Google Cloud Ready - Cloud SQL Designation and recognition as a launch partner in Google’s Data & AI Cloud for Marketing will help enterprises accelerate data-driven outcomes

Fivetran, the global leader in automated data movement, today announced that it has received the 2023 Google Cloud Technology Partner of the Year Award for Data Ingestion, which recognizes the company’s best-in-class data movement and ingestion solutions for Google Cloud customers. Fivetran also achieved Google Cloud Ready - Cloud SQL Designation for Cloud SQL, Google Cloud’s fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, and was recognized as a launch partner in Google’s Data & AI Cloud for Marketing. These accolades signal a continued strengthening of the partnership and further demonstrate Fivetran’s commitment to supporting customers, such as Autozone, Cisco, and Backcountry, across the Google Cloud analytics ecosystem.

With its recognition as 2023 Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award for Data Ingestion, this marks the second year Fivetran has been recognized by Google Cloud for its partnership and innovative data movement platform. Last year, Fivetran was recognized with the 2022 Google Cloud Global Technology Partner of the Year award for its achievements in the Google Cloud ecosystem, providing an ingestion solution that allows customers to move data into Google BigQuery quickly and easily.

“Our partnership with Fivetran provides enterprise customers with a streamlined data ingestion process into BigQuery – ultimately providing them with faster access so they can gain deeper insights into their data,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, Vice President and General Manager for Database, Data Analytics & Looker at Google Cloud. “This award recognizes the strong value Fivetran’s data movement platform continues to bring to our customers across the Google Cloud ecosystem.”

“Our data team is responsible for optimizing patient care pathways and data integration with Fivetran is the first – and a very critical – step for us in uncovering desirable outcomes for them. The Fivetran and GCP integration has become a mission-critical component that enables a significant amount of our data-driven capabilities. Furthermore, the ease of use has made adoption more scalable and efficient so that several people on the team are able to set up and maintain Fivetran data pipelines,” said Trenton Huey, Senior Director, Data and Frontend Engineering at Vida Health.

Google Cloud Ready - Cloud SQL is a new designation for the solutions of Google Cloud’s technology partners that integrate with Cloud SQL. The distinction recognizes Fivetran for meeting a core set of functional and interoperability requirements when integrating with Cloud SQL and refined documentation for ease of onboarding by our mutual customers. As part of the program, Fivetran will get more opportunities to collaborate closely with Google partner engineering and Cloud SQL teams to develop joint roadmaps. The new distinction adds to Fivetran’s existing status as a Google Cloud Ready in the BigQuery program. Fivetran’s robust support for all three Google Cloud SQL databases, including Postgres, MySQL, and SQL Server sets it apart from competitors and helped lead to this recognition.

As a partner for the Data & AI Cloud for Marketing launch, Fivetran provides additional support for data movement of marketing data sources into BigQuery for business critical use-cases such as marketing spend optimization, creative content generation and activation, personalization and segmentation and privacy-centric data sharing. By providing a streamlined data movement process, marketers can gain deeper insights into their campaigns, customers, and marketing efforts and accelerate data-driven decision making.

“We’re proud to work with Google Cloud and be recognized for both our products and innovative thinking,” said Andy Bhaduri, VP of Global Partners and Alliances at Fivetran. “As enterprises look to accelerate their digital transformations, data-driven decision making is critical. Having the right infrastructure is the first step. Fivetran is committed to helping expand data movement capabilities for BigQuery customers, ultimately speeding up the flow of data for decision-makers.”

“Google Cloud’s partner awards recognize the significant impact and customer success that our partners have driven over the past year,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem and Channels at Google Cloud. “We're delighted to recognize Fivetran as a 2023 Google Cloud Partner Award winner, and look forward to a continued strong partnership in support of our mutual customers.”

Customer experience platform recognized for its innovative application of Google Cloud technologies

AfterShip, the industry-leading customer experience platform for eCommerce, today announced that it has received the 2023 Google Cloud Customer of the Year Award. This year's recognition of AfterShip underscores the company’s commitment to continuous innovation and customer-centric approach in the supply chain and logistics category.

AfterShip was recognized for their achievements in the Google Cloud ecosystem, helping joint customers by deploying services at lightning speed and maintaining a global-scale database operation without worrying about synchronization and capacity.

“The Google Cloud Customer Awards are an opportunity to recognize the most innovative, technically advanced, and transformative cloud deployments across industries, from around the globe, built on our platform,” said Brian Hall, VP of Product and Industry Marketing at Google Cloud. . “I want to congratulate AfterShip on achieving this award and serving as an innovator for the industry.”

AfterShip's mission is to automate operations for online retailers to bring the best shopping experience to their customers, with a focus on post-purchase experience. Their clients are mainly located in Europe and North American where business has high requirements for security, service reliability, and innovation.

“We are honored to receive this recognition from Google Cloud,” said Teddy Chan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at AfterShip. “It attests to the hard work, creativity, and dedication our team has shown in leveraging the cutting-edge Google Cloud technologies to deliver the service levels that have helped us realize our ambition of becoming the number one tracking API platform in the world.”

The Google Cloud Customer Award further highlights AfterShip’s commitment to maintaining a top-quality delivery experience for clients around the globe. This recognition follows an impressive trajectory of growth and innovation by AfterShip, from its inception as a startup in 2011 to a global leader in customer experience.

NTT provides actionable insights for executives seeking benefits experienced by social sustainability leaders

Large enterprises investing in social sustainability see an average increase in revenue of $710 million according to a new study commissioned by NTT Corporation (President and CEO: Akira Shimada, “NTT”). The study, conducted in collaboration with ThoughtLab, also reveals that leading firms in social sustainability see an 11.4% increase in employee productivity and unlock approximately $675 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) across eight countries and five industries.

The published report, The Business Case for Social Sustainability, provides a roadmap designed to help businesses maximize the value of their social sustainability investments.

Study Highlights

The international survey comprised 250 senior executives from global organizations earning over $1 billion in revenue. The organizations were divided into three categories (Beginner/Intermediate /Advanced) based on an analytical framework that measured progress against 10 key initiatives in social sustainability. Key survey findings include:

• 40% of companies integrate social sustainability goals and enforce supplier compliance.
• All categories of companies report an average 8% revenue increase and 10% productivity increase from social sustainability initiatives.
• Advanced social sustainability leaders experience nearly a 10% revenue increase.
• Over 50% of social sustainability leaders expect increased revenue and profitability in the next two years.
• 62% of companies plan to increase social sustainability spending by an average of 6%.

“Now more than ever, businesses are hearing demands from across the value chain for forward-thinking, inclusive and socially impactful operations,” said NTT’s Kaoru Asakura, vice president, head of Sustainability Office, Corporate Strategy Planning Department. “This study proves that investment in social sustainability is in the interest of both businesses and the broader society. This is why NTT has set its mid-term strategy with a focus on Innovating a Sustainable Future for People and the Planet.”

Building a Socially Sustainable Enterprise

Social sustainability investment builds trust in companies’ brands and improves credibility. The most successful companies surveyed spent around $20 million on their social sustainability initiatives in the last year, tracking success from procurement to investment decision making.

Based on survey findings, NTT and ThoughtLab created a framework of actions, with additional details in the report, for organizations wanting to improve social sustainability efforts, including:

1. Understand and communicate the business case for social sustainability.

2. Build the foundation for social sustainability excellence.

3. Extend social sustainability across the supply chain.

4. Build partnerships to deliver on common goals and multiply results.

5. Harness digital technologies to drive sustainability results.

Role of Technology Across Industries

The survey also found that business leaders in social sustainability employ more technologies than less advanced firms across a range of uses. Additionally, leading enterprises are more widely adopting advanced technologies, such as the cloud, smart sensors, advanced analytics for hazards and diversity, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The survey aligns with NTT's Innovation for a Sustainable Future program which showcases the positive impact of technology, digital transformation, and R&D in achieving sustainability and social benefits. The program aims to empower organizations of all sizes to contribute to long-term sustainability for nature, wellbeing and prosperity.

NVIDIA Generative AI Technology Used by Google DeepMind and Google Research Teams Now Optimized and Available to Google Cloud Customers Worldwide

Google Cloud Next -- Google Cloud and NVIDIA today announced new AI infrastructure and software for customers to build and deploy massive models for generative AI and speed data science workloads.

In a fireside chat at Google Cloud Next, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang discussed how the partnership is bringing end-to-end machine learning services to some of the largest AI customers in the world — including by making it easy to run AI supercomputers with Google Cloud offerings built on NVIDIA technologies. The new hardware and software integrations utilize the same NVIDIA technologies employed over the past two years by Google DeepMind and Google research teams.

“We’re at an inflection point where accelerated computing and generative AI have come together to speed innovation at an unprecedented pace,” Huang said. “Our expanded collaboration with Google Cloud will help developers accelerate their work with infrastructure, software and services that supercharge energy efficiency and reduce costs.”

“Google Cloud has a long history of innovating in AI to foster and speed innovation for our customers,” Kurian said. “Many of Google’s products are built and served on NVIDIA GPUs, and many of our customers are seeking out NVIDIA accelerated computing to power efficient development of LLMs to advance generative AI.”

NVIDIA Integrations to Speed AI and Data Science Development
Google’s framework for building massive large language models (LLMs), PaxML, is now optimized for NVIDIA accelerated computing.

Originally built to span multiple Google TPU accelerator slices, PaxML now enables developers to use NVIDIA® H100 and A100 Tensor Core GPUs for advanced and fully configurable experimentation and scale. A GPU-optimized PaxML container is available immediately in the NVIDIA NGC™ software catalog. In addition, PaxML runs on JAX, which has been optimized for GPUs leveraging the OpenXLA compiler.

Google DeepMind and other Google researchers are among the first to use PaxML with NVIDIA GPUs for exploratory research.

The NVIDIA-optimized container for PaxML will be available immediately on the NVIDIA NGC container registry to researchers, startups and enterprises worldwide that are building the next generation of AI-powered applications.

Additionally, the companies announced Google’s integration of serverless Spark with NVIDIA GPUs through Google’s Dataproc service. This will help data scientists speed Apache Spark workloads to prepare data for AI development.

These new integrations are the latest in NVIDIA and Google’s extensive history of collaboration. They cross hardware and software announcements, including:

• Google Cloud on A3 virtual machines powered by NVIDIA H100 — Google Cloud announced today its purpose-built Google Cloud A3 VMs powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs will be generally available next month, making NVIDIA’s AI platform more accessible for a broad set of workloads. Compared to the previous generation, A3 VMs offer 3x faster training and significantly improved networking bandwidth.
• NVIDIA H100 GPUs to power Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform — H100 GPUs are expected to be generally available on VertexAI in the coming weeks, enabling customers to quickly develop generative AI LLMs.
• Google Cloud to gain access to NVIDIA DGX™ GH200 — Google Cloud will be one of the first companies in the world to have access to the NVIDIA DGX GH200 AI supercomputer — powered by the NVIDIA Grace Hopper™ Superchip — to explore its capabilities for generative AI workloads.
• NVIDIA DGX Cloud Coming to Google Cloud — NVIDIA DGX Cloud AI supercomputing and software will be available to customers directly from their web browser to provide speed and scale for advanced training workloads.
• NVIDIA AI Enterprise on Google Cloud Marketplace — Users can access NVIDIA AI Enterprise, a secure, cloud native software platform that simplifies developing and deploying enterprise-ready applications including generative AI, speech AI, computer vision, and more.
• Google Cloud first to offer NVIDIA L4 GPUs — Earlier this year, Google Cloud became the first cloud provider to offer NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPUs with the launch of the G2 VM. NVIDIA customers switching to L4 GPUs from CPUs for AI video workloads can realize up to 120x higher performance with 99% better efficiency. L4 GPUs are used widely for image and text generation, as well as VDI and AI-accelerated audio/video transcoding.

Automatad recognized as an expert partner providing publishers with innovative solutions and services

Automatad, a leading ad tech platform for publishers, today announced its recognition as a Google Certified Publishing Partner (GCPP). This esteemed certification emphasizes Automatad's steadfast dedication to supporting publishers and its expertise across various Google advertising products, including Google Ad Manager.

The GCPP certification process necessitated a rigorous evaluation of Automatad's ability to deliver exceptional service, maintain the highest performance standards, and consistently meet and surpass publisher expectations. The recognition further strengthens Automatad's commitment to equipping online publishers with Google’s suite of advanced tools, amplifying ad revenue, and unlocking new growth avenues.

As a GCPP partner, Automatad has a privileged position in working directly with Google. As a valued partner, it gets exclusive co-marketing opportunities with Google, partner-only resources, and a unique network of global demand partners.

Automatad's team of Ad Management professionals is committed to assisting web publishers in generating advertising revenue in the most streamlined and cost-effective manner. At the core of Automatad's offerings is its proprietary automated technology platform, which combines real-time analytics, Machine Learning, and industry expertise. The company offers access to an extensive network of demand partners, thus ensuring that publishers' inventory value is fully maximized.

Today, Automatad optimizes billions of ad impressions monthly for its publishers. As a member of the GCPP program, Automatad will be able to monitor customer sentiment more closely, gain early access to Google's ad products, and provide superior technical support in close association with Google.

“We are proud to be recognized as a Google Certified Publishing Partner. This reaffirms our commitment to innovative solutions and quality service for publishers. Going forward, we’re determined to advance our performance further and be an essential partner for our clients, helping them grow their ad revenue effectively,” said Vijay Kumar, Founder and CEO of Automatad.

8 in 10 social marketers describe influencer marketing as essential to their social strategies in new research by Sprout Social

Today’s consumers are turning to social media to discover new trends, products and brands. However, in a crowded market, brands must create increasingly personalized and authentic content in order to engage their customers and new audiences across social. According to new research released by Sprout Social, an industry-leading provider of social media management software, influencer marketing is a key strategy in bolstering a brand’s social presence with 81% of social marketers describing influencer marketing as an essential part of their social media strategy. By combining social and influencer content, brands are gaining a competitive advantage and building brand awareness necessary for long-term business growth.

The research, which surveyed more than 300 US-based social marketers, found that social marketers rate influencer marketing as having a significant impact on their brand’s marketing efforts, listing reaching new audiences, boosting engagement rates and enhancing brand authenticity and trust as the three most valuable benefits.

As influencer marketing proves critical to social strategies, brands are increasingly making it part of their social budgets. According to the data, 73% of those surveyed said their influencer marketing budget is shared with their social budget. As organizations continue to unify these strategies and budgets, it will be important to also streamline workflows and efforts to deliver the most effective results.

“We know that social media is the channel for creating authentic and unforgettable connections between consumers and brands,” said Jamie Gilpin, Chief Marketing Officer at Sprout Social. “The pressure to stand out and need for personalized content is only increasing and influencer marketing is enabling brands to bolster authenticity and differentiate themselves to consumers on social. Our research reveals that brands are realizing the necessary role influencers play in reaching new and growing audiences, and those who effectively implement it into their existing social and marketing strategies will be better able to compete and drive lasting business impact.”

As consumers continue to place an emphasis on personalized content, marketers are prioritizing influencers with more targeted audiences that best match their customer base. The research revealed that 70% of social marketers see the most impact from macro-influencers (100K to 1M followers) followed by 43% seeing the most impact with micro-influencers (10K - 100K followers).

Additional key findings include:

• Social marketers cite Instagram (86%) as the top platform for their brand’s influencer marketing efforts, followed by Facebook (78%) and TikTok (70%).
• In terms of influencer-led content, brands are most focused on giveaways (65%), product collaborations (62%) and influencer-led advertisements (57%).
• To secure internal buy-in for influencer marketing, a majority of those surveyed (58%) say that social engagement data is the most important metric, followed by conversion rates (48%) which include sales, sign-ups and downloads.
• A majority (52%) of brands are using dedicated influencer marketing platforms.
• When asked how their brands ensure authenticity in their influencer marketing campaigns a majority of marketers said they encourage influencers to share their real experiences (62%), collaborate closely with influencers on content creation (59%) and choose influencers who are genuine fans of their product (50%).
• When asked how they assess influencers prior to collaboration, marketers say they look for influencers who already post about similar products or services (62%), they evaluate engagement metrics (52%) and monitor their interactions with their audience (51%).

Emergence of AI applications increases the need for a comprehensive data security governance strategy and data security platforms across enterprise organizations

Privacera, the cloud data governance and security leader founded by the creators of Apache Ranger™, today announced it has been included as a Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Data Security, 2023, for the Data Security Platforms [DSP] and Multicloud database activity monitoring (DAM) categories.    

With the emergence of AI applications powered by underlying Large Language Models (LLMs), organizations of any scale are recognizing the increased need for a comprehensive data security and governance strategy. With Privacera's Unified Data Security Platform, these data-driven enterprises can not only securely govern and protect structured and unstructured data assets, but also apply the same secure policies and controls across AI models and diverse LLMs in use. This will help avoid the misuse and leakage of sensitive data fed into AI models and other security threats as a result of those accessible models. The protection and secure governance will consistently apply across all locations that users want to deploy AI models and LLMs, whether it's on-premise, hybrid or within public clouds.  

"A comprehensive approach will significantly improve data security governance efforts through increased automation and consistent policy management through an open and proven standard, and allow organizations to fully capitalize on the potential of building new AI-powered experiences, whether it's more efficient internal operations or improved customer engagements, in a fully compliant fashion," said Balaji Ganesan, CEO and co-founder at Privacera.

MiniTool Software Limited has released its video editing software MiniTool MovieMaker 7.0 with an optimized user experience and newly added resources for all Windows users.

What's new in this new version:

• Media files irrelevant to the current project file are not displayed.
• Support uploading media files by directly dragging them from computer storage.
• Support sorting videos and photos by name, type, and date in the media library.
• Support searching for specific media files in the media library.
• Newly added music, effects, and animated elements.
• Music can be added to the timeline apart from the video for editing.
• Maintain user-defined export path.
• Use version numbers in video names to distinguish between multiple exports.
• Fixed aspect ratio switch issue in version 6.1.

A New Way to Upload, Display, and Find Media Files

Through the updates in MiniTool MovieMaker 7.0, users can now directly drag and drop the source files from computer storage to the media library of the program. Together with the Import Media Files option and the More > Import Media entrance at the top, users now have 3 choices for uploading media files.

After importing media files to MiniTool MovieMaker, users can arrange them in either ascending or descending order and categorize them based on criteria such as name, type, or date created.

Moreover, users can now quickly find a specific media file using the search function within the media library. Just input the whole or part of the file name and press Enter. Then, all media files whose name contains the search keyword will be listed.

Furthermore, in the former versions, MiniTool MovieMaker used to retain the uploaded media files. Every time users access the main interface of MiniTool MovieMaker, the former uploaded media files would appear in the media library. However, starting from version 7.0 onwards, this has changed. MiniTool MovieMaker will only display the media files uploaded for the current project.

New Music, Filters, and Animated Stickers Make the Videos More Attractive

The new version of MiniTool MovieMaker also includes additional resources like songs, effects, and elements for users to decorate their videos.

This time, 5 wonderful songs are added to the music library of MiniTool MovieMaker 7.0. Most of them are encouraging. Users can make use of them to create encouraging videos.

One significant alteration in music processing is the ability to directly drag audio onto the timeline for editing, eliminating the necessity of adding a video or photo first.  

Regarding the latest filter enhancements, five additional categories have been introduced: fade, warm & cool, indoor action, outdoor action, and black & white. They will give users more choices for adjusting the color of their images.

Besides, 48 new animated elements are also available. They contain Halloween stickers, autumn-related gifs, countdown animations, mood stickers, and social media elements. Those funny stickers will make the videos more vivid.