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Author: Deborah Schalm

  • IBM Advances Watson’s Ability to Understand the Language of Business

    – Announces first commercial availability of key technologies from Project Debater;

    – Integrated into IBM Watson, the new capabilities help enable businesses to begin mining & analyzing some of the most challenging aspects of human language

    NEW YORK, March 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM), the leader in artificial intelligence for business1, is announcing several new IBM Watson technologies designed to help organizations begin identifying, understanding and analyzing some of the most challenging aspects of the English language with greater clarity, for greater insights.

    The new technologies represent the first commercialization of key Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to come from IBM Research’s Project Debater, the only AI system capable of debating humans on complex topics. For example, a new advanced sentiment analysis feature is defined to identify and analyze idioms and colloquialisms for the first time. Phrases, like ‘hardly helpful,’ or ‘hot under the collar,’ have been challenging for AI systems because they are difficult for algorithms to spot. With advanced sentiment analysis, businesses can begin analyzing such language data with Watson APIs for a more holistic understanding of their operations. Further, IBM is bringing technology from IBM Research for understanding business documents, such as PDF’s and contracts, to also add to their AI models.

    “Language is a tool for expressing thought and opinion, as much as it is a tool for information,” said Rob Thomas, General Manager, IBM Data and AI. “This is why we’re harvesting technology from Project Debater and integrating it into Watson – to enable businesses to capture, analyze, and understand more from human language and start to transform how they utilize intellectual capital that’s codified in data.”

    Today IBM is announcing that it plans to integrate Project Debater technologies into Watson throughout the year, with a focus on advancing clients’ ability to exploit natural language:

    A.    Analysis – Advanced Sentiment Analysis. IBM has enhanced sentiment analysis to be able to better identify and understand complicated word schemes like idioms (phrases and expressions) and so called, sentiment shifters, which are combinations of words that, together, take on new meaning, such as, “hardly helpful.” This technology will be integrated into Watson Natural Language Understanding this month. In addition, we are announcing a new classification technology that will enable clients to create AI models that can more easily classify clauses that occur in business documents, like procurement contracts. Based on Project Debater’s deep learning-based classification technology, the new capability can learn from as few as several hundred samples to do new classifications quickly and easily. It is planned to be added to Watson Discovery later this year.

    B.    Briefs – Summarization. This technology pulls textual data from a variety of sources to provide users with a summary of what is being said and written about a particular topic. An early version of Summarization was leveraged at The GRAMMYS this year to analyze over 18 million articles, blogs and bios to produce bite-sized insights on hundreds of GRAMMY artists and celebrities. The data was then infused into the red carpet live stream, on-demand videos and photos across www.grammy.com to give fans deeper context about the leading topics of the night. It is planned to be added to IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding later in the year.

    C.    Clustering – Advanced Topic Clustering. Building on insights gained from Project Debater, new topic clustering techniques will enable users to “cluster” incoming data to create meaningful “topics” of related information, which can then be analyzed. The technique, which is planned to be integrated into Watson Discovery later this year, will also allow subject matter experts to customize and fine-tune the topics to reflect the language of specific businesses or industries, like insurance, healthcare and manufacturing.

    IBM, has long been a leader in NLP, developing technologies that enable computer systems to learn, analyze and understand human language – including sentiment, dialects, intonations, and more – with increasing accuracy and speed. IBM has brought its NLP technology, much of which was born in IBM Research, to market via Watson. Product such as, Watson Discovery for document understanding, IBM Watson Assistant for virtual agents, and Watson Natural Language Understanding for advanced sentiment analysis, are all infused with NLP.

    ESPN Fantasy Football uses Watson Discovery and Watson Knowledge Studio to analyze millions of football data sources each day during the season to offer millions of fantasy football players real-time insights. By processing natural language, Watson identifies the tone and sentiment of news articles, blogs, forums, rankings, projections, podcasts and tweets that cover everything from locker room insights to injury analysis. ESPN Fantasy Football surfaces these insights in player cards that snapshot the “boom” and “bust” potential of each player, as well as a “Player Buzz” section that summarizes the positive or negative commentary about a player.

    KPMG, a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations, worked with IBM to create an AI solution based on a variety of Watson services, including Watson Natural Language Understanding. This technology makes it more effective for companies to identify, claim and retain potential R&D income tax credits. Developed by KPMG, the solution can help clients increase the amount of R&D income tax credits they capture because the Watson technology is able to review more documentation quickly while minimizing disruption to the client’s business.

    In the past year, KPMG clients have seen more potential for R&D tax credits, with some projects even seeing more than a 1000% increase in the number of documents reviewed. The solution helps clients uncover more potential activities that qualify for additional income tax credits, while reducing business disruption. As a result, engineers and scientists can stay focused on innovative R&D work by spending less time on income tax compliance activities.

    Watch ‘The Debater’

    Check out the trailer for The Debater, a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the making of Project Debater though the lens of an eclectic team of researchers that dare to take AI into uncharted territory. Official Selection of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival www.ibm.com/research/debater-film.

    About IBM
    For more information please visit IBM Watson.
    For more information please visit IBM Research.
    Developers and data scientists can access Watson APIs at IBM Developer.
    Register here to view a webinar on the news which will be broadcast on March 18 at 1:00PM ET.

    Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements
    Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company’s current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the following: a downturn in economic environment and client spending budgets; the company’s failure to meet growth and productivity objectives; a failure of the company’s innovation initiatives; damage to the company’s reputation; risks from investing in growth opportunities; failure of the company’s intellectual property portfolio to prevent competitive offerings and the failure of the company to obtain necessary licenses; cybersecurity and data privacy considerations; fluctuations in financial results, impact of local legal, economic, political and health conditions; adverse effects from environmental matters, tax matters and the company’s pension plans; ineffective internal controls; the company’s use of accounting estimates; the company’s ability to attract and retain key employees and its reliance on critical skills; impacts of relationships with critical suppliers; product quality issues; impacts of business with government clients; currency fluctuations and customer financing risks; impact of changes in market liquidity conditions and customer credit risk on receivables; reliance on third party distribution channels and ecosystems; the company’s ability to successfully manage acquisitions, alliances and dispositions; risks from legal proceedings; risk factors related to IBM securities; and other risks, uncertainties and factors discussed in the company’s Form 10-Qs, Form 10-K and in the company’s other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or in materials incorporated therein by reference. Any forward-looking statement in this release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. The company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

  • Tasktop Announces General Availability of Tasktop Viz to Guide Successful Transition From Project to Product

    VANCOUVER, BC, March 11, 2020, Tasktop, the leader in value stream management, today announced the general availability of Tasktop Viz, its value stream management solution for organizations attempting to thrive in the Age of Software as they move from project to product. This latest offering implements the Flow Framework™, Tasktop’s unique and prescriptive solution for connecting Agile and DevOps to the business, created by Tasktop founder Dr. Mik Kersten.

     

    Tasktop Viz guides IT organizations’ successful transition from project to product regardless of where they are in that transition, by providing real-time visibility into the health of product value streams and actionable insights into the obstacles impeding business value delivery. For each product value stream, it crunches the objective data captured from IT’s integrated toolchain – across teams, tools and departments – and generates Flow Metrics dashboards that pinpoint where work is slowing down and impacting time-to-market.

     

    Key benefits of Tasktop Viz include:

    • Uncovers the impediments to speed the end-to-end delivery process and applies targeted automation to measurably increase flow.
    • Identifies where to spend innovation and digital transformation budgets to achieve desired business results and provides a measurement framework for tracking progress.
    • Creates visibility into IT performance through the business lens — namely by measuring product value stream flow in terms of value realization and strategic objectives.
    • Provides a turnkey way of measuring software delivery and the progress of transformations.

     

    “Software has eaten the world, and for even the most traditional companies in industries such as automotive, manufacturing and finance, their fortunes will be determined by their ability to deliver customer value via software effectively and efficiently,” said Neelan Choksi, president and COO, Tasktop.  “We are thrilled to provide Tasktop Viz to organizations desperately attempting to master software at scale. Our initial customers have been raving about how the Flow Metrics are changing the conversation between IT and business. The dashboards in Tasktop Viz are making their way into the boardroom to provide visibility on the progress of digital transformations and to help justify major decisions around outsourcing and shifting budgets for IT. The general availability of Tasktop Viz means that Tasktop will be able to share these benefits of the Flow Framework to the entire market trying to compete in the Age of Software.”

     

    The new solution is unique in three ways:

    • It is the only turnkey solution to support the transition from project to product and sustain a product-oriented IT organization. In fact, through Tasktop’s no-code do-it-yourself modeling, business owners and tech managers can create actionable, product-specific dashboards in just a few clicks and get value from day one.
    • It provides instant out-of-the-box visibility into integrated data from across product delivery organizations (from ideation through operation) in a scalable way.
    • It is the first and only purpose-built solution to implement the Flow Framework for value stream management of software delivery. The Flow Framework helps IT leadership of traditional businesses manage their organizations like the big tech companies.

     

    “Cubic has a long and successful history of driving innovation and technology leadership in the military and public sectors,” said Jim Colson, vice president and chief technology officer, Cubic Corporation. “We recently began integration and deployment of Tasktop and the Flow Framework as part of Cubic’s 2025 Strategic Initiatives around Engineering Excellence. Early results show that complementing our Agile, SAFe and DevOps methodologies with Tasktop Viz empowers our business and technology leaders with real-time insights into our value streams, enhancing our ability to deliver targeted business agility across our technology portfolio, regardless of the toolchains that underpin the work.”

     

    ”IT and the business see the world through two different lenses,” said Jason Zubrick, CTO of a delivery service company. “Having used Tasktop Viz, the translation between IT work streams and business outcomes became increasingly clearer. The tool provides amazing visibility into the impacts of strategy and prioritization decisions based on efficiency and velocity. I love that. And, it helped me refine with confidence because I could change aspects of my product value stream—like team size, story size, point commitments—and see the results quickly.”

     

    Resources

    • Webinar: Accelerating Innovation at T-Mobile. March 18, 2020, 2 p.m. EDT: 5G & Beyond: Accelerating Innovation at T-Mobile with the Flow Framework.  Join T-Mobile SVP, Technology, Bryan Fleming and Tasktop CEO Dr. Mik Kersten on how T-Mobile is using Tasktop Viz to change the way it builds to innovate and reduce time to market.
    • Webinar: Viz product. March 26, 2020, 1 p.m. EDT:  Shifting from Project to Product with Tasktop Viz. Co-hosts Nicole Bryan, VP Product Development, and Naomi Lurie, Sr. director of Product Marketing, will share real-life stories from enterprises using Tasktop Viz to make the shift to product. They’ll also share best practices on how to get started and literally get insights within days.
    • Webinar: Flow Framework. March 13, 10 a.m. EDT; March 27, 12 p.m. EDT. Flow Framework Information Session. Learn more about Tasktop’s Flow Framework as an implementation approach for organizing around and optimizing the software delivery value stream in this one-hour session. Find out how to visualize product value streams, identify what value units flow in the value stream and understand Flow Metrics and how they correlate to business results.

     

    About Tasktop

    Tasktop is the leader in value stream integration and visualization. It catalyzes the shift from Project to Product for global enterprises and governments, enabling them to innovate and thrive in the Age of Software. Its software development offerings leverage the Flow Framework™ to create customer-centric value streams and measure end-to-end business outcomes. Unlike data lakes and custom reporting solutions, Tasktop’s Flow Modeling ensures correct, scalable and turnkey Flow Metrics. And unlike Agile or IT tool vendors, Tasktop’s Flow Fabric enables end-to-end visibility across all leading vendor tools, maximizing investments in tool platforms, enabling the best-of-breed and future proofing tool chains.

     

  • Trend Micro Blocked 13 Million High-Risk Email Threats in 2019

    Cloud-based email protection saw a rise in BEC, phishing and email-borne malware

    DALLAS, March 10, 2020 – Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, today released its 2019 Cloud App Security Roundup report. The report highlights changes in messaging-specific threats detected last year, the use of more sophisticated malware, and the potential abuse of emerging technologies in artificial intelligence to inform future business protection strategies.

    In 2019, Trend Micro blocked 12.7 million high-risk email threats for customers leveraging cloud-based email services from Microsoft and Google. This second layer of defense caught threats beyond those detected by the cloud email services’ built-in security.

    “Organizations are leveraging the power of SaaS-based applications in greater numbers to drive productivity, cost savings and growth. However, in doing so they may be opening themselves up to risk if they only rely on built-in security,” said Wendy Moore, vice president, product marketing at Trend Micro. “As our report shows, built in security is not enough on its own to stop today’s cybercriminals. Businesses must take ownership of cloud protection and find a multi-layered third-party solution to enhance their platform’s native security functionality.”

    More than 11 million of the high-risk emails blocked in 2019 were phishing related, making up 89% of all blocked emails. Of these, Trend Micro detected 35% more credential phishing attempts than in 2018. Additionally, the number of unknown phishing links in such attacks jumped from just 9% of the total to more than 44% in 2019. This may demonstrate that scammers are registering new sites to avoid detection.

    The report also shows that criminals are getting better at tricking the first layer of defense against Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which typically look at attacker behaviors and intention analysis of the email content. The percentage of BEC attacks caught by AI-powered authorship analysis increased from 7% in 2018 to 21% in 2019.

    Emerging phishing techniques outlined in the report include the increasing use of HTTPS and targeting Office 365 administrator accounts. This enables malicious hackers to hijack all connected accounts on the targeted domain and use them to send malware, launch convincing BEC attacks and more. To this end, Trend Micro blocked nearly 400,000 attempted BEC attacks, which is 271% more than in 2018.

    In the face of such threats, Trend Micro recommends the organizations take the following mitigation steps:

    • Move away from a single gateway to a multi-layered cloud app security solution
    • Consider sandbox malware analysis, document exploit detection, and file, email, and web reputation technologies to detect malware hidden in Office 365 and PDF documents
    • Enforce consistent data loss prevention (DLP) policies across cloud email and collaboration apps
    • Choose a security partner that can offer seamless integration into their cloud platforms, preserving user and admin functions
    • Develop comprehensive end user awareness and training programs

    The report’s findings were based on data generated by Trend Micro Cloud App Security™, an API-based solution that protects a range of cloud-based applications and services, including Microsoft® Office 365™ Exchange™ Online, OneDrive® for Business, SharePoint® Online, Gmail, and Google Drive.

    To find out more, please read the complete report here: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/research-and-analysis/threat-reports/roundup/trend-micro-cloud-app-security-report-2019

    About Trend Micro

    Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, helps to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. Our innovative solutions for consumers, businesses, and governments provide layered security for data centers, cloud environments, networks, and endpoints. All our products work together to seamlessly share threat intelligence and provide a connected threat defense with centralized visibility and control, enabling better, faster protection. With more than 6,000 employees in over 50 countries and the world’s most advanced global threat intelligence, Trend Micro secures your connected world. For more information, visit www.trendmicro.com.

     

  • DevOps Institute’s ‘Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report’ Spotlights Need for Human Transformation

    Based on two years of research and new data gathered from more than 1,200 IT professionals worldwide, report uncovers the state of skill sets critical to DevOps and digital transformation initiatives

    BOCA RATON, Fla., March 10, 2020 — DevOps Institute, a global member-based association for advancing the human elements of DevOps, today announced the release of the data and results of the “Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report.” For the second year, the report defines the most critical and in-demand skills needed around the world to meet DevOps transformation objectives within enterprise IT organizations of all sizes. The data that underpins the report was collected through a global community research project and open survey from more than 1,200 respondents.

    The research and data analysis was led by DevOps Institute’s Chief Research Analyst, Eveline Oehrlich, with support from Platinum Sponsor ServiceNow, Gold Sponsor CloudBees, Silver Sponsor BMC, and Bronze Sponsors Micro Focus and HCL UrbanCode.

    The report is freely available for download at (https://devopsinstitute.com/upskilling-2020).

    “Human transformation is the single most critical success factor to enable DevOps practices and patterns for enterprise IT organizations,” said Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute. “Traditional upskilling and talent development approaches won’t be enough for enterprises to remain competitive because the increasing demand for IT professionals with core human skills is escalating to a point that business leaders have not yet seen in their lifetime. We must update our humans through new skill sets as often, and with the same focus, as our technology.”

    Key Findings from the ‘Upskilling 2020: Enterprise DevOps Skills Report’ include:

    • The DevOps transformation journey is still very difficult for more than 50% of respondents: Managing the people, processes and technologies associated with and necessary for a DevOps transformation are all difficult. Each category has received the same amount of responses for being a challenge.
    • Finding and attracting skilled DevOps Humans continues to be a challenge in 2020: 58% of respondents in the report [PA(2] said finding skilled DevOps individuals is a challenge, and 48% say it’s difficult to retain skilled DevOps professionals. Salaries for experienced DevOps engineers can reach beyond $179,250, according to the Robert Half Technology 2020 Salary Guide (https://www.roberthalf.com/salary-guide). Combined with the current skills gap, 2020 will be a tough year for hiring managers and HR leaders. As Jeff Weber, executive director of staffing firm Robert Half Technology, said, “The search for DevOps talent is pervasive in organizations of all types and sizes. A DevOps professional in one company might need different skills and experience in another company, which makes recruiting and hiring very difficult.”
    • The DevOps Human must be hybrid and equipped within three key skill categories: Process skills and knowledge (69% of respondents), automation skills (67% of respondents) and human skills (61% of respondents) are the top three must-have skill categories in 2020. This is a change from the 2019 research where automation skills were the top skill category and process skills and knowledge was ranked as the second most important must-have skill category.
    • Upskilling requires the attention of business leaders now: The challenges of upskilling aren’t new and according to the World Economic Forum are the biggest challenge across the world with the tech job. Unfortunately, over 38% of respondents’ organizations have no upskilling program, 21% are currently working on one, and 7% don’t even know if their organization has an upskilling program. 31% of respondents, however, have indicated that their company had already implemented a formal upskilling program within their organizations.
    • Agile, DevOps and ITIL are getting strong competition from Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): While Agile adoption (81%), DevOps adoption (75%) and ITIL adoption (25%) have grown since the 2019 benchmark report, SRE has risen from 10% adoption in 2019 to 15% in 2020. Additional philosophies such as Value Stream Management (19%) and Systems Thinking (13%) are also being leveraged. Many of these disciplines and/or frameworks co-exist within organizations.

    DevOps Institute will be holding an informational webinar to share all the key findings from the Upskilling Report on Thursday, March 12 at 1730CET/12:30pmEST. To register, visit: (https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5xXG1v4PR6Ke5LShuq092Q).

    Introducing the ‘E-Shaped’ Human of DevOps

    “T-shaped” Humans of DevOps professionals highlighted in the 2019 report must evolve into “E-shaped” professionals – an idea according to Sarah DaVanzo that “favors individuals with ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ of knowledge as well as tangible and intangible skills that imply a big picture outlook and an attention to detail from being a practitioner. ‘E-Shaped People’ have a combination of ‘4-E’s’: experience and expertise, exploration and execution.”

    • Based on the most recent data analysis from the 2020 Upskilling survey, the “E-Shaped” DevOps Human is made up of the following skills categories: Three horizontal skill categories comprising automation skills, functional knowledge skills and technical skills.
    • A second grouping of skills – process and framework skills – that is a vertical skillset which focuses on flow and understanding of different practices and methods such as Scrum, Agile development and Value Stream Mapping.
    • Another vertical skill category focuses on human skills such as collaboration and interpersonal skills.

    “The time is now to upskill your DevOps teams and individuals, however, this must be done across more than technical and functional skills,” said Eveline Oehrlich. “We already saw a significant demand for a variety of human must-have skills in our 2019 research and this year we saw a tremendous increase across all human skills e.g. collaboration, interpersonal skills, empathy and creativity to name a few. The most important though is the increase in value placed on the human skills, which comes from the management and business leaders in our survey. Our research shows that a mindset shift is happening with the transition from “soft” skills to “human” skills, but more importantly, today’s leaders must change their mindset to recognize the value human skills will bring to a team and organization.”

    Supporting Quotes

    “At ServiceNow, our purpose is to ‘make the world of work, work better for people,’ so it’s appropriate for us to support this important piece of research about reshaping skills in the world of DevOps,” said Richard Hawes, director of product marketing for ServiceNow. “The people and culture insights are hugely valuable as enterprises seek to scale the value of DevOps, and it’s fascinating to see how they influence the discussion on process and technology. People in the industry can learn more about ServiceNow’s DevOps perspective at (www.servicenow.com/products/devops.html).”

    “People, process and technology have always been the trifecta needed to execute DevOps successfully. As we strive to enhance the culture needed to predictably deliver better software faster at CloudBees, it’s been important for us to identify which skills are considered “must-haves,” which are “nice to haves” and which are “not important” across teams, roles and regions,” said Shawn Ahmed, senior vice president and general manager of the Software Delivery Automation business at CloudBees. “As the report underscores, upskilling is now more important than ever to enable meaningful collaboration between all teams to truly deliver software at an elite level.”

    About the DevOps Institute

    DevOps Institute is dedicated to advancing the human elements of DevOps success. As a global member-based association, DevOps Institute is the go-to learning hub connecting IT practitioners, education partners, consultants, talent acquisition and business executives to help pave the way to support digital transformation and the New IT.

    We help advance careers and support emerging practices within the DevOps community based on a human-centered SKIL framework, consisting of Skills, Knowledge, Ideas, and Learning.  All of our work, including accreditations, research, events, and continuous learning programs – is focused on providing the “human know-how” to modernize IT and make DevOps succeed.

    Web | https://devopsinstitute.com/

    Twitter | @DEVOPSINST

    LinkedIn | /devops-institute

    YouTube | DevOps Institute

     

  • Deloitte and Appian Form Strategic Alliance to Modernize Mission Systems for Government and Commercial Clients

    Together, these organizations are helping clients strategically revamp business processes through a low-code center of excellence

     

    TYSONS, Va., March 10, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Deloitte Consulting, LLP and Appian (NASDAQ: APPN) today announced a strategic alliance to help modernize mission systems for its clients within commercial, federal civilian, defense, state and local government agencies. Working together, these organizations are providing clients with the ability to modernize their systems through low-code development and intelligent automation, which ranges across several technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), robotic workforce management (RWM) and more.

    This alliance showcases the power of low-code at the center of IT modernization and digital transformation. Deloitte recently established an Appian Solutions Incubator to build application accelerators, templates, and reusable solutions.  These will accelerate the modernization process in order to help provide clients with a fast and efficient way to revamp business processes and improve workflow.

    “Government entities are focused on IT modernization but often have challenges due to legacy systems,” said Kerri Maloney, Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Government & Public Services Lead Alliance Partner. “Appian helps us offer our clients a solution for modernizing systems quickly and seamlessly. Together, we are working with some of the largest federal agencies to transform their automation strategies and create more agile processes.”

    Currently, Deloitte and Appian are collaborating with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to upgrade their legacy systems and implement new technologies by leveraging robotic process automation (RPA). Specifically, the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is utilizing the Appian platform to modernize their existing systems.

    “Deloitte provides a superior level of excellence in providing IT services to the government and we are proud to partner with them,” said Marc Wilson, Founder and SVP of Global Partnerships and Industries. “We have been working in the public sector for decades, with several large clients, and this alliance is a true testament to the power of what can happen when we come together to help organizations become more agile through automation.”

    To learn more about Appian’s work within the public sector, click here.

    About Appian

    Appian provides a low-code development 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. www.appian.com

  • ExaVault Locks Application Problems Away with Instana Automated Application Performance Management

    Leading File Management Solution Chooses Instana APM to Help Provide an Optimized User Experience

    March 10, 2020 – Chicago, IL and Oakland, CA – Instana, the leading provider of automated Application Performance Management (APM) solutions for microservice applications, today announced that Managed File Transfer leader ExaVault has selected and deployed Instana to manage their mission critical applications.

    More than simply a file storage system, ExaVault delivers a high availability file management and delivery system. ExaVault serves over 35,000 requests per minute – or more than 50 million calls every day. A great number of those are automated or ‘batch’ file transfers, making the nature of the data and the functionality makes ExaVault mission critical to clients.

    That means that ExaVault needs to manage not only the aggregate performance of all the entirety of their application, but also need to be able to see into individual tenants’ applications – no two of which are the same. In fact, many of the application issues that occur in production are only impacting a single customer.

    “With every customer doing something different on  ExaVault, we needed a monitoring solution that had the ability to detect application services on its own while also handling the high volume of traffic and requests our clients generate,” said David Ordal, CEO at ExaVault. “Instana’s automated discovery and mapping, coupled with its ability to capture every request and detect changes in real time made it the perfect solution for ExaVault.”

    Unlike other APM solutions, Instana fully automates the entire lifecycle of application monitoring including application discovery and mapping, monitoring sensor and agent deployment, and application infrastructure health monitoring. Whenever an application or infrastructure change occurs within dynamic applications, Instana recognizes the change in real time, instantly adjusting its application service maps, monitoring thresholds and health dashboards.

    “Applications become more complex as service providers deliver the right combination of out-of-the-box functionality with client-driven customization,” said Chris Farrell, Technical Director and APM Strategist at Instana. “Instana’s ability to automatically build tag-defined views, called Application Perspectives, enables individual developers and operations teams to drill into the applications for a specific tenant on the fly.”

    After implementing Instana in their production environment, ExaVault got both overall observability and the client-by-client visibility they desired. They increased their overall availability from 99.51% to 99.99%, a direct result of Instana identifying hotspots and bugs that were previously unknown to the operations or development teams.

    Looking ahead, ExaVault plans to expand across the application lifecycle. For instance, Instana already provides immediate feedback whenever an update is deployed – indicating whether an update has a positive, negative or neutral impact. Learn more about ExaVault’s data management and Instana’s automated APM solution at https://exavault.com and https://instana.com, respectively.

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    ABOUT INSTANA

    As the leading provider of Automatic Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions for microservices, Instana has developed the automatic monitoring and AI-based analysis DevOps needs to manage the performance of modern applications. Instana is the only APM solution that automatically discovers, maps and visualizes microservice applications without continuous additional engineering. Customers using Instana achieve operational excellence and deliver better software faster. Visit https://www.instana.com to learn more.

     

    ABOUT EXAVAULT

    ExaVault is the leading branded file transfer service for business. Every account offers extensive custom branding options, with the ability to customize your name, logo, URL, colors and more. Integration options let you build file sharing capabilities right into your website, with support for nearly any mobile, tablet or desktop device. Direct cloud S/FTP access and a powerful developer API give further flexibility for integration. All this is backed by world-class infrastructure and technical support, so you’re never offline.

  • Deque Brings Machine Learning to Accessibility Testing

    Axe Pro Beta continues to break down testing barriers, making automated accessibility testing easier than ever, while reducing manual testing

    HERNDON, VA – March 9, 2020 – Deque Systems, a leading software company specializing in digital accessibility, continues to redefine automated accessibility testing by leveraging Machine Learning technology in its axe Pro beta.

    In an industry first, Deque has successfully integrated Machine Learning technology to perform powerful visual analyses within axe Pro’s automated and intelligent guided testing, which significantly reduces the amount of manual work required to identify and fix accessibility issues. Catching these issues quickly and easily is a crucial step to ensure that websites and apps are accessible to all people, including those with disabilities.

    “Much of accessibility testing involves determining whether digital content is accurately conveyed to assistive technologies and the users who rely on them to access that content,” comments Preety Kumar, CEO, Deque Systems. “By leveraging Machine Learning technology, we’ve continued to automate many legacy manual testing efforts, drastically reducing testing costs and making better use of a developer’s time.”

    Machine Learning – How It Works: axe Pro’s guided testing tool leverages Computer Vision, which pulls semantic data from digital images, to analyze the visual content of an HTML page’s interface elements and their relationships to one another. The visual text is then extracted from the page and fed into axe Pro’s guided testing tools, which then performs an accessibility analysis in a fully automated fashion. This greatly reduces the manual work typically required of such an analysis.

    “Amazon, Google, Facebook and others have made huge advances in Machine Learning and Computer Vision technologies, which we are leveraging to apply to accessibility testing,” says Dylan Barrell, CTO, Deque Systems. “When added to our proven technology, and our domain-specific data, we believe this first step constitutes a breakthrough that significantly reduces the amount of manual testing. We will continue to use these techniques to increasingly and steadily offer more automation and time savings far into the future.”

    Deque continues to work on improvements and additions to the axe Pro beta. More exciting guided tests, new features and new Machine Learning-powered tools will be added in coming weeks.

    The axe Pro beta is free. Anyone wishing to sign up can visit this web page: https://www.deque.com/axe-pro-sign-up/ .

    About Deque Systems

    Deque (pronounced dee-cue) is a web accessibility software and services company, and our mission is Digital Equality.  We believe everyone, regardless of their ability, should have equal access to the information, services, applications, and everything else on the web.  

    We work with enterprise-level businesses and organizations to ensure that their sites and mobile apps are accessible. Installed in over 250,000 browsers and with over 1,000 audit projects completed, Deque is the industry standard. 

  • Applitools Announces General Availability of Ultrafast Grid – the Fastest, Most Reliable and Cost Effective Cross Browser Testing Platform Available Today

    More than 50 Global Fortune 500 Applitools customers are already executing tests up to 70x faster on Chrome, Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer

    SAN MATEO, Calif., March 5, 2020 – Applitools, the leading provider of Visual AI for intelligent functional and visual testing, today announced the general availability of the Applitools Ultrafast Grid. The Ultrafast Grid is a state of the art cloud platform that enables blazing fast concurrent rendering of apps on different browsers and devices, with the superior reliability and stability that only Visual AI can deliver.

    Learn more about the Applitools Ultrafast Grid and get started today: (https://applitools.com/ultrafast-grid).

    The Ultrafast Grid, built on modern container technology, is now fully integrated with Applitools Eyes offering unprecedented speed via parallelization and DOM caching techniques. When you combine the 70x speed boost of the Ultrafast Grid with the 30x productivity boost of Visual AI, the industry is seeing the most revolutionary advancement in automated testing in over a decade.

    “The cost of testing new releases across different browsers and devices forces enterprises to choose between adding expenses via additional resources, increasing risk with a reduction of test coverage, or slowing down release cadence,” says Torsten Volk, Managing Research Director at EMA Research. “Applitools navigates the vicious triangle by providing AI-driven testing for any browser and any device, nearly eliminating the test overhead per release. This enables enterprises to release software more frequently without added cost or risk, allowing them to be a lot more responsive to market requirements. This ultra-responsiveness to customer requirements is what CI/CD is all about.”

    Ultrafast Grid + Visual AI Supercharges Functional, Visual, Cross Browser, and Cross Device Testing

    The Ultrafast Grid now offers the fastest, most reliable and cost-effective solution for teams to quickly succeed in their test automation and CI/CD efforts. Applitools solution leverages Visual AI for improved test coverage, while substantially reducing the test code that results in wasted time and endless maintenance cycles. It simplifies cross browser testing by eliminating the need to tediously run functional and visual tests individually across all browsers and viewports. Further, it integrates seamlessly with any existing DevOps or QA environment, unlocking the path to CI/CD for faster releases without sacrificing quality.

    Applitools Ultrafast Grid supports Cypress, Storybook, Selenium Java, Selenium JavaScript, Selenium C#, Selenium Python, Selenium Ruby, Selenium IDE, Webdriver.IO, TestCafe, and more. Running existing tests on the new Ultrafast Grid boosts performance by executing tests 30x to 70x faster than current solutions relying on legacy virtual machines and test clouds. All in combination with the added efficiency and stability that only Visual AI can offer for end-to-end functional and visual testing at the speed of CI/CD. Applitools Ultrafast Grid now runs cross browser and cross environment tests on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, and Internet Explorer.

    See the Ultrafast Grid in action: (https://applitools.com/blog/cross-browser-testing-ultrafast-grid)

    “Accelerating time to production without sacrificing quality has become table stakes for Agile and DevOps professionals,” said Igor Draskovic, VP, Developer Specialist at BNY Mellon. “The team at Applitools has taken a fresh approach to cross browser testing with the Ultrafast Grid. While traditional cloud testing platforms are subject to false positives and slow execution, Applitools’ unique ability to run Visual AI in parallel containers can give your team the unfair advantage of stability, speed, and improved coverage. This modern approach to testing is something that all DevOps professionals should strongly consider.”

    Early Success and Adoption of Ultrafast Grid

    The Ultrafast Grid has seen quick adoption and is already being used successfully in production. Since the beta launched in Spring 2019, Applitools has signed more than 50 Global Fortune 500 customers helping expand market presence significantly.

    “I was so pleased with the results we achieved with Applitools at my previous employer, that I am currently replicating this environment in my new role,” said Greg Sypolt, VP Quality Assurance at EverFi. “When we added Applitools Visual AI + the Ultrafast Grid solution to our test generation framework, we were able to decrease test authoring time to under five minutes per test, while increasing test coverage, reducing build time, and achieving a 99% pass rate. The level of efficiency we achieved is a testament to strong leadership, an incredibly talented team, and innovative partners such as Applitools.”

    “When using Applitools Ultrafast Grid, you can forget cross browser functional testing because eventually your E2E tests will be converted to Visual tests. Ultrafast Grid will do the job of running your E2E tests across multiple browsers,” wrote Bilal Haidar, senior system developer at CCIC and thisdot.co media contributor. “[Once you have captured your test with Cypress], the state of the DOM captured along with the visual snapshots get sent to the Applitools Ultrafast Grid in the cloud. Your E2E tests are being run on multiple browsers, and you get a chance to run your functional tests on multiple browsers inexpensively.”

    Other renowned testing experts have tried and commented on Applitools Ultrafast Grid and published their experience on their blogs. They include Jonah Stiennon, who ran 372 cross browser tests in under three minutes, and Anand Bagmar, publisher of the Essence of Testing blog, who wrote about the ease of cross browser testing using Applitools Ultrafast Grid.

    See the Grid in Action with Cypress: (https://applitools.com/blog/cross-browser-testing-cypress)

    “Continuous quality is key to success today, but existing test tools, frameworks and grids are unable to deliver on that promise,” said Gil Sever, co-founder and CEO of Applitools. “The combination of Applitools Eyes and the Ultrafast Grid allows organizations to deliver and execute cross browser tests more consistently and quickly, and at a fraction of the cost. Tests can now be run with fewer lines of code and with the assistance of Visual AI technology across all browsers. This solution creates a functional and visual testing platform that ensures app quality across all screen sizes and device types, which is key to successful digital transformation.”

    About Applitools

    Applitools delivers Intelligent Functional and Visual Testing powered by world-class Visual AI technology to help Developers, Test Automation Engineers, QA professionals, DevOps and Digital Transformation teams to release high-quality web and mobile apps and features faster.

    The company evolves test automation use cases — Functional Testing, Visual Testing, Web and Mobile UI/UX Testing, Cross Browser Testing, Responsive Web Design testing, Cross Device Testing, PDF Testing, Accessibility Testing and Compliance Testing — to transform the way organizations deliver innovation at the speed of CI/CD at a significantly lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

    Hundreds of companies from verticals such as Software, Banking, Insurance, Retail, Pharmaceuticals, and Publishing — including 50 of the Fortune 100 — use Applitools to deliver the best possible digital experiences to millions of customers on any device and browser, and across every screen size and operating system.

    Applitools is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, please visit applitools.com.

     

  • Sauce Labs Deepens Investment in OSS Community; Establishes New Open Source Program Office

    New department to drive significant increase in support for open source initiatives 

    SAN FRANCISCO – February 27, 2020 – Sauce Labs Inc., the leading provider of continuous testing solutions that deliver digital confidence, today announced the formation of its first-ever Open Source Program Office, further strengthening its already significant investment in the broader open source community. The new department will develop, define, and implement the company’s long-term open source strategy while paving the way for increased contribution to high-value community projects. The office will be led by John Kelly, the company’s recently appointed chief technology officer, and will include notable open source experts and community contributors such as Christian Bromann, Diego Molina, and Isaac Murchie.

    “The establishment of this office is an acknowledgment that open source is the soul of our company,” said Kelly. “We were co-founded by the creator of Selenium, and our legacy of open source leadership is why so many customers trust us to build digital confidence. As a company and a community, we have only scratched the surface of what’s possible with open source, not just with established projects like Selenium, Appium, and WebDriverIO, but also with newer ones like Puppeteer and Playwright. The opportunities are endless and we’re excited to increase our contributions.”

    In addition to establishing and executing the company’s open source strategy for its own solution offerings, the new department will work directly with leaders of open source projects both established and emergent to drive increased collaboration across all of Sauce Labs. The group will also continue to grow and nurture the company’s popular and long-standing “Open Sauce” program, which provides free access to its continuous testing platform for qualified open source projects.

    Sauce experts appointed to Selenium leadership committees

    The formation of the new Open Source Program Office comes just days after multiple Sauce Labs experts were appointed to critical leadership committees for the Selenium project, the de facto standard open source tool for automated testing of web applications. Marcus Merrell, senior director of field services for Sauce Labs and a long-standing leader within the Selenium community, was appointed to the Selenium Project Leadership Committee, while both Molina and Titus Fortner, senior solution architect, were appointed to the newly formed Selenium Technical Leadership Committee. The appointments were announced at last week’s SeleniumCamp Conference in Kiev.

    The company’s deep ties to the open source community extend beyond Selenium as well. Murchie is currently the Project Lead for Appium, the de facto standard for automated testing of mobile applications, and Bromann is the Project Lead for WebDriverIO, a JavaScript-based test automation framework for cross-browser testing. In addition, Bromann, Fortner, Merrell, and Molina were the only vendor delegates at the recent W3C Browser Testing and Tools Working Group, which endorsed WebDriver as a “Recommended” standard. The company is also closely involved in a number of foundations that maintain open source projects, including the OpenJS Foundation, where Bromann is a member of the Cross Project Council, helping foster collaboration between projects and the larger community.

    The company’s expanded investment in the open source community comes amid a period of significant growth. Nearly 3 million tests are now run each day across its continuous testing cloud platform, which spans thousands of browser/OS, mobile emulator, simulator and real device combinations.

    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 Toba Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Centerview Capital Technology, IVP, Adams Street Partners and Riverwood Capital. For more information, please visit https://saucelabs.com.

     

     

  • Datical Continues Investment in Liquibase with New Capabilities

    The Most Requested Feature for Liquibase: Targeted Rollback is Now Available

    AUSTIN, Texas – Feb. 27, 2020 – Datical, the leading provider of database release automation solutions, today announced the release of Targeted Rollback capabilities for Liquibase, the rapidly growing open-source tool that helps application developers track, version and deploy database schema changes quickly and safely. This powerful Liquibase Pro feature saves developers countless hours by allowing a more precise way to deliver innovative software much faster. Additionally, Datical recently released an all-in-one graphical installer feature available to the entire Liquibase community.

    This announcement comes just two months after the completion of a Liquibase community survey, which found the feature that Liquibase users overwhelmingly wanted more than anything else was a better way to handle database schema rollbacks.

    “Safely and predictably rolling back changes is a critical capability for the community of Liquibase users,” said Dion Cornett, president of Datical. “We appreciate the great feedback from the community, and with this release, we’re thrilled to respond to three-quarters of our community requesting more advanced rollback features. Community-driven innovation, such as Targeted Rollback, helps development teams innovate quickly.”

    Targeted Rollback
    Targeted Rollback is available for users of Liquibase Pro, which includes an added level of expert support and new features to help developers and database administrators (DBAs) get the most out of Liquibase’s powerful schema change tracking, version control, and deployment capabilities.

    The feature lets users precisely target and undo changes from anywhere within their history of changes (much like ‘git cherry-pick). Until now, development teams have been required to rollback database schemas changes in reverse sequence, which slows releases and frustrates developers. For instance, if the change a developer wishes to undo has been followed by 50 others, a developer using traditional rollback methods must first remove all 50 changes they actually want to keep (and therefore must re-deploy and re-populate all previous changes) to get to the one they wish to change. Targeted Rollback boosts developer productivity by empowering users to quickly and easily target a specific change, or set of changes, so they can take targeted action and remediate issues faster than ever.

    Additionally, since these new capabilities are very powerful, Datical is also delivering a companion helper command that lets users inspect a Targeted Rollback’s SQL before executing it.

    Liquibase Community
    Datical has reported over 13 million downloads of Liquibase in 2019 alone. In an effort to support further growth, Datical also recently released an all-in-one graphical installer available to the entire community. The install files have everything developers need to understand how Liquibase works, including example changelogs, preset properties files, and a concise Getting Started tutorial to walk them through their first updates.

    “In addition to providing an advanced feature like Targeted Rollback, we also wanted to provide the Liquibase community with an installer that makes it much easier to get Liquibase up and running quickly,” said Mario Champion, product manager of Liquibase. “We are genuinely committed to making Liquibase the best track, version and deploy tool for database schema changes and this effort reflects that commitment.”

    Additionally, Datical has launched a virtual community meetup. Each month, Liquibase community members from around the world are invited to see the latest Liquibase innovations in action, exchange ideas, ask questions and hear the status of community pull requests from the product managers and software engineers supporting Liquibase.

    To learn more and to sign up for upcoming meetups, visit: http://www.liquibase.org/.

    Resources

    About Datical, Inc.
    Datical’s mission is to transform the way businesses build software so they can deliver better customer experiences faster. Datical solutions deliver the database release automation capabilities technology executives need to get the most out of their Agile, Cloud, DevOps and Continuous Delivery investments. With Datical database release automation, organizations can shorten the time it takes to bring applications to market while eliminating the security vulnerabilities, costly errors, data loss and downtime often associated with current database deployment methods. For more information, visit www.datical.com, call 737-402-7187 or connect via @datical.