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Author: Deborah Schalm

  • Aqua Security Introduces Native Runtime Protection for Pivotal Cloud Foundry

    Expansion of the Aqua-Pivotal collaboration delivers comprehensive security for application development and production environments on PCF

    BOSTON – July 30, 2019 – Aqua Security, the leading platform provider for securing container-based and cloud native applications, announced today the public release of Aqua Security’s runtime protection for Pivotal Cloud Foundry ® (PCF) . Users of Pivotal’s platform can download and install the Aqua Security for PCF service from Pivotal Services Marketplace, and deploy an end-to-end solution for scanning, application assurance and runtime protection for their application workloads.

    PCF includes a widely deployed distribution of Cloud Foundry Application Runtime (CFAR) and allows customers to implement the same application platform on any major vendor’s cloud, on premises or in a hybrid model.

    “No matter where they began their journey with Pivotal, enterprises routinely begin pushing code into production faster and more frequently with our platform. Therefore, application security checks must be accessible within the deployment pipeline in order to scale safety and compliance,” said Angus MacDonald, GM Technology Ecosystem at Pivotal. “Solutions such as Aqua provide the automation and controls necessary. Together, we hope to make the task of implementing end-to-end security simpler for our customers.”

    Aqua Security for PCF is offered in two tiers – standard and advanced protection.  The standard tier allows users to:

    • Scan their applications for vulnerabilities during the Continuous Integration process
    • Provision policies to block unauthorized applications during the staging phase
    • Scan and monitor application or container artifacts for vulnerabilities, malware, and user activity
    • Apply host assurance policies for application or container artifacts

    Aqua’s advanced protection tier includes all of the standard features with an added layer of security, allowing users to:

    • Detect and block unapproved changes to running application workloads
    • Monitor and control application activity based on customized policies
    • View application network connections and apply firewall rules that whitelist authorized connections
    • Leverage granular audit trails of access activity, scan events and coverage, application activity and system events

    Aqua Security for PCF installs natively as a Buildpack (containing the languages, runtimes, libraries, and services used by the app), and the advanced runtime protection component is implemented as a Bosh add-on, protecting all Pivotal Application Service apps without requiring any manual changes or individual re-deployments of Aqua per application.

    Since introducing scanning for Pivotal Cloud Foundry last year, we have seen tremendous interest in the PCF platform at some of our largest customers”, said Upesh Patel, VP of Business Development for Aqua.  “As they progressed in their application rollouts, they are now looking to protect their production-grade applications as well, and we are pleased to deliver the complete Aqua solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry today.”

    Pivotal customers can get Aqua Security for PCF directly from the Pivotal services marketplace.

    Availability

    Support for PCF is available now as part of the Aqua CSP v4.2 release.

    About Aqua Security

    Aqua Security helps enterprises secure their cloud native, container-based and serverless applications from development to production. Aqua bridges the gap between DevOps and security, promoting business agility and accelerating digital transformation. Aqua’s Cloud Native Security Platform provides full visibility and security automation across the entire application lifecycle, using a modern zero-touch approach to detect and prevent threats while simplifying regulatory compliance. Aqua customers include some of the world’s largest financial services, software development, internet, media, hospitality and retail companies, with implementations across the globe spanning a broad range of cloud providers and on-premise technologies. For more information, visit www.aquasec.com or follow us on twitter.com/AquaSecTeam

     

  • Test Automation University Enrollment Surges to 20,000 in Six Months as Engineers Skill Up to Advance Career Paths

    Fueled by pent-up demand to learn test automation skill sets, the free online educational hub expands to 23 courses, launches leaderboard of top 100 test automation experts

    SAN MATEO, Calif., – July 24, 2019 – Applitools, the leading provider of AI-Powered end-to-end Visual Testing and Monitoring, today announced Test Automation University has surpassed the 20,000 student mark since announcing its first course in January 2019. In addition, Test Automation University has identified the top 100 students based on scores from its 23 courses.

    To see the full list of the Top 100 Test Automation University superstar students, visit: (https://testautomationu.applitools.com/tau100.html)

    Created as a community-driven collection of free educational training resources, Test Automation University (TAU) helps improve test automation skill sets for test engineers and developers. Test Automation University offers video courses with transcripts, quizzes to earn course credits, rankings and badges for more than 20 beginner and advanced test automation courses. The curriculum is provided for free by a faculty of more than 20 expert instructors with a shared goal of increasing test automation success rates globally.

    “For me, the best part of Test Automation University is that it brings the biggest personalities in our field together in one open and easily accessible corner of the internet,” said William de Witt, Test Lead at Western Cape Government. “Also, I can’t express how happy I am that there is no cost to register. This allows everyone in the testing community and those who are interested in QA to see what it is all about. I think that TAU will also play a huge part in raising the standard of test automation globally.”

    To learn, build, identify, aggregate and amplify test automation strategies and techniques for free, enroll at Test Automation University today by visiting (https://testautomationu.com).

    “In looking at the failure rate of test automation initiatives globally, we realized that there was a great need to build a centralized learning platform and a community for test automation engineers,” said Raja Rao DV, Director of content and growth at Applitools and Head of TAU. “What we’ve seen is the creation of an ecosystem where conversations and collaboration can occur freely and openly. We also provided a Slack channel so students can connect with each other and it’s really taken on a life of its own. Not only are people learning from the courses themselves, but they are learning from each other as well. Taking self-paced online courses can be lonely, so it’s been incredible to see TAU students go on the learning journey together.”

    “When we first started Test Automation University, it was to create a one-stop-shop for people interested in test automation because the information was scattered all over the web,” said Angie Jones, senior developer advocate at Applitools and director of TAU. “As we’ve moved forward, we’ve discovered a lot about how people learn and use the platform and we’re constantly making it better. Today, we’re working to curate different paths to help people who are interested in particular subjects, programming languages or technologies to help them advance their knowledge more efficiently. The result is a more clearly defined process that helps our students learn. It’s been amazing to watch the enrollment grow in response.”

    To read more about some of the incredible students of TAU, visit Applitools blog by Angie: (https://applitools.com/blog/test-automation-superstars)

    “In the small company I work for, I’m the one who wrote automated UI tests,” said Penny Howard, QA automation analyst at Flex Rental Solutions. “I didn’t know anyone to ask, or even what to ask when I started, so Google was my best friend. Google tells you everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly. The Java Programming course on Test Automation University has shown me better ways of doing things. The API courses have shown me things about API testing that I simply didn’t know. The most important thing to me is that it is slowly, but surely raising my confidence in my abilities.”

    Initially launched with just a few courses in January 2019, TAU has aggressively expanded its curriculum to now more than 20 courses covering subjects such as:

    These courses are created by world-class instructors who are some of the best and brightest minds in the test automation space. A few of the newest faculty members delivering free video courses on TAU includeAlan Richardson, author of books Java for Testers and Automating and Testing a REST API,  Aparna Gopalakrishnan, Quality Engineering Consultant at Wipro Limited, Tariq King, Head of Quality at Ultimate Software, Meaghan Lewis, Engineering Manager at GitHub, Jonathan Lipps, Architect of the Appium project and Nikolay Advolodkin, CEO of Ultimate QA.

    To join the thousands of people in the Test Automation University community on Slack, visit (https://tauslacksignupapp.herokuapp.com/).

    With more than 20 courses in its current curriculum and additional courses being added every couple of weeks, the growth of TAU seems to just be beginning. “The best part is that the growth of TAU is really exponential,” said Jones. “As more students enroll, we will continue to create even more content to meet their needs — which in turn will lead to more students and an even more vibrant community. We are incredibly excited about where this road will lead to.”

    To learn more about Test Automation University, visit (https://testautomationu.com)

    About Applitools

    Applitools provides a state-of-the-art AI-powered end-to-end visual testing and monitoring platform for Developers, Test Automation, Manual QA, DevOps, and Digital Transformation teams. Our Visual AI technology transforms how organizations approach quality by ensuring web and mobile applications appear and operate exactly as designed across any device, browser, OS, or native application. Applitools is fast, quick to integrate with any DevOps environment, easy to use by anyone on the team, and scalable to any size organization looking to increase speed and quality with every release – an outcome necessary to compete in today’s challenging business environment.

    Hundreds of companies from a range of verticals, including Fortune 100 firms in software, banking, insurance, retail, and pharmaceuticals, use Applitools to deliver the best possible digital experiences to their customers. Applitools is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, please visit applitools.com.

  • IT Revolution Announces Speakers from Deloitte, Google, IBM, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019

    Video presentations, slides and photos also available on-demand from DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2019

    PORTLAND, Ore, July 17, 2019 — IT Revolution, the industry leader for advancing DevOps, today announced new speakers for DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019 (http://bit.ly/DOES19LVSPEAKERS). Hosted at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas from October 28-30, the DevOps Enterprise Summit is the premier industry event for technology and business leaders to gather for three days of immersive learning about IT transformation practices.

    Additionally, all of the presentation videos, slide decks and photos from DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2019 are now available on-demand. The largest European event ever hosted by IT Revolution brought together more than 1,000 attendees to highlight the heroic DevOps transformation journeys of large, complex organizations. The event created numerous learning opportunities from leading subject domain experts and provided a forum for attendees to network with one another each day of the event.

    The DevOps Enterprise Summit is a conference for technology and business leaders who are transforming how large, complex organizations deliver software to help their organizations win in the marketplace.

    Entering its sixth year in the United States, its goal is to accelerate DevOps adoption and increase the likelihood of those initiatives succeeding, and to help enable the cultural norms, technical practices, and architectures that help organizations achieve the highest levels of performance.

    The latest business and technology leaders confirmed to present during the 2019 Las Vegas program include:

    • Nicole Forsgren, Head of DORA, Google
    • Suzette Johnson, Northrop Grumman Fellow, Northrup Grumman
    • Rosalind Radcliffe, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect for DevOps for Enterprise Systems, IBM
    • Jonathan Smart, Partner, Enterprise Agility, Deloitte
    • Steve Spear, Principal, HVC, LLC
    • Leon Stigter, Developer Advocate, JFrog
    • Robin Yeman, Lockheed Martin Fellow, Lockheed Martin

    “Of course, our goal is to create the best programming ever — which presents a worthy challenge for the programming committee, since we all thought that the DevOps Enterprise Summit London was the best yet,” said Gene Kim, founder of IT Revolution, author of The Unicorn Project and co-author of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook and Accelerate. “One of the hallmarks of the DevOps Enterprise Summit is its commitment to spotlighting experience reports because as leaders we must learn from watching how other people in similar situations solve problems. By doing this, we help create a community of fellow travelers who are actively helping each other.”

    To attend DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019, register at (http://bit.ly/DOES19LASVEGAS) before the conference sells out.

    Share This: DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas 2019 Adds New Speakers, Releases videos, slides and photos from #DOES19 London. For more info, visit http://bit.ly/DOES19LV @DOES_USA @DOES_EUR

    About IT Revolution

    IT Revolution assembles technology leaders and practitioners through publishing, events, and research. Our goal is to elevate the state of technology work, quantify the economic and human costs associated with suboptimal IT performance, and to improve the lives of technology professionals.

  • Near raises 100 Million to Roll Out New Platform Offerings, Fuel Expansion

    Financing to help launch new suite of data products and expand into strategic markets

    New York / San Francisco — July 16, 2019 – Near, the platform that leverages AI to make real-world data actionable, announced today that it has raised $100 million in a new round of funding. The investment comes from London headquartered private equity firm Greater Pacific Capital (GPC). With this fresh investment, Near has raised a total of $134 million to date, including from Sequoia Capital and JP Morgan.

    The Near platform has the largest data set of people’s behavior in the real world. Brands, enterprises and publishers can use location, transaction and other unique real-world signals from more than 1.6 billion users in the platform for data enrichment and marketing, in a privacy-led environment.

    “We are humbled that we were able to close one of the largest rounds in our industry. It is a testament to our offering, which is backed by unique data sets and powerful science,” said Anil Mathews, the founder and CEO of Near. “With the new funds, we will be launching a suite of new data products, powered by the core platform. The funds will help us strengthen our position in existing markets and enter key strategic markets.”

    Near has seen significant traction and growth since the launch of its flagship SaaS product, Allspark, the first of its kind in the industry. Allspark enables end-to-end marketing automation for clients and partners across more than 20 countries.

    “We are a rare example of a true SaaS business focused on generating long-term customer value and sustainable revenues,” Mathews added. “We are the only company aggregating this quality and scale of data at a global level. Our product Allspark has scaled its SaaS revenues faster than anything we have historically seen.”

    Ketan Patel, CEO, GPC, commented, “Near provides insights into human behavior by analyzing where people are, and combining that with a multitude of data points to predict and influence behaviour. Given it does this across the globe in a privacy protected manner, it is well-positioned to create an exciting new space that delivers value to both people, and those that wish to build relationships with them.”

    Near makes it seamless for users to employ their first-party data, and real-world data to deliver superior customer experiences. With a global presence across the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, Near is the only true global player in the industry. Key brands such as News Corp, MetLife, Mastercard and WeWork work with Near to leverage continuous, accurate and easy to access intelligence on people’s behavior in the real world.

    About Near

    Near is the world’s largest source of intelligence on people and places, processing data from over 1.6 billion monthly users across 44 countries. The Near Platform powers data-driven marketing and enrichment offerings through a suite of SaaS products. The users of the platform can leverage audience, spatial, retail, among other data in a privacy-led environment.

    Founded in 2012, Near is headquartered in Singapore with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Bangalore, Tokyo and Sydney. Today, marquee brands such as News Corp, MetLife, The We Company and Mastercard work with Near to provide enhanced customer experiences. Near is backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital, JP Morgan Private Equity Group, Cisco Investments and Telstra Ventures. Visit www.near.co to find out more.

     

     

     

  • DevOps Institute Named Continuous Learning Track Sponsor of DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019

    DevOps Institute to help upskill attendees by offering DevOps Leader and DevSecOps Engineering certification courses and a panel session on the future IT workforce

    BOCA RATON, Fla. – July 16, 2019 – DevOps Institute (https://devopsinstitute.com/), a  global member-based association for advancing the human elements of DevOps, today announced its unique role as the Continuous Learning Track Sponsor of DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019 from August 12-15 in San Francisco. The DevOps Institute will host several learning and upskilling opportunities to attendees, including two certification courses led by Helen Beal and Sean Davis, and a panel discussion led by Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute. Both certification courses from DevOps Institute — DevOps Leader and DevSecOps Engineering — will be held on August 12 and 13.

    Register to attend DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019 and reserve your spot for the DevOps Leader and/or DevSecOps Engineering certification courses. Use the code ‘DOI20’ to receive a 20 percent discount on registration for a limited time: (http://bit.ly/DOI20)

    “Our main goal is to help the humans of DevOps evolve skills, gain knowledge, and explore ideas within a vibrant, continuous learning community,” said Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute. “We are thankful for the opportunity to collaborate with CloudBees and the DevOps World | Jenkins World conference attendees to help advance the IT workforce of the future. The certification courses offered will help DevOps practitioners gain the fundamental skills needed to confidently tackle emerging IT practices and business opportunities as T-shaped professionals”

    About the Certification Courses and Sessions at DevOps World | Jenkins World

    DevOps Leader Certification Course

    Led and facilitated by Helen Beal, DevOpsologist at Ranger4 Limited, the DevOps Leader Certification course was developed to extract real-life best practices in transformational leadership for DevOps initiatives. It includes key differences and emerging practices for cultural transformation in a fast-paced DevOps and Agile environment. Target audience for this course includes managers, directors, executives and any role that influences the culture and ways of working within an organization.  This certification course positions learners to successfully complete the DevOps Leader exam. Attendees who complete the entire class will receive a voucher to schedule their exam online.

    DevSecOps Engineering Course

    Led and facilitated by Sean Davis, Chief Transformation Evangelist at Equifax, the DevSecOps Engineering course is designed to teach practical steps on how to integrate security practices into DevOps initiatives so that security is “everyone’s responsibility.”  The course highlights how all IT professionals can use data and security science as the primary means of protecting the organization and customer. The target audience includes software engineers, operations professionals and security practitioners. This certification course positions learners to successfully complete the DevSecOps Engineering exam. Attendees who complete the entire class will receive a voucher to schedule their exam online.

    Panel Discussion: Upskilling DevOps

    Sam Fell of CloudBees will moderate a multi-perspective panel with industry experts Helen Beal, Sean Davis, Damon Edwards and Jayne Groll. Panelists will discuss the challenges and opportunities for the future IT workforce and insights for upskilling DevOps practitioners.

    “The courses DevOps Institute are offering at DevOps World | Jenkins World for the DevOps community are a real value-add for conference attendees,” said Anthony Palladino, senior vice president of worldwide field operations at CloudBees. “When we look at the organizations we work with every day, quality training such as this educates and equips DevOps practitioners to be leaders in their organization’s DevOps transformation, providing them the skills and best practices necessary to achieve success.”

    DevOps World | Jenkins World brings together DevOps thought leaders, IT executives, continuous delivery practitioners and the Jenkins community and ecosystem, providing attendees with the opportunity to learn, explore, network face-to-face and help shape the next evolution of Jenkins development and solutions for DevOps.

    Share This: The @DEVOPSINST is the Continuous Learning Track Sponsor of #DevOpsWorld | #JenkinsWorld. Register to get your #DevOps Leader or #DevSecOps Engineering Certifications at the event: http://bit.ly/DOI20

    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.

  • ShiftLeft Ocular Identifies Business Logic Flaws 10x Faster than Manual Code Reviews

    Support for New Programming Languages and Enhanced Regression Testing Delivers First-of-its-Kind Vulnerability Analysis Solution

    Santa Clara, Calif. – July 16, 2019 – ShiftLeft Inc., an innovator in automated application security, today announced enhancements to its Ocular solution that empower organizations to discover business logic flaws during application development 10 times faster than manual code reviews.

    Updates to Ocular include support for four new programming languages, C#, C, C++ and Scala, which improve development efforts with coverage for the top cloud, Internet of Things (IoT) and embedded applications. The updates also include blazing fast automated security regression testing in CI/CD, which ensures previously fixed business logic flaws are never reintroduced. Ocular can analyze two million lines of code in under eight minutes, which is 40 times faster than typical code analysis tools.

    With Ocular, a Fortune 500 customer is able to find vulnerabilities 10 times faster than manual code reviews. In less than the time it took to typically find one vulnerability, the company quickly found eight zero-day vulnerabilities in its custom code and open source libraries, including an insecure direct object reference, which would allow attackers to manipulate direct object references by merely changing the predictable sequence in order to access other objects without authorization.

    The pace and complexity of modern applications has grown beyond human scale. Even the best security reviewers cannot comprehend the logic of tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code to find flaws. Yet, to date, the only way for organizations to detect business logic flaws in development is through manual code reviews, which are error prone and take weeks to complete. The result is the majority of releases have little or no checks for business logic flaws and the overwhelming majority go unnoticed in development.

    Unlike technical vulnerabilities — such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting and deserialization — business logic flaws often require little or no technical expertise to exploit. For example, in the recent First American Financial Corp. data breach, a control flow reachability business logic flaw was exploited by simply changing values in a URL.

    Matias Blanco, manager of application security at Okta, said of Ocular: “Millions of daily users rely on the Okta Identity Cloud to access the technologies they need. For an agile software development team, every minute is valuable, and the time spent on in-depth code audits can be especially challenging. ShiftLeft Ocular promises to turn weeks into hours when it comes to code security reviews.”

    Ocular is an interactive shell to query ShiftLeft’s Code Property Graph (CPG). The CPG is a graph of graphs that connects the functions of source code together into a fabric of information flows that can be traversed from source to sink. With Ocular, security researchers, code auditors and developers can iteratively interrogate the validity of business logic flows to identify flaws and demonstrate reachability. Ocular queries can then be automated as security policy checks and regression testing through CI/CD pipelines.

    “Business logic flaws are inherently unique to each organization, which makes them incredibly difficult to identify and fix,” said Manish Gupta, CEO of ShiftLeft. “Through our updates to Ocular, we’re making it easier for developers and application security teams to automatically find flaws in their software not covered by traditional static application testing tools. However, we also know fixing vulnerabilities before they make it to production isn’t always possible for every release. Since we know exactly how applications are vulnerable, we can also automatically generate a custom security profile to protect applications in production and buy security and development teams more time to fix their vulnerabilities.”

    To learn more about Ocular, visit the ShiftLeft website or sign up for a 14 day free trial here: https://go.shiftleft.io/ocular-free-trial.

    About ShiftLeft

    ShiftLeft is a continuous application security platform, purpose-built for the modern software development life cycle. It combines next-generation static code analysis (to quickly and accurately identify vulnerabilities) with application instrumentation (to protect the application) in an automated workflow. This combination of runtime-informed code analysis and code- informed runtime protection delivers the most accurate, automated, and comprehensive application security solution. To learn how ShiftLeft keeps application security in sync with the rapid pace of DevOps, see https://www.shiftleft.io/.

     

     

  • Micro Focus Introduces New Robotic Process Automation Product, Ignites Enterprise Productivity

    Designed for the enterprise, the scalable and resilient solution is first to deliver UI and API-based RPA

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 15, 2019 – Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO; NYSE: MFGP) today announced the general availability of Micro Focus Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which gives companies the power to build, secure, and scale automated business processes, from legacy to modern, across the enterprise.

    According to Gartner, “The ability to integrate legacy systems is the key driver for RPA projects. By using this technology, organizations can quickly accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, while unlocking the value associated with past technology investments.”  Micro Focus RPA automates repetitive, error-prone UI-based human actions on legacy apps and integrates them with modern IT process automation in a single product.

    “Micro Focus RPA delivers on key capabilities such as scalability, resiliency and security that our customers and partners demanded,” said Tom Goguen, Micro Focus Chief Product Officer. “It adapts to UI changes, automates UI and API-based applications, and includes real-time auditing and traceability, giving our customers the confidence to deploy RPA across the enterprise while providing for centralized governance and compliance for their digital workforce.”

    “As we have worked closely the last few years with our customers and partners to leverage test automation for their first RPA projects, it presented a convenient way to evaluate the potential of business-related automation and further prove its value to the organization,” said Raffi Margaliot, Micro Focus General Manager for Application Delivery Management. “With Micro Focus RPA, we augmented our core capabilities to be purpose-built for RPA, and we believe our innovations in making automation more resilient to change will deliver a lower TCO compared to existing solutions.”

    Micro Focus RPA capabilities include:

    • Easy-to-use design studio: An intuitive design interface that allows users to easily record screen actions and design sophisticated end-to-end RPA workflows, visually or with code.
    • Cross-platform connections: A technology-rich product that combines UI automation with API and other integration methods to connect business processes spanning old and new applications.
    • Scalable robots: A worker-queue-based architecture to scale robots up or down as workloads change, making it possible to run hundreds or thousands of robots at once.
    • Centralized security: A centralized dashboard to manage the robots that have unique IDs and encrypted, role-based credentials.
    • Resilient robots: Advanced object recognition technology to detect UI changes and automatically adapt as needed, saving time on maintenance.

    “Our customers demand genuine improvements through integrated service delivery, and we know this can only occur with advanced service offerings and innovative partnership in technologies like robotic process automation,” said Denham Seneviratne, National Sales Manager for Winthrop Australia. “We believe Micro Focus is well placed to help deliver on this promise, and we hope our customers are the beneficiaries.”

    “At Kinetic IT, we strengthen our personalized service offerings by minimizing effort on activities better suited to automation,” said Brett Roberts, Chief Product Officer of Kinetic IT. “The release of Micro Focus RPA opens up new opportunities to explore and pursue for the benefit of our customers.”

    “As a Platinum partner of Micro Focus, we are excited about the release of the RPA product and see the definite benefits it can start to bring our clients,” said Jamie Duffield, CEO of Revolution IT. “The RPA product will enable us to automate their processes and focus areas of their application stack to drive value into repetitive tasks quickly and efficiently.”

    With cost-effective licensing, companies can keep their RPA costs predictable and scalable. Pricing starts at $15,000 USD per robot, with special pricing that extends to Micro Focus Unified Functional Testing and Operations Orchestration customers.

    Additional Information

    For companies looking to start their first RPA projects, Micro Focus has professional service offerings available for best practice and process improvement guidance.

    For more information on the release of Micro Focus Robotic Process Automation, visit www.microfocus.com/rpa.

    About Micro Focus
    Micro Focus helps organizations run and transform their business through four core areas of digital transformation: Enterprise DevOps, Hybrid IT Management, Predictive Analytics and Security, Risk & Governance. Driven by customer-centric innovation, our software provides the critical tools they need to build, operate, secure, and analyze the enterprise. By design, these tools bridge the gap between existing and emerging technologies—enabling faster innovation, with less risk, in the race to digital transformation.

     

  • Twilio SendGrid Adds Automation and Email Testing Features to Marketing Campaigns, Instilling Confidence in Every Email Sent

    New functionality enables customers to optimize email campaigns across automated and recurring series, one-time campaigns and transactional mail

    SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 10, 2019 — Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform, today introduced new Automation and Email Testing features within Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns providing customers with the confidence, scalability and streamlined personalization to optimize email campaigns. The new features allow marketers to manage all email including one-time and automated marketing mail and transactional messages for unprecedented consistency and control to perfect content and improve deliverability.

    “As the most used medium for businesses to engage with current and potential customers and a proven ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, email is critical to meeting business goals,” said Steve Sloan, chief product & marketing officer, Twilio SendGrid. “But marketers are often so time-strapped that complicated, expensive options just don’t seem feasible to optimize their email results. Marketing Campaigns’ new approachable Automation and Email Testing solutions provide frustration-free workflows and integrated tools to build flawless emails across automated and recurring series, one-time campaigns and transactional email.”

    “As a high-tech design collaboration platform, we have an incredibly high bar for user experience across everything we do,” said Toni Gemayel, growth marketing, Figma. “Email is no exception. It’s a leading channel for driving our business goals, but it can be complicated to get it right. Twilio SendGird’s new Email Testing and Automation offerings have given us critical tools to meet our high bar. We now know emails will render perfectly across devices and browsers, and can easily take on Automation with modern workflows that are intuitive to manage.”

    Automation

    Customers expect messages from brands to be personalized, timely and relevant. Marketing Campaigns has long provided best-in-class service for one-time and transactional messages and now marketers have an approachable solution for recurring emails or drip series, saving them time and driving better personalization, timeliness and scalability.

    Marketing Campaigns customers can get started with Automation on day one to:

    • Trigger automations when contacts meet the entry criteria of joining a designated list.
    • Meet email marketing goals and gain efficiency with straightforward drip flows to effectively engage recipients over time.
    • Create customer experiences that reflect a customer’s state and improve resonance with the ability to easily keep track of what customers are receiving to adjust over time.
    • Send messages based on a customer’s behavior, speed up the production of recurring emails and effectively target messages in real time.

    In addition, with new Signup Forms, marketers can grow their contact base and use Automation to easily create an engaging welcome experience to drive business outcomes.

    Email Testing

    Sending email campaigns without proper email testing can lead to low deliverability rates and high spam complaints or unsubscribe rates, resulting in poor reputation scores with inbox providers and credibility with customers. While previewing a mobile or desktop rendering of an email message with Email Service Providers (ESPs) is common, more advanced third-party email testing tools are expensive and require marketers to leave their workflow, open a different tool to test, then go back to edit and fix any errors, creating a cumbersome experience for each email campaign. Coupled with managing countless email clients, devices and browsers, the long list of spam filters that the content has to battle to get to the inbox, and the risk of overlooked or incorrect links or URLs, marketers find themselves increasingly cautious to hit send.

    New Email Testing capabilities, offered directly within Marketing Campaigns, now allows customers to:

    • Send emails with confidence thanks to powerful integrated email testing, featuring inbox rendering, spam and link validation tests.
    • See how emails will look across a wide range of inboxes, clients and devices with inbox rendering tests—helping to catch any issues before pressing send.
    • Trust that their emails will reach the inbox with insight into how emails will perform against inbox providers’ most powerful B2B and B2C spam filters.
    • Ensure that every link in their email is formatted for success and works just as intended with detailed link validation.

  • CLEARLAKE CAPITAL GROUP AND TA ASSOCIATES TO MAKE A STRATEGIC GROWTH INVESTMENT IN DIGICERT

    DigiCert will accelerate growth and innovation as market leader in TLS/SSL, PKI and IoT security solutions

    LEHI, UT, SANTA MONICA, CA and BOSTON, MA – July 9, 2019 – DigiCert, Inc., the world’s leading provider of TLS/SSL, PKI and IoT security solutions for identity and encryption, today announced that Clearlake Capital Group, L.P., a leading private investment firm, and TA Associates, an existing investor and leading global growth private equity firm, have reached a definitive agreement to make a strategic growth investment in the company. As a part of the transaction, Clearlake and TA will become equal partners in DigiCert. The company will continue to be led by CEO John Merrill and the current management team, who are investing alongside Clearlake and TA in the transaction. Terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

    DigiCert provides certificate management platforms and industry-best customer support in multiple languages through a diverse staff, with offices located across the globe. The company combines a modern infrastructure with locally focused solutions to enhance security for its customers anywhere they conduct business and in compliance with local requirements.

    “DigiCert continues to experience strong growth within our SSL business as well as enterprise PKI and IoT security, and we are addressing the needs for improved automation and certificate management,” said DigiCert CEO John Merrill. “We’re excited to continue our partnership with TA and welcome Clearlake to accelerate our growth, advance our industry leadership and continue to innovate for our customers.”

    “Having served as an active investor in DigiCert for nearly seven years, we have had the distinct honor and privilege of watching the company flourish from a 40-person upstart technology company to a leading provider of digital certificates with more than 1,000 employees globally,” said Jason Werlin, a managing director at TA Associates. “Specifically, DigiCert’s solutions and loyal customer base have strategically positioned the company to capitalize on both organic and inorganic initiatives to further scale its business. We look forward to continuing to provide support to DigiCert and working collaboratively with management alongside Clearlake as the company enters its next phase of growth.”

    Mr. Werlin will become chairman of the DigiCert Board of Directors upon the closing of the transaction, and Hythem El-Nazer, a managing director at TA, will join the DigiCert Board of Directors.

    “DigiCert is an exciting business with visionary technology, led by John and the management team, that seamlessly addresses security needs for customers of all sizes across the globe,” said Behdad Eghbali, co-founder and managing partner, and Prashant Mehrotra, partner, of Clearlake Capital Group. “We believe the company is well positioned for further growth due to its solid base of recurring subscription revenue and significant market trends as customers increasingly demand security and identity solutions with the strongest encryption and highest authentication standards. We are pleased to join TA as partners in DigiCert and look forward to utilizing our O.P.S.® framework to support the team in continuing to aggressively grow the company organically and through acquisition.”

    DigiCert has a history of innovation, including being the first to launch an independent log for Google Certificate Transparency, offer TLS for the TOR browser and partner with Microsoft to enable EV code signing certificates. DigiCert also leads with certificate-based encryption, authentication, integrity and identity for the IoT. The company operates PKI for many IoT device industry consortia and manufacturers, and has issued billions of device certificates to-date.

    “DigiCert is grateful for the partnership with Thoma Bravo, which has allowed us to achieve operational excellence. They were the right partner at the right time to help us drive the growth that we’ve achieved,” said Merrill.

    “Our DigiCert investment is a powerful example of Thoma Bravo partnering with management to dramatically scale a business through organic growth initiatives and acquisition,” said Robert Sayle, a partner at Thoma Bravo. “DigiCert has maintained an impressive growth rate throughout our investment and is on track for continued industry leadership this year and beyond. We appreciate the commitment and partnership of John Merrill and his outstanding management team. Today, DigiCert is strategically positioned for continued success with its new partners, and we wish them well.”

    The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2019, pending customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions.

    About DigiCert

    DigiCert is the world’s leading provider of scalable TLS/SSL, PKI solutions for identity and encryption. The most innovative companies, including 89 percent of Fortune 500 companies and 97 out of the 100 top global banks, choose DigiCert for its expertise in identity and encryption for web servers and Internet of Things devices. DigiCert supports TLS/SSL and other digital certificates for PKI deployments at any scale through its certificate lifecycle management platform, CertCentral®. The company is recognized for its enterprise-grade certificate management platform, fast and knowledgeable customer support, and market-leading security solutions. For the latest DigiCert news and updates, visit digicert.com or follow @digicert.

    About Clearlake

    Clearlake Capital Group, L.P. is a leading private investment firm founded in 2006. With a sector-focused approach, the firm seeks to partner with world-class management teams by providing patient, long-term capital to dynamic businesses that can benefit from Clearlake’s operational improvement approach, O.P.S.® The firm’s core target sectors are software and technology-enabled services; industrials and energy; and consumer. Clearlake currently has over $10 billion of assets under management and its senior investment principals have led or co-led over 100 investments. More information is available at www.clearlake.com.

    About TA Associates

    TA Associates is one of the most experienced global growth private equity firms. Focused on targeted sectors within five industries – technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer and business services – TA invests in profitable, growing companies with opportunities for sustained growth, and has invested in more than 500 companies around the world. Investing as either a majority or minority investor, TA employs a long-term approach, utilizing its strategic resources to help management teams build lasting value in high quality growth companies. TA has raised $32.5 billion in capital since its founding in 1968 and is committing to new investments at the pace of over $2 billion per year. The firm’s more than 85 investment professionals are based in Boston, Menlo Park, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong. More information about TA Associates can be found at www.ta.com.

    About Thoma Bravo
    Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled services sectors. With a series of funds representing more than $30 billion in capital commitments, Thoma Bravo partners with a company’s management team to implement operating best practices, invest in growth initiatives and make accretive acquisitions intended to accelerate revenue and earnings, with the goal of increasing the value of the business. Representative past and present portfolio companies include industry leaders such as ABC Financial, Blue Coat Systems, Deltek, Digital Insight, Frontline Education, Global Healthcare Exchange, Hyland Software, Imprivata, iPipeline, PowerPlan, Qlik, Riverbed, SailPoint, SolarWinds, SonicWall, Sparta Systems, TravelClick and Veracode. The firm has offices in San Francisco and Chicago. For more information, visit www.thomabravo.com.

  • IBM and DBmaestro announce on a global partnership on DevOps and Cloud Solutions

    IBM and DBmaestro Team Up to Deliver Database Automation Capabilities to Enterprise Customers Worldwide

    IBM selects DBmaestro’s DevOps platform as a Complementary Offering to IBM UrbanCode Velocity Customers

    Boston, MA– July 7, 2019: DBmaestro, a global DevOps leader in database automation, today announced a worldwide partnership with IBM, offering database release automation capabilities designed to optimize DevOps environments for enterprises. As part of the deal, IBM will be offering DBmaestro’s platform to its worldwide enterprise customer base.

    In order to stay competitive, companies across all industries are expected to deliver superior customer experience and continuous innovation through frequent and rapid release cycles. For Enterprises who operate hybrid cloud environments, back-end databases have long presented a major challenge in a market that expects daily and even hourly releases. With a customer base that includes ADP, ING Bank, National Bank of Canada, LFG, Anthem, DBmaestro has long served the Fortune1000 in offering the most robust DevOps platform. Its’ offering automates continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI\CD) processes for databases with zero disruption to existing processes, combining Version Control, Security & Governance, Release Automation and Business Activity Monitoring.

    The platform allows users to define and enforce the process for making changes to databases, version everything in source control (database as-code), offer database-focused configuration management, and establish database policies for all constituents, resulting in productivity and efficiency gains and reduced risk by preventing application downtime.

    Today’s announcement reflects DBmaestro’s strategy to support enterprise customer needs through integrations with complementary agile and DevOps solutions, which include Atlassian’s Jira, Git, Chef, Puppet and Jenkins, among others. IBM has long been a partner, with DBmaestro offering seamless integration with IBM UrbanCode Velocity.

    “This strategic alliance builds on our existing relationship in harnessing each other’s products and support our joint mission to enable enterprises to become more agile, build, deploy, and release code securely and faster,” said Yariv Tabac, CEO and Co-founder, DBmaestro. “We’re very proud and excited that IBM chose DBmaestro to bring DevOps for Database automation to its’ global enterprise customer base.”

    Eric Minick, Product Manager for DevOps solutions, IBM, added, “IBM has long understood its global enterprise customer bases’ need to rapidly release digital products and services. We’ve worked closely with the DBmaestro team for some time and many of our UrbanCode customers are already using their leading DevOps solution, so this strategic partnership is a very natural next step. We’re looking forward to deepening our partnership with DBmaestro to accelerate DevOps deployments for our enterprise customers worldwide.”

    To learn more about the joint solution, visit the DBmaestro website.

    About DBmaestro

    DBmaestro brings DevOps best practices to the database, delivering a new level of efficiency, speed, security and process integration for databases. DBmaestro’s platform enables organizations to run database deployments securely and methodically, increase development team productivity and significantly decrease time-to-market. The solution enables organizations to implement CI/CD practices for database activities, with repeatable pipeline release automation and automatic drift prevention mechanisms. For more information, visit www.dbmaestro.com.