devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Deborah Schalm

  • Vendia Announces $15.5M Series A Funding and Launches Vendia Share™ for Developers

    With a Series A Led by Canvas Ventures, BMW i Ventures, and Sorenson Ventures, Vendia Tackles Dispersed Data with Serverless Distributed Data Platform for Sharing Code and Data Across Clouds and Companies

    San Francisco-February 3, 2021 — Vendia, a serverless, distributed data and code sharing platform, today announced a $15.5M Series A funding round and launched Vendia Share™ with a free tier for developers. The Series A round, which comes only six months after its initial $5.1M seed round, was led by Canvas Ventures with participation from BMW i Ventures, Sorenson Ventures, and Vendia’s seed stage investors.

    Data silos are pervasive within companies, and sharing that data in real time with external partners is even more difficult. Vendia makes sharing real time data and code with partners easy and well-governed, at any scale, by bringing serverless and distributed ledger concepts together into a simple, schema-driven development approach. Customers such as BMW, Best Friends Animal Society, United Natural Foods, Inc., and a leading travel industry company use Vendia to build solutions spanning multi-party supply chains, logistics tracking, financial settlements, and to share data powering AI/ML, Edge, and Internet of Things applications with compliance and control.

    Getting started with Vendia is easy, and a one week proof-of-value can demonstrate the ease with which a custom data model can be turned into a production-grade, multi-party solution.

    Share and Verify Data Across Parties and Accounts with Vendia Share™

    Vendia is opening its powerful data and code sharing platform to all developers today at no cost, making multi-region, multi-account, multi-owner distributed applications on AWS as quick and easy as creating a new database table. Developers can use Vendia Share to build applications that allow multiple clients to query, update, and share data in real time with transactional semantics, even when they span accounts, regions, owners, or technology stacks.

    Vendia Share further simplifies application development with built-in support for web and mobile applications through automatically generated GraphQL APIs, fine-grained authorization and identity solutions out of the box, and code-free integration support for AWS Lambda, Amazon SQS, Amazon S3, and other cloud services. To start building modern applications now, visit www.vendia.net/developers.

    Vendia was founded by Dr. Tim Wagner, formerly General Manager and creator of Lambda at AWS, and Shruthi Rao, formerly Head of Business Development for Blockchain at AWS. With its Series A investment, Vendia is now fast tracking its go-to-market strategies, opening new sales channels, and growing its engineering teams to expand the Vendia platform to additional cloud service providers, including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

    Quotes

    • Tim Wagner, CEO and Cofounder, Vendia: “Developers have struggled to build applications that can span multiple regions and accounts and that can keep application data consistent, versioned, and well governed over time. With this latest round, we’re looking forward to accelerating the development of the Vendia platform and growing our engineering team to give developers and customers an effortless way to share data across multiple parties with fine-grained control and a single source of truth.”
    • Grace Isford, Investor, Canvas Ventures.  “Fortune 500 companies are struggling to share data across internal siloes, let alone share data securely. An increasing pace of regulatory requirements adds further complexity, with nearly 80% of business data living outside of an organization’s four walls. After scouring the DataOps landscape, we were impressed by Vendia’s turn-key data-sharing solution, enabling organizations to share data immutably at scale—with just a few lines of code. AWS powerhouses Tim Wagner (Lambda’s founder) and Shruthi Rao (Managed Blockchain) have joined forces to build a state-of-the-art serverless-blockchain platform that is poised to be the new standard for data sharing.”
    • Kasper Sage, Partner at BMW i Ventures: “The automotive industry, including BMW relies heavily on partners for flawless execution. A shared view of data between partners is critical for responding to market changes such as Covid. The beauty of Vendia’s technology is that it combines the scalability of serverless computing with the security of distributed ledger technology. This means enterprises can build a data exchange system that scales with whatever project they are working on while ensuring full control over access to their data. Vendia will truly usher in the next generation of data exchange and collaboration across corporate partners.”
    • Angie Embree, CIO, Best Friends Animal Society: “Ending the killing in US animal shelters by the end of 2025 is our goal at Best Friends Animal Society. To effectively care for shelter pets and find them forever homes, the animal welfare community needs reliable, trustworthy, and real-time data. We are now able to build applications that return more lost pets to their families, know where shelters might euthanize for space and help them by moving those animals, and easily exchange mission critical data among organizations and between applications using Vendia’s platform.”
    • John Matz, Managing Principal, Matz Collaborative Architects, Inc: “Successful design projects depend on the effective collaboration of a diverse project team assimilating intense volumes of design information from a wide variety of sources. Vendia automates these processes while adding document and revision tracking, all within a new collaborative workspace shared by the entire project team. We expect this platform to dramatically reduce manual reconciliation work and create much-needed visibility for the Architecture and Construction industry.”

    Resources

    About Vendia

    Vendia provides multi-cloud services that make it easy for organizations to share real time data and code across clouds, companies, and regions for data integration, financial settlement, ML training, transaction processing, supply chain solutions and more. Vendia was founded by Dr. Tim Wagner, formerly General Manager and creator of AWS Lambda at AWS, and Shruthi Rao, formerly Head of Business Development for Amazon Managed Blockchain at AWS. The company is based in San Francisco and has raised $20.6M in funding led by BMW i Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Neotribe Ventures, Sorenson Ventures, and other leading investors. To learn more about Vendia visit www.vendia.net.

  • StorCentric Closes 2020 As Another Year of Record Growth and Product Innovation — Surpasses Goal of Delivering Industry’s Most Comprehensive Portfolio of Data Management Solutions

    StorCentric Achieves Enviable Business and Product Milestones Across the Board
    StorCentric today announced it has closed 2020 on a high note with a greater than 35% CAGR achieved over the past several years. During 2020, the company continued to grow and diversify its market participation through innovation, with the launch of over eight new products; strategic investment, with the acquisition of Violin Systems; and the strengthening and expansion of customer relationships, while increasing operational efficiencies.
    As the events of 2020 forced the world to change in rapid, unprecedented ways, organizations of all types and sizes around the world looked to technology to build and protect enterprise resilience, driving increased demands for data management solutions. To meet these new customer challenges, StorCentric introduced eight new products during the year, including the Unbreakable Backup solution which provides security against the rising ransomware attacks business are facing today. Furthermore in 2020, StorCentric was able to increase operational efficiencies by consolidating its supply chain and leveraging higher product volumes, creating a unified support team and streamlining operations across all functions.
    “It goes without saying that the past year will go down in history as challenging for countless reasons. For StorCentric, however, it has been a transformative year,” said Mihir Shah, CEO of StorCentric. “Our tremendous achievements, including product announcements, operational efficiencies as well as our ability to meet our customers’ diverse requirements and exceed their expectations, would not have been possible without our unparalleled global employee team and strategic partners.” He continued, “We look forward to the promise of 2021, and maintaining this exceptional momentum.”
    Highlights of StorCentric’s 2020 achievements include:
    Corporate Momentum:
    –       Enterprise customers now total over 7,000 organizations
    –       Enhanced and diversified solutions portfolio with acquisition of Violin Systems, the company’s fifth acquisition in two years
    –       Added experienced leaders to the company, including Rob Eggers as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and former Brocade CFO, Dan Fairfax together with financial services visionary Manju Agarwal to its Board of Advisors (BOA)
    Innovation:
    –       Unveiled over eight new data management solutions offerings, including its first software-only Data Mobility Suite (DMS) Software Platform, empowering customers to more fully control their data and ensure maximum ROI
    –       Released the Unbreakable Backup solution to provide security against ransomware attacks
    –       In addition, the company also introduced:
    –       Retrospect Backup 17.5 with cloud updates and the latest Apple support
    –       Unity third generation 3300 and 7900 enterprise-class unified storage
    –       E-Series 32F Storage Platform the most compact, high density QLC SSD solution on the market
    –       BEAST Platform with new BEAST Elite Models with major performance and connectivity improvements
    –       E-Series 18F QLC-powered storage
    –       RoCE and Private Blockchain technology to its Assureon solution
    Awards & Acclaim:
    –       Innovation highlighted: StorCentric named to CRN’s “The 40 Coolest Software-Defined Storage Vendors: The 2020 Storage 100”, Nexsan and Drobo recognized in the 2020 CRN Partner Program Guide
    –       World class employee team acknowledged: Judy Kaldenberg recognized as one of CRN’s 2020 Women of the Channel, and Read Fenner recognized on CRN’s 2020 Channel Chiefs
    StorCentric recently launched a video looking back over the past year to recognize and thank its employees and strategic partners for their dedication and invaluable contributions to its success, found here: https://twitter.com/i/status/1344550145464164353. The video includes details on even more achievements across all the StorCentric brands, including accolades from many of the most respected voices across the industry.
    Tweet this: @StorCentric Closes 2020 As Another Year of Record Growth and Product Innovation — Surpasses Goal of Delivering Industry’s Most Comprehensive Portfolio of Data Management Solutions https://storcentric.com/about-us/newsroom/ @Drobo @Nexsan @RetrospectInc @VexataCorp @ViolinSystems
    To learn more about StorCentric, and its Drobo, Nexsan, Retrospect, Vexata and Violin divisions, please visit: www.storcentric.com.

  • University of Texas at Dallas Adds Low-code Intelligent Automation to 2021/2022 Curriculum

    University uses the Appian Low-code Automation Platform to prepare students for careers in the new world of low-code Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and more

    MCLEAN, VA, Feb. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) announced that The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) is using the Appian Low-code Automation Platform for a new curriculum course on Intelligent Automation for the 2021/2022 academic year. The course, led by Assistant Professor Gaurav Shekhar in the UTD Naveen Jindal School of Management, enables students to get “hands-on” with a low-code platform for complete automation. Students will learn to master skills including Process Orchestration, Process Modelling, Process Re-engineering, Robotic Process Automation, and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). Students who complete the course receive certification as an Appian Level 1 Developer.

    “UTD is committed to preparing our students for rewarding lives and productive careers in a constantly changing world,” said Shekhar, program director of the Master of Science in Business Analytics Flex and Online programs in the Jindal School. “Low-code development and automation skills are in high demand by businesses in the Dallas area and around the world, creating exciting new career opportunities for students who master those technologies.”

    UTD is an education and research powerhouse. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education designated UTD an “R1” doctoral-granting university of the highest research activity. Faculty, including a Nobel laureate and members of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, deliver top-ranked programs in business, engineering, science, the arts, and technology. UTD has been named a “Best Value College” by The Princeton Review for seven years.

    “Industry partnerships are a growing resource we use to help students become career ready and able to contribute the moment they enter the workplace,” said Dr. Hasan Pirkul, dean of the Jindal School. “We count on our partners to tell us what skills our students will need to succeed. And we are grateful when those partners point us to, and sometimes provide, the most advanced knowledge and tools available.”

    UTD first partnered with Appian in 2018 to provide low-code automation platform skills training to students. In 2019 and 2020, Shekhar made low-code development with Appian the basis for the Digital Consulting class project. The 2020 class project delivered AI-based Intelligent Document Processing into business operations at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

    “The results of UTD’s 2020 Capstone project for DFW Airport were impressive,” said Michael Youngs, Vice President of Information Technology Services at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. “The students were able to provide new Artificial Intelligence capabilities that will reduce our need for paper forms and accelerate our business processes. This is furthering DFW Airport’s commitment to modernize and digitalize its business processes Airport-wide. We applaud UTD’s focus on bringing a new generation of low-code experts to the workforce.”

    Appian helps organizations build apps and workflows rapidly, with a low-code automation platform. Appian combines people, technologies, and data in a single workflow to maximize resources and improve business results. UTD chose Appian as the learning platform for students due to Appian’s unique combination of development simplicity with modern automation power and industrial-strength cloud security and reliability. Analyst firm Forrester predicts that by the end of 2021, 75% of application development will use low-code platforms, up from 44% in 2020.

    “Low-code is the future of business automation, and it is a future that is open to virtually anyone,” said Michael Beckley, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Appian. “UTD is at the forefront in understanding the tremendous career opportunities available to graduates with low-code expertise. We’re proud to continue making our platform available to UTD’s students.”

    To try the latest version of Appian for yourself, sign up for a free trial at https://www.appian.com/platform/free-trial/.

    About Appian
    Appian provides a low-code automation platform that accelerates the creation of high-impact business applications. Many of the world’s largest organizations use Appian applications to improve customer experience, achieve operational excellence, and simplify global risk management and compliance. For more information, visit www.appian.com.

  • Datomize Secures $6 Million Seed Round Funding for Enterprise Grade Synthetic Data Solution – Datomize speeds up time to market

    Datomize speeds up time to market for AI/ML models and new applications that drive digital transformation and business growth 

    Tel Aviv – February 3, 2021 – Today Datomize announced the completion of its $6 million seed funding round for the commercialization of its synthetic data solution that accelerates time to market for artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) models and new products that drive business growth. This funding round was led by TPY Capital, as part of its thematic focus on groundbreaking data and analytics startups, with participation from its first investor F2 Venture Capital, which backs visionary big data and AI companies.

    “Datomize’s synthetic data revolutionizes the AI/ML and IT lifecycle by removing the major bottleneck that prevents the successful deployment of AI/ML models and continuous delivery of evolving applications,” said Avi Weiss, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). “Datomize makes the generation and management of synthetic data simpler, more effective, and efficient, so that highly trained and hard to find data scientists can focus on analysis and strategy.”

    There is a massive data shortage caused by data privacy laws that is limiting the effectiveness of development and training of AI/ML models. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle for Privacy released July 2020, authored by Bernard Woo and Bart Willemsen, “One of the major problems with AI development today is the burden in obtaining real-world data and labeling it so that AI may be trained effectively. Synthetic data addresses the problem of volume and variety for sparse, nonexistent or difficult to get data”.

    Datomize synthesizes new data that preserves the behavioral features of the original data without violating personal privacy regulations. Designed based on real customer data and insights from global banks, Datomize is uniquely able to process highly complex data structures with multiple dependencies and is fully scalable to process thousands of tables with millions of records. Datomize improves the efficiency and speed of developing and training AI/ML models and applications for hundreds of use cases, as companies become more data-driven in the new online economy.

    “Datomize has the potential to enable enterprises to unlock the value of one of the most prized assets – their data. It eliminates one of the biggest concerns of executives and regulators, jeopardized privacy, by producing synthetic data which can be used for multiple business applications,” commented Dekel Persi from TPY. “We are particularly happy to back a founding team which combines a successful entrepreneurship track record with technological depth.”

    Jonathan Saacks from F2 commented, “We are backing Datomize because they have the right solution at the right time. They are supplying exactly what organizations need to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. Designed using real word data from international banks, Datomize has the ability to unlock the value organizations can receive from their data with the scale and speed global organizations need so that their AI/ML models are more powerful, accurate, and can become fully operational faster.”

    The three Datomize co-founders include Avi Weiss, CEO, previously co-founder of ObserveIT, acquired by Proofpoint, Sigal Shaked, CTO and PhD in Software and Systems Engineering with over 15 years of experience in research and implementation of data solutions, and Roy Yogev, who has helped Fortune 500 companies bring new ideas to market for over 25 years.

    About Datomize 

    Datomize’s synthetic data solution accelerates and streamlines the development, training and testing of AI/ML models and applications that drive business growth. Datomize preserves the behavioral features of the original production data without violating personal privacy regulations, to speed up time to market for new products and services and rapidly generate insights that drive digital transformation. Providing the speed and scale required by global financial institutions and highly regulated industries, Datomize processes highly complex data structures with multiple dependencies and is fully scalable to process thousands of tables and millions of records. Datomize enables enterprises to rapidly release new services, move analytics to the cloud, integrate third-party solutions, and glean insights from AI/ML models to become market leaders. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.datomize.com.

    Media Assets can be found here

    # # #

  • Tealium Raises $96 Million in Series G Funding Led by Georgian and Silver Lake Waterman

    Investment will fuel product innovation and expand global footprint to enhance service to enterprise customers.

    SAN DIEGO, Feb. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Tealium, the trusted leader in real-time customer data orchestration, today announced it raised $96 million in Series G funding led by existing investors Georgian and Silver Lake Waterman. The funding, which increases the company’s valuation to $1.2 billion, will be used to fund accelerated product innovation to address the growing demand for a customer data platform (CDP) that delivers real-time, personalized, compliant, and omnichannel customer experiences to global enterprises.

    In a hyper-competitive, on-demand world, consumer expectations for personalized, omnichannel experiences have put increasing pressure on organizations to use their customer data effectively. In addition to consumer pressure, the phase out of third party cookies and increased regulatory compliance are putting additional pressure on organizations to ensure they have a trusted and reliable customer data strategy. These trends have led to a shift towards first party data and a need for CDPs to help companies deliver relevant buyer experiences that are also compliant.

    “Key factors in the market have come together and created an environment where organizations have to adopt a first party data strategy to stay competitive and viable — and this trend is only increasing,” said Jeff Lunsford, CEO, Tealium. “We have seen an acceleration in global enterprises selecting Tealium’s CDP because we can help them realize business value quickly, which is critical in these dynamic times. This new capital will be invested in expanding our customer success, ecosystem development and product development teams around the world. We are committed to supporting our customers with high-touch industry expertise, from our team and our partners, and to delighting them with new products and services that make their jobs easier.”

    The first true CDP, Tealium has built the industry-standard data platform to enable companies all over the world and across many industries to leverage data to produce deeper insights. As a vendor-neutral CDP offering more than 1,300 solution integrations, Tealium allows customers to support many use cases to deliver great experiences to their customers and maintain a competitive advantage. Investors and customers alike saw this opportunity early on and have contributed to Tealium’s adoption and growth for over a decade.

    “A personalized buying experience is now as important as the quality of product or service being bought,” said Justin LaFayette, Lead Investor at Georgian. “Tealium’s customer data platform helps businesses gain a competitive advantage by providing the insights to deliver a highly personalized customer journey. We are excited to continue our partnership with Tealium as they lead the growing demand for this essential requirement of digitization.”

    Media Contacts
    For Tealium:
    Sydney DeLosh
    sydney.delosh@walkersands.com
    +1 (312) 267-2939

    About Tealium
    Tealium connects customer data – spanning web, mobile, offline, and IoT devices — so brands can connect with their customers. Tealium’s turnkey integration ecosystem supports over 1,300 client-side and server-side vendors and technologies, empowering brands to create a unified, real-time customer data infrastructure. The Tealium Customer Data Hub encompasses tag management, an API hub, a customer data platform with machine learning, and data management solutions that make customer data more valuable, actionable, and secure. More than 1,000 businesses worldwide trust Tealium to power their customer data strategies. For more information, visit www.tealium.com.

    About Georgian
    Georgian is a fintech company investing in high growth software companies that harness the power of data in a trustworthy way. At Georgian, we’re building a platform to provide a better experience of growth capital to software company CEOs and their teams. Georgian’s platform is designed to identify and accelerate the best growth-stage software companies, taking an intelligent, data-first approach to solving the key challenges CEOs face as they grow their businesses. Based in Toronto, Georgian’s team brings together software entrepreneurs, machine learning experts, experienced operators and investment professionals. For more information, visit https://georgian.io/.

  • Datomize Secures $6 Million Seed Round Funding for Enterprise Grade Synthetic Data Solution

    Datomize speeds up time to market for AI/ML models and new applications that drive digital transformation and business growth 

    Tel Aviv – February 3, 2021 – Today Datomize announced the completion of its $6 million seed funding round for the commercialization of its synthetic data solution that accelerates time to market for artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) models and new products that drive business growth. This funding round was led by TPY Capital, as part of its thematic focus on groundbreaking data and analytics startups, with participation from its first investor F2 Venture Capital, which backs visionary big data and AI companies.

    “Datomize’s synthetic data revolutionizes the AI/ML and IT lifecycle by removing the major bottleneck that prevents the successful deployment of AI/ML models and continuous delivery of evolving applications,” said Avi Weiss, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). “Datomize makes the generation and management of synthetic data simpler, more effective, and efficient, so that highly trained and hard to find data scientists can focus on analysis and strategy.”

    There is a massive data shortage caused by data privacy laws that is limiting the effectiveness of development and training of AI/ML models. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle for Privacy released July 2020, authored by Bernard Woo and Bart Willemsen, “One of the major problems with AI development today is the burden in obtaining real-world data and labeling it so that AI may be trained effectively. Synthetic data addresses the problem of volume and variety for sparse, nonexistent or difficult to get data”.

    Datomize synthesizes new data that preserves the behavioral features of the original data without violating personal privacy regulations. Designed based on real customer data and insights from global banks, Datomize is uniquely able to process highly complex data structures with multiple dependencies and is fully scalable to process thousands of tables with millions of records. Datomize improves the efficiency and speed of developing and training AI/ML models and applications for hundreds of use cases, as companies become more data-driven in the new online economy.

    “Datomize has the potential to enable enterprises to unlock the value of one of the most prized assets – their data. It eliminates one of the biggest concerns of executives and regulators, jeopardized privacy, by producing synthetic data which can be used for multiple business applications,” commented Dekel Persi from TPY. “We are particularly happy to back a founding team which combines a successful entrepreneurship track record with technological depth.”

    Jonathan Saacks from F2 commented, “We are backing Datomize because they have the right solution at the right time. They are supplying exactly what organizations need to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives. Designed using real word data from international banks, Datomize has the ability to unlock the value organizations can receive from their data with the scale and speed global organizations need so that their AI/ML models are more powerful, accurate, and can become fully operational faster.”

    The three Datomize co-founders include Avi Weiss, CEO, previously co-founder of ObserveIT, acquired by Proofpoint, Sigal Shaked, CTO and PhD in Software and Systems Engineering with over 15 years of experience in research and implementation of data solutions, and Roy Yogev, who has helped Fortune 500 companies bring new ideas to market for over 25 years.

    About Datomize 

    Datomize’s synthetic data solution accelerates and streamlines the development, training and testing of AI/ML models and applications that drive business growth. Datomize preserves the behavioral features of the original production data without violating personal privacy regulations, to speed up time to market for new products and services and rapidly generate insights that drive digital transformation. Providing the speed and scale required by global financial institutions and highly regulated industries, Datomize processes highly complex data structures with multiple dependencies and is fully scalable to process thousands of tables and millions of records. Datomize enables enterprises to rapidly release new services, move analytics to the cloud, integrate third-party solutions, and glean insights from AI/ML models to become market leaders. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.datomize.com.

    Media Assets can be found here

  • Agiloft Closes Out 2020 with 124% Increase in Sales, $45M in Funding, and Significant Advances in AI Development

    Growing CLM software provider realizes strong performance with executive team expansion, AI product innovation and new global partner program

     

    REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 2, 2021 — Agiloft, the global standard in no-code contract and commerce lifecycle management, today announced strong growth in 2020 with a 124% increase in new sales over the previous year. Along with adding three new C-level leadership positions, Agiloft grew its headcount by 40% to serve its growing client base and accelerate product innovation in the contract management space.

    “2020 was a remarkable year here at Agiloft, despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Eric Laughlin, Agiloft CEO. “Our dedicated staff did not miss a beat as we managed to accelerate the innovation of our no-code CLM platform and drive sales to unprecedented levels. An implementation success rate of 99.6% and consistent positive feedback from our growing base of loyal customers contributed to our industry leadership recognition from top analyst firms. With a $45 million capital injection, the additions to our executive team, and the expansion of our partnerships, we are in a prime position to build on the momentum for further growth.”

    Growth Equity Investment

    Agiloft secured a $45 million growth equity investment from FTV Capital in August of 2020. Bootstrapped and profitable since its establishment, Agiloft will dedicate this first round of external funding for the accelerated development of its AI-based CLM software as well as the expansion of its vertical and geographic market presence.

    Expansion of Executive Team

    Four new management roles have been established in tandem with the growth plans and equity investment. Accomplished legal tech executive Eric Laughlin was appointed chief executive officer, allowing founder and former CEO Colin Earl to take on the new role of chief technology officer. Following this, contract management industry veteran Kevin Niblock joined the leadership team as chief revenue officer to lead the sales expansion, while accomplished SaaS pre-sales leader Steven Coulange joined the sales organization as VP of solution engineering. More recently, product management and legal technology veteran Andy Wishart was appointed chief product officer to advance the development of the AI-enabled CLM platform.

    Revamped Partner Program

    After a 300% increase in channel revenue over 2019, Agiloft revamped its Partner Program, focusing on a strategic set of reseller, service, and technology partnerships geared towards greater joint customer value and expanded partner opportunities. Led by Elisabeth Bykoff, VP of global alliances and partnerships, as well as Danielle Haugland, global alliance director, the program aims at tripling channel revenue while extending its reach in international markets such as EMEA and APAC as well as deepening its thought-leadership and presence in specific industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare, and Public Sector with partners such as Periscope Holdings.

    Product Releases & New Integrations

    Featuring GUI enhancements, advanced usability, and expanded functionalities, two product releases in 2020 provided new AI capabilities to integrate complex contract processes with enterprise applications and ecosystems. Included in its latest update, the Agiloft Contract Assistant provides direct Agiloft CLM functionality within Microsoft Word, the Dell Boomi Connector enables integration with large application ecosystems such as ERP and CRM, Tableau integration provides one-step syncing with advanced data visualizations, and updated integration with Salesforce enables real-time, bi-directional synchronization with Salesforce.

    Industry Awards and Recognitions

    Agiloft’s strong year was validated by several industry accolades by top analyst firms. Most recently, Agiloft won the Business Intelligence Group (BIG) Innovation award for its AI Core in its product category. It also won a Silver Stevie in the 2020 American Business Awards for its AI-powered software.

    Additionally, Agiloft was ranked a leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management and received the highest scores in every use case in the 2020 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Contract Life Cycle Management. Lastly, Agiloft achieved the highest rating among Contract Life Cycle Management vendors on Gartner Peer Insights, with customers rating Agiloft 4.9 out of 5 on average over the last 12 months.

    Agiloft at Legalweek 2021

    This week, Feb. 2-4, Agiloft will attend the Legalweek conference and host a virtual booth to talk to attendees about contract transformation and its impact on corporate legal teams. In addition, the company will host a panel on Feb. 2 titled “How to Maximize the Efficiency of Your Legal Operations with Contract Management.” Learn more and sign up for Legalweek here.

     

    About Agiloft

    As the global leader in contract and commerce lifecycle management (CCLM) software, Agiloft is trusted to provide significant savings in purchasing, enable more efficient legal operations, and accelerate sales cycles, all while drastically lowering compliance risk. Agiloft’s adaptable no-code platform ensures rapid deployment and a fully extensible system. Using contracts as the core system of commercial record, Agiloft’s CCLM software leverages AI to improve contract management for legal departments, procurement, and sales operations. Visit www.agiloft.com for more. 

     

  • MongoDB Announces General Availability of Device to Cloud Data Sync to Accelerate Mission-Critical Mobile Development

    Realm Sync empowers mobile developers to easily build cross-platform and offline-first applications with bi-directional syncing of data between the Realm Mobile Database and MongoDB Atlas

    NEW YORK — February 2, 2021 — MongoDB, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDB), the leading, modern general purpose database platform, today announced the general availability of MongoDB Realm Sync, a fully managed service which syncs data between the popular Realm mobile database and  MongoDB Atlas. This new solution addresses the unique technical challenges of mobile and offline-first development, allowing organizations to rapidly build responsive applications for their customers and remote workforces that drive user adoption, improve productivity, and deliver ROI.

    Realm Sync will enable teams to take advantage of robust bidirectional data sync between devices and the industry-leading multi-cloud database, MongoDB Atlas, without having to write complex conflict resolution and networking code. The Realm mobile database allows end users to read and write data to their devices, enabling zero-latency data retrieval and offline application functionality. With more than two billion downloads, applications built on Realm are used by millions each day. Bidirectional sync to MongoDB Atlas enables data captured on the device to be processed, analyzed, and combined with other data sets; this can then be delivered back to the user’s device to deliver a better and more robust experience. Over 20,000 customers use MongoDB Atlas, now available in 79 regions across Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.

    “We’re witnessing a mobile-led digital transformation that is changing how companies interact with their customers and how they support their workforces. The proliferation of 5G will only enable richer application experiences that rival what can be delivered on desktops today,” said Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer, MongoDB. “For developers who aspire to build these best-in-class experiences on mobile, Realm Sync can be transformative in reducing the amount of time to get these apps in the hands of users
. Building on the strong foundations of the Realm mobile database and MongoDB Atlas, Realm Sync simplifies the development of mission-critical mobile applications with global reach.”

    “To support our edge computing strategy we’ve begun expanding the use of automation technologies within our distribution centers. We’re evaluating using Realm and Realm Sync to assist with inbound and outbound parcel shipping use cases,” said James Fairweather, Chief Innovation Officer, Pitney Bowes. “As an example, we are exploring building an app on Realm for our front-line workers to scan a package that would automatically sync the data back to MongoDB Atlas providing consistent reporting and up-to-date logistics throughout the shipping journey.”

    “Business apps tend to be rated less highly than consumer apps, suffer a high churn rate and have lower retention rates. They are designed to improve productivity, but fail to do so if they are not being used,” said William Fellows of 451 Research. “Apps should work offline—regardless of the strength of signal—be reactive to changes, show data that is synced in real-time across multiple users and provide a seamless experience when users move between devices. This is where Realm Sync comes in, with support for real-time data sync between the Realm Mobile Database and MongoDB Atlas.”

    Further Resources:

    About MongoDB

    MongoDB is the leading modern, general purpose database platform, designed to unleash the power of software and data for developers and the applications they build. Headquartered in New York, MongoDB has more than 22,600 customers in over 100 countries. The MongoDB database platform has been downloaded over 130 million times and there have been more than one million MongoDB University registrations.

  • Sauce Labs Enters into Definitive Agreement to Acquire AutonomIQ

    • Planned acquisition bolsters continuous testing platform with leading scriptless test automation solution
    • Planned addition of scriptless test automation expands and complements company’s existing capability set, enabling continuous testing leader to serve broader range of users and use cases

    SAN FRANCISCO – February 2, 2020 – Sauce Labs Inc., the leading provider of continuous testing solutions that deliver digital confidence, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AutonomIQ, a leading provider of scriptless test automation solutions. AutonomIQ leverages powerful AI and ML capabilities to help users quickly and easily create and execute tests for modern SaaS and low-code applications. The planned acquisition further expands and enriches the depth and breadth of the Sauce Labs portfolio, adding scriptless test automation to a growing capability set that now also includes API testing, visual testing, and front-end performance testing in addition to the functional UI testing for which the company is known.

    “We’re thrilled to start 2021 by picking up where we left off in 2020,” said Aled Miles, president and CEO, Sauce Labs. “On the heels of our recently announced acquisition of API Fortress, we are poised to add yet another essential piece to the testing collaboration platform, one that will help our customers continue to accelerate their digital initiatives. We look forward to welcoming the people and products of AutonomIQ and see them grow and thrive as part of the Sauce Labs team.”

    The planned acquisition of AutonomIQ complements the company’s existing expertise in Selenium, Appium, and other leading scripted test frameworks, enabling Sauce Labs to serve a broader range of users and use cases. AutonomIQ is ideally suited for the emergent class of users such as citizen developers, manual testers, product managers, and business analysts who lack the coding expertise required to write test scripts, and for the growing volume of smaller, less complex business applications for which the full power of scripted test frameworks is not required. The solution is also ideal for administrators of Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, Oracle, SAP, and other SaaS applications now common in the modern enterprise, who simply seek to define business processes and make sure their custom SaaS app follows those processes as intended.

    “Sauce Labs and AutonomIQ are a perfect pairing for any organization that understands the expanded role automated testing now plays in delivering quality applications at speed,” said Ram Shanmugam, founder and CEO, AutonomIQ, who will join the Sauce Labs leadership team upon close of the planned acquisition. “I’m incredibly proud of everything we accomplished at AutonomIQ and am excited about the opportunity for continued growth that being part of Sauce Labs affords us. We built AutonomIQ on a fierce commitment to innovation and customer service, and I have no doubt that will continue as Sauce Labs shares those same passions.”

    The changing face of modern business applications

    Though Selenium, Appium, and other powerful scripted test frameworks remain ideal for automated testing of larger and more complex applications, smaller, low-code applications are becoming increasingly common in the enterprise, driven by a surge in the prevalence of SaaS business applications. Not only are these applications far more limited in functionality and scope than their more complex counterparts, making it simpler than ever to describe the functions and processes they can and cannot perform, but they are often managed and administered by users without expertise in coding and test creation.

    “With the continued maturation of AI and ML capabilities, there is now both a need for and opportunity to deliver easy-to-use, scriptless test automation solutions that address those users and use cases for which scripted frameworks are not the ideal solutions,” said John Kelly, CTO, Sauce Labs. “The planned acquisition of AutonomIQ lowers the barrier to entry for Sauce Labs users lacking background or proficiency in the coding of automated test scripts, while also providing additional value to traditional Sauce Labs users who, while proficient with scripted frameworks, are nonetheless responsible for many test cases where simple, easy-to-use scriptless automation can save them time and help them be more productive.”

    Simple low-code automation with AutonomIQ

    AutonomIQ provides users with a simple yet powerful scriptless test automation platform that dramatically lowers the barriers to entry that have historically prevented many organizations from getting their automated testing initiatives off the ground. The AutonomIQ platform leverages sophisticated AI/ML to understand natural language descriptions of test cases, or captured mouse clicks, and then generates synthetic data and robust automated testing that “self heals” when the app changes. AutonomIQ offers a variety of solutions purpose-built for the testing of modern SaaS business applications, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Oracle, and SAP.

    To learn more about AutonomIQ, go here.

    The acquisition is expected to close later in Q1 subject to customary closing conditions.

    About Sauce Labs
    Sauce Labs is the leading provider of continuous testing solutions that deliver digital confidence. The Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud delivers a 360-degree view of a customer’s application experience, ensuring that web and mobile applications look, function, and perform exactly as they should on every browser, OS, and device, every single time. Sauce Labs is a privately held company funded by TPG, Salesforce Ventures, IVP, Adams Street Partners, and Riverwood Capital. For more information, please visit https://saucelabs.com.

     

  • New LogicMonitor Study Reveals that 51% of Enterprises Experienced an Increase in IT Downtime During Pandemic

    Strategic influence of CIOs and CTOs within organizations is growing as companies race to shore up cloud, remote work, and full-stack IT observability capabilities

    SANTA BARBARA, Calif., February 2, 2021 – LogicMonitor, the leading cloud-based IT infrastructure monitoring and observability platform, today released a new global research report, titled The Race to IT Observability, which delves into the ways that the pandemic has impacted traditional CIO, IT operations and developer roles within organizations while also shifting executive priorities towards cloud migration, remote workforce enablement and end-to-end unified observability.

    The study of 600 global IT leaders reveals that previously siloed IT teams and technologies are converging as enterprises accelerate their modernization efforts in reaction to COVID-19. The responsibilities of CIOs are expanding and the roles of traditional IT operations and administration teams (ITOps) are moving closer and closer to those of agile application developers and quality and security engineers (DevOps) as business priorities shift to align with the customer and their digital experience.

    • 79% of global CIOs and CTOs feel that their input and importance within the boardroom has increased in the last 12 months (86% of CIOs/CTOs based in North America feel that way; 78% based in EMEA; 74% based in APAC).
    • The vast majority of global enterprises (93%) have seen some level of convergence between traditional IT operations and administration teams and development teams in the last 12 months.
    • 94% of those respondents credit the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic with accelerating this convergence.
    • 21% of global IT leaders believe that improved security will be the top benefit resulting from convergence between ITOps and DevOps; followed by greater ability to scale (16%); better cross-org collaboration/alignment (14%); reduction in outages/brownouts (12%); and better customer experience (11%).

    “One of the key benefits of the convergence between ITOps and DevOps is that such a synergy makes it increasingly feasible to achieve true unified IT observability within modern enterprises,” said Christina Kosmowski, President of LogicMonitor. “As our research shows, observability is all about gaining full visibility into the health, performance and availability of an organization’s IT stack. Companies who achieve unified observability will find it far easier to complete their digital transformation initiatives and succeed in today’s digital economy, which is why LogicMonitor is focused on becoming the industry’s leading IT observability platform.”

    Enterprises are prioritizing data security, cloud and IT automation in today’s era of remote work

    Many IT leaders are changing the way they invest in various IT initiatives as digital transformation accelerates due to COVID-19 and the rise of remote work.

    • In 2020, 73% of global IT leaders substantially increased their investments in data security; 71% substantially increased their investments in cloud technologies and services, and 68% substantially increased their investments in IT automation.
    • In 2020, 17% of global enterprises decreased their investments in on-premises technologies.
    • 11% of global enterprises say that expanding use of the cloud is their number one priority in 2021.
    • 75% of global IT leaders plan to increase investment in both data security and cloud technologies and services in the next 12-24 months; 71% of global IT leaders plan to increase investment in IT automation in the next 12-24 months.

    IT outages and brownouts remain widespread

    One negative IT trend that global businesses continue to experience at alarming rates – despite the severe negative business impact – is IT downtime, which includes both brownouts and outages. Global IT leaders identify remote work, the Internet of Things (IoT) and migration to the cloud as the top three trends contributing to widespread downtime, although respondents based in EMEA mention mobile computing as a key contributor, and respondents in APAC mention edge computing as a key contributor.

    • In the past three years, 97% of global IT leaders said their organization had experienced an IT brownout; 94% said their organization had experienced an outage.
    • 51% of IT leaders said they had seen an increase in IT downtime as a result of the pandemic since March 2020.
    • Respondents in North America were more likely to see an increase in downtime since the pandemic began (57%), compared to Europe (50%) and APAC (48%).
    • 7% of IT leaders admit to experiencing 50 or more brownouts and 50 or more outages in the last three years.
    • Enterprises experience an average of 15 IT outages every 3 years and 19 brownouts.
    • Lost productivity tops the list as the most negative impact IT leaders have experienced as a result of IT brownouts (66%) and outages (61%), followed by lost revenue (43% for brownouts and 42% for outages) and damage to brand/reputation (31% for brownouts and 32% for outages).
    • 16% of IT leaders say their organization was shut down permanently as a result of IT outages during the past three years.

    As the world continues the rapid pace of digital transformation—made even more imperative by the ongoing pandemic—organizations cannot afford to experience downtime. By embracing the technologies that provide them with full observability into their IT infrastructure, organizations can mitigate the risk of downtime and quickly resolve issues when they do occur.

    For more information about winning the race to observability, download a full copy of LogicMonitor’s 2021 Research Report: The Race to IT Observability.