#cloud migration system

[astutebusiness]

Say goodbye to outdated infrastructure. With Astute’s Oracle IT Estate Modernization, you can simplify management, reduce costs and drive innovation. We help you migrate securely, enable AI/ML and automate your operations—faster. Let Astute modernize your IT estate the smart way.

[preemptivetechnofield]

At Preemptive Technofield, we specialize in helping organizations navigate their digital journey with tailored IT infrastructure solutions. Enhance your business efficiency, agility, and measurable outcomes with our expert consulting.

[smarterintegration]

Integrated IT Systems and Cloud Migration: The Use of IPaaS in Modernizing Enterprise Architecture

IPaaS plays a crucial role in cloud migration by seamlessly integrating legacy IT systems with modern cloud solutions. It ensures smooth data flow, real-time synchronization, and scalable integration, simplifying the transition to the cloud. This approach helps businesses modernize their architecture, improve efficiency, and stay agile in a digital landscape.

With more businesses shifting to cloud environments, making enterprise architecture modern is a requirement to remain competitive and responsive. One of the main challenges during this transformation is merging legacy IT systems with contemporary cloud-based solutions. This is where Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) comes into play, facilitating seamless integration and providing a seamless cloud migration experience.

IPaaS is a centralized platform that integrates multiple on-premises systems, cloud applications, and third-party services. It enables businesses to integrate heterogeneous systems and data sources and promote a unified data and workflow management approach. While migrating to the cloud, iPaaS facilitates data to move seamlessly from legacy systems to new cloud applications without interruption, making the migration simpler.

One of the major advantages of iPaaS in the modernization of enterprise architecture is its scalability. iPaaS solutions enable companies to scale their business rapidly by adding new cloud services as they expand, without the necessity of rebuilding existing infrastructure. This adaptability allows organizations to respond to shifting business requirements while ensuring the integrity and reliability of their IT infrastructure.

Additionally, iPaaS makes data synchronization and real-time data exchange easy, keeping all systems in sync and running smoothly. This does away with data silos, enhances interdepartmental collaboration, and supports better decision-making through the presentation of a single view of information.

In summary, iPaaS is crucial in modernizing enterprise architecture by simplifying the integration of legacy IT systems with cloud solutions. It provides a seamless, scalable, and agile cloud migration, enabling business companies to achieve operational efficiency and agility while keeping up with digital transformation.

Check out this Article for similar Insights-

https://tinyurl.com/2s43f2un

[jcmarchi]

Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/babak-hodjat-cto-of-ai-at-cognizant-interview-series/

Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant – Interview Series

Babak Hodjat is Vice President of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, and former co-founder and CEO of Sentient. He is responsible for the core technology behind the world’s largest distributed artificial intelligence system. Babak was also the founder of the world’s first AI-driven hedge fund, Sentient Investment Management. He is a serial entrepreneur, having started a number of Silicon Valley companies as main inventor and technologist.

Prior to co-founding Sentient, Babak was senior director of engineering at Sybase iAnywhere, where he led mobile solutions engineering. He was also co-founder, CTO and board member of Dejima Inc. Babak is the primary inventor of Dejima’s patented, agent-oriented technology applied to intelligent interfaces for mobile and enterprise computing – the technology behind Apple’s Siri.

A published scholar in the fields of artificial life, agent-oriented software engineering and distributed artificial intelligence, Babak has 31 granted or pending patents to his name. He is an expert in numerous fields of AI, including natural language processing, machine learning, genetic algorithms and distributed AI and has founded multiple companies in these areas. Babak holds a Ph.D. in machine intelligence from Kyushu University, in Fukuoka, Japan.

Looking back at your career, from founding multiple AI-driven companies to leading Cognizant’s AI Lab, what are the most important lessons you’ve learned about innovation and leadership in AI?

Innovation needs patience, investment, and nurturing, and it should be fostered and unrestricted. If you’ve built the right team of innovators, you can trust them and give them full artistic freedom to choose how and what they research. The results will often amaze you. From a leadership perspective, research and innovation should not be a nice-to-have or an afterthought. I’ve set up research teams pretty early on when building start-ups and have always been a strong advocate of research investment, and it has paid off. In good times, research keeps you ahead of competition, and in bad times, it helps you diversify and survive, so there is no excuse for underinvesting, restricting or overburdening it with short-term business priorities.

As one of the primary inventors of Apple’s Siri, how has your experience with developing intelligent interfaces shaped your approach to leading AI initiatives at Cognizant?

The natural language technology I originally developed for Siri was agent-based, so I have been working with the concept for a long time. AI wasn’t as powerful in the ’90s, so I used a multi-agent system to tackle understanding and mapping of natural language commands to actions. Each agent represented a small subset of the domain of discourse, so the AI in each agent had a simple environment to master. Today, AI systems are powerful, and one LLM can do many things, but we still benefit by treating it as a knowledge worker in a box, restricting its domain, giving it a job description and linking it to other agents with different responsibilities. The AI is thus able to augment and improve any business workflow.

As part of my remit as CTO of AI at Cognizant, I run our Advanced AI Lab in San Francisco. Our core research principle is agent-based decision-making. As of today, we currently have 56 U.S. patents on core AI technology based on that principle. We’re all in.

Could you elaborate on the cutting-edge research and innovations currently being developed at Cognizant’s AI Lab? How are these developments addressing the specific needs of Fortune 500 companies?

We have several AI studios and innovation centers. Our Advanced AI Lab in San Francisco focuses on extending the state of the art in AI. This is part of our commitment announced last year to invest $1 billion in generative AI over the next three years.

More specifically, we’re focused on developing new algorithms and technologies to serve our clients. Trust, explainability and multi-objective decisions are among the important areas we’re pursuing that are vital for Fortune 500 enterprises.

Around trust, we’re interested in research and development that deepens our understanding of when we can trust AI’s decision-making enough to defer to it, and when a human should get involved. We have several patents related to this type of uncertainty modeling. Similarly, neural networks, generative AI and LLMs are inherently opaque. We want to be able to evaluate an AI decision and ask it questions about why it recommended something – essentially making it explainable. Finally, we understand that sometimes, decisions companies want to be able to make have more than one outcome objective—cost reduction while increasing revenues balanced with ethical considerations, for example. AI can help us achieve the best balance of all of these outcomes by optimizing decision strategies in a multi-objective manner. This is another very important area in our AI research.

The next two years are considered critical for generative AI. What do you believe will be the pivotal changes in this period, and how should enterprises prepare?

We’re heading into an explosive period for the commercialization of AI technologies. Today, AI’s primary uses are improving productivity, creating better natural language-driven user interfaces, summarizing data and helping with coding. During this acceleration period, we believe that organizing overall technology and AI strategies around the core tenet of multi-agent systems and decision-making will best enable enterprises to succeed. At Cognizant, our emphasis on innovation and applied research will help our clients leverage AI to increase strategic advantage as it becomes further integrated into business processes.

How will Generative AI reshape industries, and what are the most exciting use cases emerging from Cognizant’s AI Lab?

Generative AI has been a huge step forward for businesses. You now have the ability to create a series of knowledge workers that can assist humans in their day-to-day work. Whether it’s streamlining customer service through intelligent chatbots or managing warehouse inventory through a natural language interface, LLMs are very good at specialized tasks.

But what comes next is what will truly reshape industries, as agents get the ability to communicate with each other. The future will be about companies having agents in their devices and applications that can address your needs and interact with other agents on your behalf. They will work across entire businesses to assist humans in every role, from HR and finance to marketing and sales. In the near future, businesses will gravitate naturally towards becoming agent-based.

Notably, we already have a multi-agent system that was developed in our lab in the form of Neuro AI, an AI use case generator that allows clients to rapidly build and prototype AI decisioning use cases for their business. It is already delivering some exciting results, and we’ll be sharing more on this soon.

What role will multi-agent architectures play in the next wave of Gen AI transformation, particularly in large-scale enterprise environments?

In our research and conversations with corporate leaders, we’re getting more and more questions about how they can make Generative AI impactful at scale. We believe the transformative promise of multi-agent artificial intelligence systems is central to achieving that impact. A multi-agent AI system brings together AI agents built into software systems in various areas across the enterprise. Think of it as a system of systems that allows LLMs to interact with one another. Today, the challenge is that, even though business objectives, activities, and metrics are deeply interwoven, the software systems used by disparate teams are not, creating problems. For example, supply chain delays can affect distribution center staffing. Onboarding a new vendor can impact Scope 3 emissions. Customer turnover could indicate product deficiencies. Siloed systems mean actions are often based on insights drawn from merely one program and applied to one function. Multi-agent architectures will light up insights and integrated action across the business. That’s real power that can catalyze enterprise transformation.

In what ways do you see multi-agent systems (MAS) evolving in the next few years, and how will this impact the broader AI landscape?

A multi-agent AI system functions as a virtual working group, analyzing prompts and drawing information from across the business to produce a comprehensive solution not just for the original requestor, but for other teams as well. If we zoom in and look at a particular industry, this could revolutionize operations in areas like manufacturing, for example. A Sourcing Agent would analyze existing processes and recommend more cost-effective alternative components based on seasons and demand. This Sourcing Agent would then connect with a Sustainability Agent to determine how the change would impact environmental goals. Finally, a Regulatory Agent would oversee compliance activity, ensuring teams submit complete, up-to-date reports on time.

The good news is many companies have already begun to organically integrate LLM-powered chatbots, but they need to be intentional about how they start to connect these interfaces. Care must be taken as to the granularity of agentification, the types of LLMs being used, and when and how to fine-tune them to make them effective. Organizations should start from the top, consider their needs and goals, and work down from there to decide what can be agentified.

What are the main challenges holding enterprises back from fully embracing AI, and how does Cognizant address these obstacles?

Despite leadership’s backing and investment, many enterprises fear falling behind on AI. According to our research, there’s a gap between leaders’ strategic commitment and the confidence to execute well. Cost and availability of talent and the perceived immaturity of current Gen AI solutions are two significant inhibitors holding enterprises back from fully embracing AI.

Cognizant plays an integral role helping enterprises traverse the AI productivity-to-growth journey. In fact, recent data from a study we conducted with Oxford Economics points to the need for outside expertise to help with AI adoption, with 43% of companies indicating they plan to work with external consultants to develop a plan for generative AI. Traditionally, Cognizant has owned the last mile with clients – we did this with data storage and cloud migration, and agentification will be no different. This is work that must be highly customized. It’s not a one size fits all journey. We’re the experts who can help identify the business goals and implementation plan, and then bring in the right custom-built agents to address business needs. We are, and have always been, the people to call.

Many companies struggle to see immediate ROI from their AI investments. What common mistakes do they make, and how can these be avoided?

Generative AI is far more effective when companies bring it into their own data context—that is to say, customize it on their own strong foundation of enterprise data. Also, sooner or later, enterprises will have to take the challenging step to reimagine their fundamental business processes. Today, many companies are using AI to automate and improve existing processes. Bigger results can happen when they start to ask questions like, what are the constituents of this process, how do I change them, and prepare for the emergence of something that doesn’t exist yet? Yes, this will necessitate a culture change and accepting some risk, but it seems inevitable when orchestrating the many parts of the organization into one powerful whole.

What advice would you give to emerging AI leaders who are looking to make a significant impact in the field, especially within large enterprises?

Business transformation is complex by nature. Emerging AI leaders within larger enterprises should focus on breaking down processes, experimenting with changes, and innovating. This requires a shift in mindset and calculated risks, but it can create a more powerful organization.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Cognizant.

[softweb-solutions]

AWS for Application Modernization: Updating Your Legacy Systems for the Cloud

Introduction:

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, outdated legacy systems can hinder your business’s growth and innovation. These systems can be complex, expensive to maintain, and difficult to scale, posing a significant barrier to agility and progress. To stay ahead of the competition and unleash the full potential of your business, embracing AWS for application modernization is not just a choice but a necessity. By leveraging AWS consulting services, you can effectively navigate the complexities of modernization and ensure a smooth transition to cloud-powered agility.

Unlocking Cloud Potential: Top Strategies for Migrating to AWS

If you want to dive deeper into the benefits and approaches of AWS for application modernization, be sure to check out our detailed whitepaper: Migrating legacy applications to AWS cloud

“In today’s era of volatility, there is no other way but to re-invent. The only sustainable advantage you can have over others is agility, that’s it. Because nothing else is sustainable, everything else you create, somebody else will replicate.” — Jeff Bezos

The Need for Modernization:

Legacy systems often act as anchors, weighing down businesses with outdated technologies and inefficient processes. They can lead to:

Reduced agility: Legacy systems often lack the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands and customer needs.

Increased costs: Maintaining and upgrading legacy systems can be costly, diverting resources from more strategic initiatives.

Security vulnerabilities: Legacy systems may not be equipped with modern security measures, leaving them susceptible to cyberattacks.

Limited innovation: Legacy systems can hinder the adoption of new technologies and innovations that drive business growth.

AWS: Your Partner in Modernization:

AWS, a leading cloud platform, offers a comprehensive suite of services to help you modernize your legacy systems and transform your business. With AWS, you can:

Lift-and-shift: Migrate your existing applications to AWS without significant code changes.

Refactor: Restructure your applications to take advantage of cloud-native features and improve scalability.

Rebuild: Develop new applications from scratch using modern technologies and cloud-based infrastructure.

Benefits of AWS Application Modernization:

Modernizing your legacy systems with AWS brings a multitude of benefits, including:

Reduced costs: AWS’s scalable and pay-as-you-go model can significantly lower your IT infrastructure costs.

Increased agility: AWS’s elastic infrastructure enables you to scale your applications up or down as needed, adapting to changing demands.

Enhanced security: AWS’s robust security features safeguard your applications and data from cyber threats.

Accelerated innovation: AWS provides access to cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics, fueling innovation.

Migrating to AWS:

The journey to AWS application modernization can be tailored to your specific needs and preferences. Common approaches include:

Lift-and-shift: Move your existing applications to AWS EC2 instances, the quickest and easiest option.

Refactor: Modify your applications to leverage cloud-native features, enhancing scalability and performance.

Rebuild: Develop new applications from scratch using modern cloud-based technologies, maximizing control and flexibility.

Suggested: AWS Cloud Migration Guide: Explore the 7 Rs Strategy

AWS Services for Modernization:

AWS offers a wide range of services to support your modernization efforts, including:

AWS EC2: Provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud.

AWS RDS: Offers a managed relational database service.

AWS ElastiCache: Provides a managed in-memory data store service.

AWS Lambda: Enables serverless computing without provisioning or managing servers.

AWS Amplify: Provides a framework for building mobile and web applications.

Unlock the Power of AWS with Expert Guidance:

Navigating the complexities of application modernization can be challenging. To ensure a smooth and successful transition, consider partnering with an experienced AWS consultant. An AWS consultant can provide expert guidance, tailored solutions, and ongoing support throughout your modernization journey. If you need dedicated talent, check out our Hire AWS Developers service for expert assistance.

FAQs:

1. What are the benefits of modernizing legacy systems with AWS?

Ans: Modernizing legacy systems with AWS can bring a multitude of benefits, including reduced costs, increased agility, enhanced security, and accelerated innovation. AWS’s scalable and pay-as-you-go model can significantly lower your IT infrastructure costs. AWS’s elastic infrastructure enables you to scale your applications up or down as needed, adapting to changing demands. AWS’s robust security features safeguard your applications and data from cyber threats. AWS provides access to cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics, fueling innovation.

2. What are the different approaches to migrating legacy applications to AWS?

Ans: There are three common approaches to migrating legacy applications to AWS: lift-and-shift, refactoring, and rebuilding. Lift-and-shift is the quickest and easiest option, involving moving your existing applications to AWS EC2 instances without significant code changes. Refactoring involves modifying your applications to leverage cloud-native features, enhancing scalability and performance. Rebuilding involves developing new applications from scratch using modern cloud-based technologies, maximizing control and flexibility.

3. What AWS services can help with application modernization?

Ans: AWS offers a wide range of services to support your application modernization efforts, including AWS EC2, AWS RDS, AWS ElastiCache, AWS Lambda, and AWS Amplify. AWS EC2 provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. AWS RDS offers a managed relational database service. AWS ElastiCache provides a managed in-memory data store service. AWS Lambda enables serverless computing without provisioning or managing servers. AWS Amplify provides a framework for building mobile and web applications.

4. How can I ensure a smooth and successful transition to AWS?

Ans: To ensure a smooth and successful transition to AWS, consider partnering with an experienced AWS consultant. An AWS consultant can provide expert guidance, tailored solutions, and ongoing support throughout your modernization journey.

5. What are the next steps for me to start my AWS application modernization journey?

Ans: To start your AWS application modernization journey, consider these steps:

Assess your current applications and infrastructure.

Define your modernization goals and objectives.

Develop a migration roadmap.

Choose the appropriate migration approach for each application.

Partner with an experienced AWS consultant.

Begin your migration process. By following these steps, you can embark on a successful AWS application modernization journey and transform your business into a cloud-powered powerhouse.

[hlbsolutionsontario]

[auroraelabs]

Best Cloud Architecture Redesign Service Provider

Are you looking for best cloud architecture redesign service? Then you can count us! We provide latest technological solutions available on cloud through API’s & build innovative solutions. For more information, you can visit our website.

[kssgservices]

Maximizing Performance: Migrating Oracle PeopleSoft Application Services to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

In the ever-evolving landscape of enterprise applications, migrating Oracle PeopleSoft Application Services to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has emerged as a game-changer. This shift isn't just a trend; it's a strategic move that offers a plethora of benefits while addressing certain challenges.

Why the Move?

Oracle PeopleSoft Application Solutions cater to diverse organizational needs, and migrating them to OCI amplifies their potential. Improved scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency stand out as primary drivers. OCI's elastic nature allows seamless scaling, accommodating fluctuating workloads without compromising performance. Moreover, the pay-as-you-go model ensures optimal resource utilization, reducing unnecessary expenses.

Challenges to Address:

However, this transition isn't without hurdles. The complexity of the migration process, ensuring data security, and maintaining system integrity pose significant challenges. Compatibility issues between on-premises setups and the cloud environment demand meticulous planning and execution. Addressing these concerns requires a robust strategy and leveraging Oracle's best practices.

Best Practices for Success:

Successful migration hinges on meticulous planning. Start by conducting a thorough assessment of the existing PeopleSoft environment to strategize the migration roadmap. This includes workload analysis, identifying dependencies, and selecting suitable OCI services. Leverage Oracle's Migration Accelerators and tools like Cloud Manager for streamlined migration and deployment.

Optimizing Performance:

Once migrated, optimizing PeopleSoft on OCI is crucial. Utilize OCI's advanced monitoring tools to track performance metrics in real-time, ensuring optimal system health. Implement automated backups and disaster recovery plans to safeguard critical data.

Community Support and Continuous Learning:

Leverage the vast Oracle PeopleSoft community for insights, best practices, and support. Attend relevant conferences and webinars to stay abreast of the latest advancements in maximizing PeopleSoft on OCI.

Migrating Oracle PeopleSoft Application Services to OCI is a strategic move towards future-proofing your organization's ERP landscape. By embracing best practices and leveraging OCI's robust infrastructure, organizations can unlock the true potential of their PeopleSoft solutions.

[vistabusinessgroup]

***CUSTOM SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT COMPANY FOR SALE***

We are listing for sale a company that develops custom software and solutions for businesses that deal with large data sets in heavily regulated industries. With a strong integration team that specializes in healthcare, they're poised to continue growth as a cloud engineering and AI team.

The CEO will be staying, while the co-owner will be exiting the company to pursue other interests.

Location - New York State

Acquisition Highlights: - AWS Select Tier Partner - Healthcare focus - knowledge of regulatory requirements & healthcare transaction sets - One owner will be staying with the company - The company operates fully remote - Licensed to do business in Canada

If you would be interested in learning more about this opportunity please contact Scott Blackwood at scott@vistabusinessgroup.com.

[syngrowc]

Ensuring a future-ready and resilient tech ecosystem. 🌟 Stay with us as we journey toward a seamless digital tomorrow!

visit us at - www.syngrowconsulting.com Email us at - contact@syngrowconsulting.com Call us at - +1 (917) 764 5482

[smarterintegration]

Accelerating Digital Transformation with Cloud Migration and Integrated IT systems

Smarter Integration can be deployed within any business or organization across all industries and sectors to provide a hybrid integration connectivity-as-a-service solution. It can be implemented agilely iteratively, as organizations do not need upfront infrastructure, software, or resource skills to get started.

Cloud Migration

From planning and designing a cloud migration strategy to accelerating the process and optimizing for ongoing performance, Smarter Integration helps ensure and measure the success of your cloud migration projects. The Smarter Integration platform helps engineering teams understand existing infrastructure and application architecture to ensure an effective and cost-efficient cloud migration strategy.

1. Leverage insights to assess which cloud-native technologies, such as Kubernetes or serverless functions, are best suited to your needs.

2. Map dependencies, patterns, and usage with Smartscape before refactoring applications.

3. Make informed decisions about architecting microservices and prioritizing workload migration.

Integrated IT systems

An integrated IT system is a system that combines different software and hardware modules into a single infrastructure. The goal is to make the systems work smoothly and share information and processes more efficiently. In an IT context, Integration refers to the result of a process that aims to combine different -- often disparate -- subsystems so that the data contained in each becomes part of a larger, more comprehensive system that, ideally, quickly and easily shares data when needed. 

An Integrated Information System refers to a system that combines various databases, web-based information retrieval systems, and bibliographic and full-text systems to provide efficient control and access to different types of information formats and library collections.

Digital Transformation Strategy

Businesses are under greater pressure than ever to provide the best possible digital experience—not just for their customers but also for their staff and partners. However, many IT departments are still concerned with maintaining legacy systems, and senior management often does not understand what digital transformation strategy in the retail sector involves.

This creates the need for closer Integration between IT departments and business units. To deliver what the customer wants, businesses are increasingly turning to self-service solutions, allowing business units to build and maintain their own applications.

Discover a related blog here:

https://shorturl.at/ESrPl

https://shorturl.at/YJkyE

[amnhnyc]

🚨 Encounters in the Milky Way, the Museum’s new Hayden Planetarium Space Show, is now open!

✨ While the stars in our night sky appear fixed, the constellations unchanging, they are all in motion. Narrated by Pedro Pascal, Encounters in the Milky Way takes visitors on an exhilarating voyage: Follow the Sun’s galactic migration, journey through a simulated Oort Cloud, fly by a spacecraft in the process of leaving our solar system, and more.

🚀 This immersive theater experience is based on authentic data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, which is dubbed the “billion-star survey” for mapping the precise positions, distances, and motions of nearly 2 billion stars in our galaxy.

🤩 Did you know? The Museum is home to one of the world’s most advanced planetarium projection systems—so book your tickets to explore the cosmos today!

Photos: A. Keding & D. Kim / © AMNH

[karlachismylife]

Spot on the Mark || The Queen of the Clan pt.5

CW: fem!chubby!reader, mentions of animal marking/pasting, some piss mentioned again, dead animal mentioned (no descriptions).

A lot more work goes into a wildlife documentary than you thought. It was obvious that it’s not as simple as just grabbing good quality cameras and riding off into savannah blindly, but the amount of tricks and different ways to get enough shots for a compelling and educational storyline you’re learning about seems infinite: from studying animals’ trails and routes of migration to hauling senior operators up into the trees to film fluffy and feathered stars of the future documentary as up close as possible without disturbing their natural peace.

These people have done it time and time again, telling you about the months-long stakeouts on bigger productions, the ones that can afford to simply wait every day for an animal to come and do what the script requires; the masking of carefully placed hides that can still be not enough to trick a smart bird into thinking it was all alone and perform a beautiful mating dance; the difficult hikes that test everyone’s endurance and result in barely ten seconds of footage in the end cut. You can’t help but feel excited yet intimidated when your turn comes to participate in one such trick, intended to shorten the waiting time your smaller production just can’t afford.  It’s not that difficult, but it’s smart and elegant – at least in your opinion.

This is how you find yourself stuck in your Rover with Kir, wrapped in a small blanket for additional warmth, while he meddles with the sound equipment: speakers mounted on the hood of the car and a knot of wires connecting them to a laptop, screen covered up with a scarf to muffle its light. You’re holding your night vision camera pointed at a spot just several meters ahead, a fresh carcass placed under a tree to attract a carnivore, two more cameras planted at different angles on the ground and one more strapped to a branch right above the “dining table”.

A switch clicks, and the night fills with triumphant hyena whooping, a whole cacophony of different voices celebrating a kill. This is a dinner bell for lions – no matter what the public’s perception is, it’s often the big cats coming to steal hyenas’ fresh kills, not the other way around. You hold your breath, misty clouds of steam coming out of your mouth dissipating in the loud, poorly lit night. You wait.

Time doesn’t stretch as much as you would think. This isn’t a boring, monotonous wait of a text back in a stuffy big city apartment, the only “wildlife” sounds seeping through the closed windows – revving engines of nighttime dumbass street racers or neighbours yelling at each other over hysterically loud TV.

Compared to what you’re used to, savannah seems peaceful. Somewhere in the vast darkness big predators avoid each other’s paths, unwilling to start unnecessary fights. Grass rustles in a rhythmic pattern as little springhares jump through the night, stopping to glance at the huge, imposing shadow of a human car just once and continuing on their way. The wind breathes quietly and calmly with the cooling ground, welcoming a lively picture of a complex system, each part of which is perfectly in tune with others.

You feel like you could be a part of it – like it’s a place you can actually belong to, care for and be taken care of in return, unlike the constant hectic hostility of a city. They call it concrete jungles, but none of the brutal ways of nature you’ve witnessed in the wild so far can compare to the ruthless, pointless cruelty human kind inflicts on itself and everyone else.

There is a hopefulness inside you that was completely snuffed out previously, and it sounds like a smooth, lulling chirping of insects hidden in the wet grass.

Loud baboon yelling alerts you before you manage to clock any movement or hear an animal approaching your little spectacle. Insane luck. Before gluing yourself to the camera, you glance at the time and it’s barely an hour after you put the recording on – it’s hard to contain your excitement, but you manage to keep your hands steady as you scope the area in search of your guest. Kir shifts in his seat next to you, picking up his simple night vision binoculars and following the same trajectory as your camera lens.

When you see a distinctive hunched silhouette sniffing at the bait, you almost feel the tiniest bit of disappointment – no lions today, huh? – that quickly gets replaced with surprise.

The hyena doesn’t even touch the food you placed to lure animals in and turns its back on it, instead staring straight at you and Kir. Its ears twitch, clearly determining the direction where other hyenas’ noises are coming from, and slowly, almost leisurely, it moves towards you.

“It’s coming here, Kir,” you whisper, still keeping the camera rolling, too fascinated with the elegance of each silent step the huge, dark form with devilishly glowing eyes in your night vision tape takes. “Didn’t even try the meat… what do we do?”

“Ah, shit, that’s a first one.” He sounds more surprised than concerned, and after a moment of hesitation, reaches out to turn the luring sounds off. “Maybe it’s already killed and got territorial? Worst case scenario, we just scare it away. You getting the footage?”

“I… am, yeah… it’s pretty.” Somehow you aren’t even surprised anymore, when the hyena ignores the fact that the calls of its peers or more likely rivals stop abruptly – there’s something deeply wrong with them here, you decide, too much human contact or something. Maybe these ones were released from the sanctuary? But no one in their right mind would let such domesticated animals back into the wild, right?

While the myriad of possibilities swarms your mind, the camera keeps recording, and you, quite well-trained already, don’t even seem to realize that you’re following the hyena’s steps, turning the camera more and more to the side as the animal approaches your Rover. Wait-

“Tsk, hold up!” Kir’s hand hooks into your back belt loop and pulls you slightly back into the car. When did you even stand up to lean over the car door? “Let’s not diversify its diet today with soft city cookies, alright?”

“Sorry, sorry,” you whisper, sitting back down. For a moment – just a moment – you lose the animal out of sight while you pull your pants back up, and the next thing you know it’s already right in front of you.

Standing on its short hind legs and resting front paws on the car side to lean inside.

A big snout shoved almost into your face, coming into your darkness-shortened sight out of nowhere, is bound to freak you out – you drop your camera, luckily catching it in your lap, and pull back, pressing your back into Kir, who can only grunt quietly under the sudden weight and grip your shoulders protectively.

The hyena just snorts and tilts is head adorably, a soft, almost reproachful look in its bit wet eyes reflecting every little light on the car’s dashboard and your equipment. There’s something familiar to this slender, elegant snout, nodding in the air as the big nose takes in your scent, toned down by the contrasting savannah night cold.

“Chocolate?.. Is that you?” It’s a wild guess, honestly – you can’t see shit without your camera, only able to notice the hyena’s movements by the wet glistening of its eyes, nose and lips, and even through the night vision equipment you weren’t able to determine your guest’s colour – something that would definitely help distinguish Chocolate from any other hyenas; you doubt there are any others, who are already this big and grown up, yet still carry their childish dark brown hide. Maybe Chocolate is a melanistic variant? You’ve never heard of such mutations in spotted hyenas, but it’s not like you specialize in them, right?

A soft grunt tears through your thoughts again, a non-threatening pitch that almost sounds like purring – along with the repeated scratching of its claws on the steel side of your Rover, Chocolate seems like a cat more than anything. A huge, maned cat asking to be let inside.

“No-no-no, buddy, you’re not coming into the car. It’s humans only.” You try to sound stern – it seems to work on these animals, but it’s so damn hard, when your visitor whines quietly and flutters its rounded ears, staring at you hypnotically. “Come on, there’s food. Look!”

A nod in the direction of the carcass, attracting no one but some flies it seems, has no effect on the hyena. When you pretend to throw something there, Chocolate giggles quietly and lowers itself back on the ground – but when it realizes you won’t be throwing any of your real possessions for it to chase after, it stands up against, reaching its long, thick-furred neck to breathe a hot, steamy snort into your face.

And just like that, after you blink at the pretty muzzle in disbelief, trying to find an appropriate way to react to a wild, dangerous animal almost sneezing in your face, it leaves to inspect your car.

For a moment, you worry it’ll try and jump inside from the back, but it seems to have lost any interest to join a party it wasn’t invited to. Slowly, you scramble back into your seat, relieving Kir of your weight and earning a supportive pat on the back from him, and pick up your camera to watch Chocolate.

“What’s it doing?” Kir’s whisper suddenly elicits more of a reaction from the hyena than any of your stern talking – it lifts its head from the tire it was sniffing at and scowls, a striking killer smile flashing in your direction. Seeing its sharp canines nestled in the massive jaws makes a cold shiver run down your spine. This just was right in front of your face with nothing to protect you against a sudden attack.

“Shh, quiet… don’t agitate it,” you whisper back as soon as you manage to swallow the snowball-like lump in your throat. Kir shuts up, clearly a full-on believer in your hyena whisperer abilities now, and you watch on as Chocolate lowers its cute head back, sniffing and pawing at your tire.

After several minutes of looking between you and the wheel, sniffs and huffs growing more and more impatient and exasperated, it gives up on whatever it was trying to tell you – you could swear it rolls its eyes too! – and circles your car, flicking the fluffy brush on the end of its tail in what you can only assume to be a goodbye.

You’re wrong. A real goodbye is left a few meters away from the Rover on Kir’s side. Your curious night visitor stops abruptly, sniffs the air, tilting its head so far back that it almost rests on its shoulder blades, and then, without a warning – what warning could you expect though? – it crouches down to paste over a particular spot in the tall grass.

“Is that?..” – “Yes.” You tear yourself away from the camera to glance at Kir, just in time to see him sigh heavily and put his binoculars down, rubbing his hand down his face painted with disbelief, eyebrows raised high and lips pressed together. You’re still not sure – even though little snickers already start escaping your throat and roll down your nose in sweet snorts – so you pry again: “The spot where you went to-“ – “Yes.”

Even the need to hold your camera still to capture Chocolate marking its territory with a thick smelly paste smeared all over the grass Kir went to pee in several hours ago can’t prevent you from giggling. Anxious about scaring the animal and provoking it, you cover your own mouth and keep filming – eyes on the little black and white picture just in time to see Chocolate shake its plush butt, tail high up to assert dominance, and turn to look at you.

Or, perhaps, to look at Kir.

“Okay, okay, got it, no pissing on your territory. Jeez, buddy, no need to be so petty about it, I probably live here as long as you do.” Hearing Kir mutter under his nose as he gets stared down by a proud carnivore is hilarious.

“You disrespected it. What’s it like, to have a sworn enemy because of your bladder?” Your little giggles elicit two smiles at the same time – an embarrassed one from Kir, who threatens to snore into your ear directly once you wrap up this nightly stakeout, and another wide, toothy one from Chocolate.

You can’t be sure with the blurry image your camera shows you, but you once again feel like it winks at you. How likely is it for this hyena to have some eye problems that cause it to constantly dish out the flirtiest winks an animal is capable of?

“Oh, look, it’s leaving,” Kir finally turns away from the direction Chocolate left in, and just scoffs when you hear distant whooping slowly pick up in frequency before it disappears into the night. “Wanna try with the record again? I’m not sure we will attract anyone if there are actual hyenas around, though.”

“No, no, let’s try again,” you’re fully energized despite your arms feeling cold because the blanket slipped off your shoulders when you got spooked by Chocolate. Kir pulls it back up, wrapping you in a warm cocoon, and rubs your shoulder absentmindedly while he rewinds the recording and tries slightly different settings. “Maybe we’ll attract Stinky at least, these two seem to be buddies.”

“Yeah, right,” he responds, wrapping his own jacket tighter around himself. “Because that little shit will cause less chaos that the one we just saw.”

You can’t argue with that. If that was Stinky that came to the false call, it would have definitely jumped into the back of your Rover.

“At least that’s some good footage to post online. They’re cute. Will be good promo for the documentary.”

Kir grumbles something into the warm thermos, steam clouding the air between you, and hands it to you – to warm both your hands and your whole body from the inside.

Even if you don’t catch a lion tonight, you still caught something precious – right in your heart. You just have to find a way to define it properly.

Part 4 | Part 6

Series masterlist | Main masterlist

Tagging: @elaineiswithyou-blog @creepingeva @my-halo-is-a-little-broken @sillymanjaro @ihatethinkingofnames10 @ravensfeatheruniverse @yaminax @ljh861 @darkangel4121 @ginger-n-coco @grey-shadow6475 @cryingpages @mothsdrabbles @mc-glare-is-king @vixxie22 @aldis-nuts @terraantarctica @henhouse-horrors @blizzivy @perfectus-in-morte

Here's an illustration to Chocolate's visit:

Comrades, I think I'm too deep in this now, I started watching documentaries about filming documentaries, the docuseption is coming for me...

[hlbsolutionsontario]

Managed IT Service Solutions for Modern Businesses

TITLE: Managed IT Service Solutions for Modern Businesses Today's commercial landscape demands technological proficiency and seamless operations. Companies of all sizes acknowledge the need for comprehensive technology solutions to maintain their competitive edge and optimize productivity. Among these essential services, Managed IT service has emerged as a steadfast solution to the complex challenges businesses face daily. Here’s how you can ensure that your business stays ahead in today's tech-driven world. 1. Embrace Advanced Managed IT Services: In major cities like Toronto, where competition among businesses is fierce, employing robust managed IT services ensures continuous operation and minimal downtime. Partnering with a reputable IT company in Guelph or Toronto provides you access to cutting-edge technologies, proactive system monitoring, and strategic planning that aligns with your specific business objectives. 2. Streamline Communication with Business Phone Systems: Effective communication forms the bedrock of any thriving enterprise. Modern business phone systems offer more than just voice calls; they facilitate video conferencing, instant messaging, and customer management tools integrated into one platform. By leveraging these systems, your company can boost internal collaboration while providing exceptional customer service. 3. Secure Your Operations with Cloud Solutions: As cyber threats evolve, safeguarding data has never been more important. Cloud solutions offer scalable and flexible infrastructure that enables secure data storage, backup, disaster recovery plan—all while allowing employees to collaborate efficiently regardless of location. 4. Navigate Complexity with Business IT Support: Staying on top of the latest software updates and hardware requirements can be daunting for companies without dedicated technical support teams. A reliable IT services provider in Toronto or elsewhere grants you peace of mind with comprehensive support plans tailored to address hardware issues, software glitches, and overall tech maintenance. 5. Invest in a Strategic Partnership with an IT Services Firm: The value of a strategic partnership with an experienced IT company cannot be overstated. Such partnerships allow for proactive planning around technology initiatives that keep your business at the forefront of innovation while managing operational costs effectively. By engaging a trusted partner like HLB System Solutions specialized in offering advanced managed IT service solutions including cloud technologies and state-of-the-art business phone systems—a move which not only enhances day-to-day workflows but also secures long-term growth prospects through innovative technologies adapted to your unique business needs—ensure your organization is poised for success amidst an ever-changing technological era.

For More Details:

Contact us: HLB System Solutions Address : 291 Woodlawn Rd W Unit C3,Vancouver,British Columbia,N1H 7L6 Email : sales@hlbsolutions.com Hours : Monday : Friday:8:00 : 5:00