Databricks expands ANZ presence, boosting AI capabilities
Databricks is expanding its footprint in Australia and New Zealand, aiming to boost AI capabilities and workforce to over 200 by year-end amid rising demand. 
© 2025 ITBrief Thu 8:05am SAP appoints new leaders to boost ANZ public sector growth
SAP has appointed Brian Senior and Gretta Svendsen as Executive General Managers in Australia and New Zealand to boost public sector engagement and growth.
© 2025 ITBrief Mon 12:25am HP: Here’s how AI will make your work and leisure time effortless
Despite AI having well and truly arrived, there’s no denying that using a laptop still requires human effort. I still need to manually hook up my Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to connect devices, and to open and direct my apps to achieve anything.
But that may not be the case for very much longer, according to HP executives presenting at the HP Amplify Conference in Nashville last week. The team revealed the company’s vision for a future in which AI laptops will seamlessly connect to an ecosystem of devices that will know what you want to do when you want to do it.
To illustrate, HP president and CEO Enrique Lores used the example of a worker who walks into a conference room whereby their laptop promptly knows they have a meeting, automatically launches their meeting app, then chooses and configures the right speakers and camera to use.
That kind of seamless connectivity will also be available for consumers, said Lores. “These are innovations that are going to start on the commercial side, but they will make their way into homes. In many cases homes are not just living spaces anymore. They have become offices, whether that’s for parents working or kids doing their homework,” he said.
Although HP is a little way off achieving its goal, it has made progress. One example of a product that takes all the guess work out of connecting is the new HyperX Cloud III S gaming headset that uses HP Instant Pair technology to automatically connect to your HP Omen PC when you switch it on.
Brad Pulford, HP managing director for ANZ, explained how it’ll be much similar to access your applications in such an AI driven ecosystem.
“The power of AI, when I’m talking about personal referencing, it’ll be able to determine what applications you use most. Say, you use five applications, it’ll make sure those applications are available to you in the world that you live and go straight to your devices.”
“AI will be able to reference how you like to work, or that you like to read the news every morning and make sure those applications are front and center for you. In some cases, it may even open those applications without you having to reference them specifically,” he said.
HyperX Cloud III S gaming headset instantly connects to select HP Omen gaming laptops. Dominic Bayley / IDG
An early example of AI driven connectivity is HP’s Omen AI on the company’s Omen gaming laptops. It uses millions of data points collected from thousands of user PCs across the web to analyze your specific hardware, OS settings, and game settings to maximize FPS in your games.
Alex Cho, HP president of personal systems, summed up the company’s goal as this: “We want to really reinvent connectivity. What we’re talking about is building an industry standard for connectivity… where AI can actively enable the devices to work together, discover their capabilities, that’s how we’re going to enable the future with AI.”
Disclosure: PCWorld accepted travel and accommodation to the HP Amplify Conference in order to view and try out HP products that were being released and not physically available in the author’s location.
© 2025 PC World Wed, 26 Mar 3:15am  
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