking Service Mesh Research

In early January, I started researching the service mesh market. To oversimplify, a service mesh is a way of providing for the kind of network services necessary for enterprise applications deployed using a microservices architecture. Since most microservices architectures are being deployed within containers and, most often, managed and orchestrated using Kubernetes, service mesh technology will have a major impact on the adoption of these markets.

As I began writing the original paper, I quickly realized that an explanation of service mesh technology was necessary to understand the dynamic of the service mesh market. Creating a primer on service mesh and a market guide turned out to be too much for one paper. It was unbearably long. Subsequently, the paper was split into two papers, a Technical Guide and a Market Guide.

The Technical Guide is a quick primer on service mesh technology and how it is used to enhance microservices architectures, especially within the context of containers and Kubernetes. The Market Guide outlines the structure of the market for service mesh products and open source projects, discusses many of the major players, and talks to the current Istio versus Linkerd controversy. The latter is actually a non-issue that has taken on more importance than it should given the nascence of the market.

The Technical Guide will be released next week, just prior to Cloud Foundry Summit. Even though service mesh companies seem to be focused on Kubernetes, anytime there is a microservices architecture, there will be a service mesh. This is true for microservices implemented using Cloud Foundry containers.

The Market Guide will be published roughly a month later, before Red Hat Summit and KubeCon+CloudNative Summit Europe, which I will be attending. Most of the vendors discussed in the Market Guide will be in attendance at one or the other conference. Read the report before going so that you know who to talk to if you are attending these conferences.

A service mesh is a necessary part of emerging microservices architectures. These papers will hopefully get you started on your journey to deploying one.

Note: Vendors interested in leveraging this research for commercial usage are invited to contact Lisa Lincoln (lisa@amalgaminghts.com).

 

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Todd Maddox Reveals How Collaborative Video-Based Practice Effectively Trains People Skills: A Brain Science Analysis

Amalgam Insights Brain Science Research Fellow Todd Maddox has released new research on the Rehearsal website focused on the role of collaborative video-based practice and its role in teaching people skills (also known as soft skills). Continue reading “Todd Maddox Reveals How Collaborative Video-Based Practice Effectively Trains People Skills: A Brain Science Analysis”

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Tom Petrocelli Clarifies How Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes Provide Different Paths to Microservices

DevOps Research Fellow Tom Petrocelli has just published a new report describing the roles that Cloud Foundry Application Runtime and Kubernetes play in supporting microservices. This report explores when each solution is appropriate and provides a set of vendors that provide resources and solutions to support the development of these open source projects.

Organizations and Vendors mentioned include: Cloud Foundry Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Pivotal, IBM, Suse, Atos, Red Hat, Canonical, Rancher, Mesosphere, Heptio, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and Microsoft

To download this report, which has been made available at no cost until the end of February, go to https://amalgaminsights.com/product/analyst-insight-cloud-foundry-and-kubernetes-different-paths-to-microservices

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Todd Maddox Publishes Brain Science Analysis of Augmented Reality for Product Lifecycle Management

Today, Todd Maddox published the report “Why Augmented Reality is Effective in Product Lifecycle Management: A Brain Science Analysis.” This report provides best practices for implementing augmented reality across product development, supply chain management, equipment operation, troubleshooting, and field service.

Recommendations are based on Maddox’ research, which has been cited over 10,000 by his academic peers.

This report is available at no cost through the end of February based on the generosity of our clients. To download this report at no cost for the rest of February, please go to https://amalgaminsights.com/product/analyst-insight-why-augmented-reality-is-effective-in-product-lifecycle-management.

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Leveraging Psychology and Brain Science to Optimize Retention and Behavior Change

Amalgam Insights’ Learning Science Research Fellow Todd Maddox has recently published an Analyst Insight focused on exploring how psychology and brain science can inform learning practitioners and provide tools that optimize information retention and behavior change. The workplace is changing rapidly and the modern employee needs continuous learning of hard skills, people (aka soft) skills and situational awareness. Neuroscience reveals that each of these skill sets is mediated by a distinct learning system in the brain, each of which has its own unique operating characteristics. The modern employee expects learning in the flow of work, available 24/7 on any device, with engaging content and experience.

Maddox’ key finding was that Qstream’s mobile microlearning solution meets these challenges by delivering content in a way that engages the cognitive skills learning system in the brain during hard skills training, the behavioral skills learning in the brain during people skills training, and the emotional skills learning system in the brain during situational awareness training. The user experience engages employees through scenario-based challenges which stimulate critical thinking, gives real-time feedback, explains answers, supports personalized coaching, and delivers learning in minutes per day.

For a complementary copy of the complete report, vist the Qstream website at: https://info.qstream.com/leveraging-learning-science-how-qstreams-mobile-microlearning-solution-changes-behavior.

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Leveraging Learning Science: Why Skillsoft’s Technology and Developer Learning Content Drives Continuous Adaptability in the Digital Age: A Market Milestone

In a recently published Market Milestone, Todd Maddox, Ph.D., Learning Scientist and Research Fellow for Amalgam Insights, evaluated Skillsoft’s Technology and Developer Learning Content from a learning science perspective—the marriage of psychology and brain science.
This involves evaluating the training content and delivery to determine whether it engages psychological processes and learning systems in the brain effectively.

Amalgam’s overall evaluation is that Skillsoft’s Technology and Developer Learning Content is highly effective. Skillsoft’s Technology and Developer Content portfolio meets the need for continuous adaptability and effective engagement of the task appropriate learning system in the brain with their “watch”, “read”, “listen” and “practice” content and delivery methodology. Delivering the Technology and Developer Content portfolio with Percipio’s ELSA ensures that the portfolio is efficiently organized, is easily accessible on any device, is searchable and is seamlessly integrated into the employee’s flow of work. Finally, Skillsoft’s newly developed “Aspire” offering helps the employee realize their aspirations and desires by building an “Aspirational Persona” and developing a digital learning journey to support career advancement.

For more information, read the full Market Milestone licensed for distribution by Skillsoft at http://learn.skillsoft.com/Website-AR-Amalgam-Leveraging-Learning-Science-Why-Skillsofts-Tech-Dev-Learn_LandingPage.html.