MUNICH, GERMANY – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – One key way to address the global trends of an increasing share of volatile renewable energy sources and a growing electrification in mobility is to improve system integration of electricity consumers from all sectors. Implementation requires holistic thinking: from green power generation to a stable and efficient grid infrastructure to storage and consumption. Bidirectional charging contributes significantly to this by, for example, allowing the electricity stored in the battery of an electric vehicle to be used to supply the power grid or electrical appliances in the home when needed. However, energy generators and consumer devices need a standardized language to be able to communicate.

“This principle of an unified energy eco-system has been the basic philosophy of the EEBus Initiative from the very beginning. We offer an open solution for all market participants instead of another proprietary isolated solution,” said Dr. Robert Böhm, Managing Director from EEBus Initiative e.V. “With EEBus we develop and standardize a dynamically flexible interface on behalf of the industry and provide a global standard for communication.”

“The continuous and collaborative coordination of members in working groups at eye level is creating a unified and vendor-independent communication solution which is essential for bidirectional charging and a decentralized power grid,” said Andreas Urschitz, Chief Marketing Officer of Infineon. “With EEBus’ special focus on energy management, bidirectional end user devices can be integrated into the Smart Grid, easy and efficiently.”

EEBus as a uniform standard

EEBus is a manufacturer-independent and standardized language for the exchange of energy and application-relevant information that can be used free of charge. The standards-based language enables the proper functioning of all devices even during energy shortages and the provision of plug-and-play solutions for residential and commercial applications.

The EEBus Initiative distinguishes generally between content, namely the data model that is transmitted, and the type of transmission respectively the communication path. The EEBus data model “SPINE” (Smart Premises Interoperable Neutral-Message Exchange) can be transported via many communication paths and protocols. One possible transport protocol is the IP-based “SHIP” (Smart home IP) which is based on widely-used RFCs and can be used in existing IP infrastructure. To guarantee maximum flexibility, the EEBus architecture is based on the Smart Grid Architecture Model (SGAM) and offers solutions for several layers.

Regardless of previously used communication technologies or industry affiliation, companies can use SPINE to offer their services or platforms and potentially control millions of energy relevant devices or, as device manufacturers, smartly and interoperably connect their own products to a larger eco-system. More information about the EEBus Initiative e.V. is available at www.eebus.org.

More information about Infineon’s contribution to energy efficiency: www.infineon.com/green-energy

Hashtag: #Infineon #Electrification #mobility #charging #energy-efficiency

The first-ever two-day hybrid event on 26-27 October 2022 aims to help sellers grow their brand on a global scale with the theme ‘Small Businesses, Big Ambitions’

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – (NASDAQ:AMZN) – The Amazon Southeast Asia Seller Summit 2022 returns for its fourth edition on 26-27 October 2022, with the theme ‘Small Businesses, Big Ambitions’ and a bigger focus to support sellers in Singapore to expand their businesses online, locally and globally. For the first time ever, the Summit will be held in a hybrid format – online via an Event App, and in person at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Center in Singapore.

http://sell.amazon.sg

The new Traveller is digital savvy, strongly influenced by social media and more inclined to combine work and leisure in their travel.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – A survey of more than 8,000 travellers globally, including 2,461 travellers in China, Indonesia and Thailand, reveals a growing appetite for overseas travel as countries reopen, that hasn’t been dampened by rising living costs.

Across the 3 countries polled in Asia Pacific, 71% of travellers in China and 56% in both Indonesia and Thailand, said that inflation had “no impact” to “moderate impact” in their decision when planning and evaluating the cost of travel. Respondents who cite a “moderate impact” also stated that cheap accommodation rates are not the most important factor when booking their travel.

The annual Changing Traveller Report 2022 by SiteMinder (ASX:SDR), the world’s leading hotel commerce platform, also found that about half of respondents – 48% of travellers in China and Thailand and 52% of travellers in Indonesia – intend to travel “internationally or domestically” over the next 12 months. Millennials (age 26 to 41) form the largest segment who plan to travel, accounting for 58% of travellers in Indonesia, followed by 56% in China and 52% in Thailand.

As the largest accommodation-specific traveller survey globally, insights from SiteMinder’s 2022 Changing Traveller Report showed that:

• Gen Z (age 18-25) are also the most likely to be influenced by the social media presence of the property they book, compared to other age groups. Thai travellers are the most influenced by social media, with 78% of respondents saying they are “very influenced” or “influenced” by the property’s social media presence in their booking decision, followed by 75% in China and 74% in Indonesia. In fact, respondents in every age group agree they are all influenced by the social media accounts of the accommodation they book.
• Bleisure continues to be a growing trend with 49% of Gen Z global travellers most likely to take a working holiday, followed by 46% of Millennials. 65% of Thai travellers, almost two in every three, are the leaders in bleisure travel, followed by 62% of Indonesia travellers and 47% of Chinese travellers. In fact, a quarter or more of travellers from every country surveyed in the report will be bleisure travellers on their next trip.
• Travellers are likely to change their perception of the accommodation provider if they have a negative customer experience when accessing and using the accommodation provider website, for example if the website is slow or the payment process is not secure. A high proportion of travellers – 89% in China, 72% in Indonesia and 75% in Thailand – said they are “very likely” or “likely” to change their perception when the accommodation provider is not using technology effectively.
• The use of AI and robots by accommodation providers to replace hospitality professionals is also well accepted with 86% of travellers in China, 85% of travellers in Thailand and 76% of travellers in Indonesia saying they are “very supportive” or “supportive” of accommodation providers using AI and robots to automate previous human work processes.

Sankar Narayan, Managing Director and CEO of SiteMinder, said, “We can see that optimism is returning from travellers to the tourism sector, and there is demand for travel as travel restrictions and health concerns abate across the world. Despite inflation and rising costs, travellers are reporting they are undeterred and do not intend to cancel their travel plans, which is a positive sign for accommodation industry resilience and travel globally, particularly in Asia.

“The long-awaited recovery of travel has also emerged with a new type of traveller, who has higher expectations from hotels and their travel experiences than ever. We can see that, more than ever, travellers now have ambitions to book, travel, work, connect, and experience the world with the greatest flexibility and security possible.”

The extensive report also extensively uncovers five key travel trends set to inform and inspire the accommodation and tourism industry:

1. The Macro-Travel Trend: The urge to travel is stronger than rising inflation
2. The Digital Influence Trend: Right now, travellers are the most winnable consumers on earth
3. The Bleisure Trend: Working travellers want the hotel of the future, today
4. The Trust Trend: Every digital touchpoint matters for the new trust-critical traveller
5. The Human Connection Trend: Tech-enabled travellers are not willing to compromise on human connection

Explore SiteMinder’s interactive hotel experience to gain more insights and to read the full report.

Survey methodology

Powered by Kantar, in August 2022, SiteMinder undertook a survey of 8,182 travellers aged over 18 years in August, 2022, in 10 markets, including Australia, China, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Thailand, UK, USA. Respondents were asked 25 accommodation-specific questions, and were split up by gender, generation, location (urban, suburban, rural), travel plans, work plans and the type of accommodation they plan to stay in next. The data was supplemented with reports and data from McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, Paysafe, and others.

Hashtag: #SiteMinder

About SiteMinder

SiteMinder Limited (ASX:SDR) is the world’s leading open hotel commerce platform, ranked among technology pioneers for opening up every hotel’s access to online commerce. It’s this central role that has earned SiteMinder the trust of tens of thousands of hotels, across 150 countries, to sell, market, manage and grow their business. The global company, headquartered in Sydney with offices in Bangkok, Berlin, Dallas, Galway, London and Manila, generated more than 100 million reservations worth over US$35 billion in revenue for hotels in the last year prior to the start of the pandemic.

Zero Trust Security helps organisations thrive in the era of hybrid work and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – Okta, Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA), one of the leading independent identity providers, today revealed that a growing number of Asia-Pacific (APAC) organisations are embracing Zero Trust Security initiatives to overcome the challenges of today’s dynamic cyber threat landscape.

The State of Zero Trust Security in Asia Pacific 2022 report, commissioned by Okta and conducted by Pulse Q&A, found that the percentage of APAC organisations that had implemented a Zero Trust Security initiative had grown by 18 points from the 2021 figure to reach 50%. While the rate of Zero Trust adoption among APAC organisations (18% YoY growth) was lower than the global figure (31% YoY growth), almost all (96%) respondents in APAC have a defined Zero Trust security initiative in play or in plan for 2022.

The report also found that APAC organisations were slower to recognise the importance of leaving passwords behind in the quest for stronger security and identity and access management (IAM) to combat increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Of all organisations worldwide, those in APAC had the lowest adoption of passwordless access, with only 0.5% having implemented and only 10% planning to implement in the next 18 months.

There is a growing consensus among global organisational thinking that an identity-first approach to Zero Trust is not only paramount, but essential. This allows organisations to fully leverage identity and access management (IAM), by integrating it with other critical security solutions, into a powerful central control point for intelligently governing access among users, devices, data, and networks. The research found that 80% of global organisations consider identity as important to their overall Zero Trust security strategy, and an additional 19% say identity is business critical. APAC respondents rated the importance of identity to their overall Zero Trust security strategy at 83% while an additional 15% say identity is business critical.

While securing data, networks and devices continue to rank as the top priorities among surveyed organisations, a growing proportion recognises the importance of people to an identity-centric security model. The report found organisations in the APAC region place a greater emphasis on automating the provisioning and deprovisioning of employees and working on privileged access for cloud infrastructure over the coming 18 months. The responses forecast an increase from 22% to 76% adoption and from 43.5% to 88% adoption, respectively.

Nearly all APAC organisations acknowledge identity is key to Zero Trust Security

“By adopting Zero Trust Security, organisations can position themselves to overcome the challenges presented by hybrid work–including mobile and remote working–by adopting an identity-centric approach to network and resource access rather than relying on outdated security models based on the traditional network perimeter,” says Ben Goodman, SVP and General Manager for Asia Pacific, Okta. “Our research showed that while APAC organisations lagged behind their global counterparts in implementing Zero Trust Security, 98% of respondents recognised that identity was important or business-critical to that approach.”

Despite the concept of Zero Trust Security being discussed as early as 2009, many APAC organisations and leaders lack understanding about its benefits. This elevates risk in an environment of increasingly sophisticated security threats. However, most APAC organisations are acutely aware of the need to stop malicious actors from compromising their people, systems, and data to the extent that 75% of those surveyed prioritised security over the useability of business-critical applications and resources, unlike most of their global counterparts.

Of those APAC organisations that have yet to implement a Zero Trust Security initiative, 38% said they planned to do so over the next six to 12 months.

Unfortunately, as with many ICT projects, the global talent crunch presents a sizable challenge; 31% of APAC organisations cited talent and skills shortages as a challenge, followed by a lack of stakeholder buy-in and lack of awareness of Zero Trust Security solutions, both cited by 18% of respondents.

Investment commitments in Zero Trust Security Upheld

The report found that APAC organisations typically followed through on their 2021 commitments to invest in Zero Trust Security. Last year, 76% of organisations in the region pledged to increase their Zero Trust Security budgets moderately or significantly, and 82% of APAC organisations in this year’s survey reported a moderate or significant increase.

Zero Trust Security is a security framework based on the assumption that every user, device, and IP address accessing a resource is a threat until proven otherwise and requires organisations to implement rigorous security controls to verify anything that attempts to connect to the corporate network. The rapid take-up of mobile, cloud, and hybrid working has put pressure on organisations to replace increasingly redundant ‘castle and moat’ security models with more agile, holistic approaches centered on identity.

In the context of Zero Trust Security, identity is an actor–whether human or process–that wants access to data for purposes that include retrieval, deletion, and modification. With an identity-centric approach, organisations can give the right people the right level of access to the right resources in the right context, with access assessed continuously.

To complete the State of Zero Trust Security in Asia Pacific 2022 report–which assesses the maturity of identity and access management in APAC organisations and where they reside on the journey towards a full Zero Trust security posture–Pulse Q&A surveyed 200 security leaders across the region. The survey questionnaire covered the Zero Trust initiatives organisations had in place and how they planned to prioritise these over the near and long term.

Okta’s State of Zero Trust Security in Asia Pacific 2022 report can be downloaded here.

Hashtag: #Okta

About Okta

Okta is one of the leading independent identity providers. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organisations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time. With more than 7,000 pre-built integrations to applications and infrastructure providers, Okta provides simple and secure access to people and organisations everywhere, giving them the confidence to reach their full potential. More than 16,400 organisations, including JetBlue, Nordstrom, Siemens, Slack, Takeda, Teach for America, and Twilio, trust Okta to help protect the identities of their workforces and customers.

TAINAN, TAIWAN – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – At the end of 2019, the Taiwanese TV series “Someday or One Day” was broadcasted in various Asian countries and it created a wave of nostalgia for Tainan in the 1990s. There was a lot of discussion amongst the fans when the Series was being filmed in Tainan, and with the upcoming remake, the Tainan City Bureau of Tourism used the historical and cultural attractions of the Series to create advertisements in South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia. Advertisements were featured on the 3 East Penang bus routes of Rapid Penang, which passes through the capital of George Town to prepare for the recovery of tourism in Tainan.

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – After long months of behind-closed-doors technical development, the international Forex broker OctaFX finally announced its soon-to-be-launched native trading platform, OctaTrader. The much-anticipated inauguration will take place in the following months.

OctaFX is a global broker providing online trading services worldwide since 2011. It offers commission-free access to financial markets and a variety of services already utilised by clients from 150 countries who have opened more than 12 million trading accounts. Free educational webinars, articles, and analytical tools they provide help clients reach their investment goals.

The company is involved in a comprehensive network of charity and humanitarian initiatives, including the improvement of educational infrastructure and short-notice relief projects supporting local communities and small to medium enterprises.

On a side note, OctaFX has also won more than 50 awards since its foundation, including the 2021 ‘Best Forex Broker Asia’ award from Global Banking and Finance Review and the 2021 ‘Best ECN Broker’ award from World Finance.

Striving for an ideal and tasteful lifestyle with tailor-made furniture and free consultation for interior design

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 3 October 2022 – The Danish brand BoConcept inspires customers to create a truly personal home which can be customized for their modularity, functionality and quality. We offer more than 120 different fabrics and materials to choose from, such as size, materials and colors etc. To build up an extraordinary home, BoConcept provides a free interior design consultation service, while 3D drawings can illustrate vividly to the clients the style matched on different furniture, mood lighting, texture, material used and functional design. To celebrate 70 years of Ekstraordinær with an exclusive collection, featuring timeless shapes and neutral colours. Multifunctional pieces that respond to consumer needs.

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach – 5 October 2022 – Oasys, a blockchain developed specifically for the gaming community, today announced a strategic partnership with tofuNFT, the largest multi-chain, GameFi-focused NFT marketplace, to expand the Oasys gaming ecosystem.

NFT marketplaces are the bedrock of blockchain gaming. As a two-layer blockchain, Oasys plays a critical role in the blockchain gaming industry’s development, with future gaming projects likely to be built on “Verse”, the gaming-focused Layer-2 on Oasys. Each Verse is expected to develop its own independent ecosystem, and integrating an NFT marketplace is one of the most essential components in expanding the blockchain gaming ecosystem.

As part of the strategic partnership, tofuNFT will integrate with all of the Verses on Oasys. This integration provides Oasys ready access to tofuNFT’s expansive ecosystem, by virtue of their position as the largest multi-chain NFT marketplace, whose volume primarily comes from GameFi-related projects.

Daiki Moriyama, Director, Oasys, said: “Through our partnership with tofuNFT, we envisage bringing together both gaming communities and blockchain gaming ecosystems to usher in the next phase of the industry’s growth. It is incredibly exciting to be joining hands with a partner who has deep GameFi expertise and an extensive network, as we collectively shape the industry’s future and work towards a shared goal of driving the mass adoption of blockchain technology.”

Yu Numazaki, Co-founder of tofuNFT, added: “We are thrilled to be collaborating with Oasys as it continues to grow from strength to strength, and increasingly onboards more and more Layer-2 blockchain gaming projects. With NFT marketplaces functioning as a key defining feature of blockchain games, we look forward to leveraging Oasys’ deep ties with traditional gaming institutions and offering our solutions to encourage the uptake of blockchain gaming.”

Oasys’ partnership with tofuNFT comes on the back of a recent announcement of Square Enix’s participation as the final initial validator on the Oasys blockchain, as well as other strategic collaborations with industry movers in the gaming and blockchain space such as Mythical Games and ConsenSys. In July 2022, Oasys also announced a successful USD20 million Private Token Sale round led by Republic Capital, with participation from other industry heavyweights such as Jump Crypto, Crypto.com, Huobi, Kucoin, Gate.io, bitbank and Mirana Ventures.

With backing from significant players in the industry, Oasys will continue to focus on improving user experience and championing the mass adoption of blockchain technology in the gaming sector and beyond as it gears up towards a Mainnet launch in October this year.

Hashtag: #Oasys

About Oasys

Oasys was established in February 2022 to increase mainstream play-and-earn adoption, and at launch, committed to partnering with 21 gaming and Web3 tech companies to act as validators, such as Bandai Namco Research, SEGA, Ubisoft and Yield Guild Games. Led by a team of blockchain experts and joining forces with the biggest gaming company names to serve as the initial validators, Oasys is revolutionising the gaming industry with its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based eco-friendly blockchain.

With a focus on creating an ecosystem for gamers and developers to distribute and develop blockchain-based games, Oasys solves the problems game developers face when building games on the blockchain. The trifecta approach of the fastest network powered by the gaming community, a scalable network powered by AAA game developers and the blockchain offering the best user experience with fast transactions and zero gas fees for users, readies participants to enter the Oasys and play.

For more information, please visit: https://www.oasys.games/

About tofuNFT

tofuNFT (tofuNFT.com) is the largest multi-chain NFT marketplace that lives on 30+ EVM-compatible public chains and most of volume comes from GameFi. It started in Oct 2021 on BSC and has been the largest since December. We’ve also already become the largest NFT marketplace on Arbitrum, Metis, Boba, Aurora, Moonbeam, Astar and are among the top 3 on Avalanche, Polygon, Fantom, Cronos, Optimism and other chains. In Sep 2022, we formed a strategic partnership with X2Y2, the world’s highest volume NFT marketplace.

For more information, please visit: https://tofunft.com/