Backblaze, the leading specialized cloud storage provider, today announced an update to its annual guidance for 2023 as a result of pricing increases and product updates across Computer Backup and B2 Cloud Storage products. For more details on these changes, please refer to our blog post.

Backblaze’s full-year revenue outlook has been revised to $100 to $102M from prior guidance of $98 to $102 million, raising the midpoint to $101M compared to the previous midpoint of $100M. The company’s guidance range for adjusted EBITDA was also improved to (6.5)% to (4.5)% versus a previous range of (8.5)% to (4.5)%. The company reiterated third quarter revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance provided on August 8, 2023.

“I am excited that we continue to offer exceptional value to our customers while providing our cloud storage at roughly one fifth the cost of traditional cloud storage providers. Today’s announced pricing and product updates help improve our ability to serve our customers, invest in further innovation, and support the financial strength of the company,” said Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze. “With these changes, we are targeting a $20 million ending cash balance in 2024 and returning to being cash flow positive by mid-2025.”

Financial Outlook

Based on information available as of the date of this press release,

For the third quarter of 2023 we reiterate our prior guidance (no changes):

• Revenue between $25.0 million to $25.4 million
• Adjusted EBITDA margin between (8)% to (4)%

With a new look and feel to BlueWater software suite, Orca Wave enhances its Intelligent Routing with capabilities such as User Defined Routing Plans, Super Groups, Route Streaming and much more.

Orca Wave, a leading OSS/BSS solution provider for international and domestic carriers, and global application services providers announces today the launch of its new website as well as a suite of new capabilities for its Voice and SMS Intelligent Routing. Orca Wave intends to provide users with immense flexibility, routing automation options, profit protection, fraud blocking, the ability to mix routing rules within each routing order and large expansion of routing plan support.

Some of the more anticipated updates include Super Groups and User Defined Routing. With Super Groups, users are enabled to create collections of countries, code groups, individual dial codes, or a mixture of all of these. This allows for easy routing management and re-use of custom groups across all your route plans. This feature also allows for explicitly excluding countries, code groups, individual dial codes and mixtures of all of these. Users may want all the EU, but exclude fixed-line prefixes, or a US Domestic grouping that includes only Verizon and ATT LERG network codes, or a special group of high cost/fraud destinations that will receive special routing or blocking logic.

User Defined Routing provides a set of power tools for creating easy or complex user defined routes depending on the user's need. Users can mix different routing logic for a single destination to enable scenarios where a specific carrier will always be used first, but then a percentage of other carriers next, followed by least cost routing for the remaining carriers available. Any destination can receive a mixture of routing algorithms based on the user's needs.

There are no longer caps on the number of Routing Plans managed, with thousands supported, nor how many suppliers can be in routing.

The entire lineup of Orca Wave's enhanced Intelligent Routing capabilities include:

• User Defined Routing
• Route Blocking
• Change Histories
• Customer Isolated Routing Plans
• Route Streaming
• Routing Reports

"We are continually looking at new ways to add value for our customers and help them to increase profitability. These enhancements in Intelligent Routing are fully integrated to AutoLoading and analysis of supplier voice/SMS rates and codes. Automatic code additions by Route Streaming are a game changer" said John Rivenburgh, founder at Orca Wave.   

Cyberint, the leader in impactful intelligence, is thrilled to announce its integration with Cyware, the leading provider of threat intelligence management, security collaboration, and cyber fusion solutions. The combined solution enables organizations to access and integrate contextual threat intelligence, enhance their threat-hunting capabilities, and automate collaborative response actions to potential attacks. The joint solution and use cases will be detailed in an upcoming webinar on August 29 at 1:00 pm EDT.

“By combining Cyware's advanced capabilities with Cyberint's deep and dark web intelligence, we empower organizations to connect the dots on security incidents, reduce response time, and elevate their security posture,” said Shahar Kodraty, Head of Technical Alliances at Cyware. “Together, we can make a tangible impact in the fight against cyber threats, benefiting enterprises, government agencies, and MSSPs globally."

With this collaboration, Cyberint's web intelligence seamlessly integrates with Cyware’s Threat Intel Exchange product enabling customers to:

• Identify potential threats at an early stage by leveraging streamlined deep and dark web intelligence,
• Receive contextual threat intelligence to enrich and enhance security tools, blocklists, threat research, and threat-hunting activities,
• Aggregate threat intelligence from multiple sources to create clear visibility into threat patterns,
• Automatically notify all stakeholders about critical intelligence,
• Proactively build detection rules and automate response actions to reduce the risk of successful attacks.

"Our collaboration with Cyware will enable organizations to harness the power of streamlined deep and dark web intelligence, strengthening their security posture and ensuring continuous external protection from cyber threats," said Yochai Corem, CEO of Cyberint.

Clio, the world's leading provider of cloud-based legal technology, has announced a new integration with Google Ads to launch Google's Local Services Ads for Clio, an innovative legal marketing solution designed to transform how lawyers grow their law firms. This integration enables lawyers to more easily promote their firm on Google Search, capture leads from nearby residents, and manage their advertising spend—all directly from the legal industry's most robust centralized technology platform.

"Legal demand is moving from the offline world to online, with most of that demand happening on Google Search," said Jack Newton, CEO and founder of Clio. "Our research indicates that more than half of clients find a lawyer by navigating online channels—meaning that a law firm's reviews, website, and digital presence are increasingly critical to law firm growth. Working with Google to embed the management of Local Services Ads into Clio is a significant help to lawyers, allowing them to navigate a competitive advertising strategy that's simple, affordable, and effective."

Local Services Ads for Clio combines Google Ads' localized lead generation with Clio's client intake software for law firms, Clio Grow. Lawyers can easily manage their advertising spend and connect to leads generated from relevant search queries, all from an easy-to-use dashboard.

With Google's Local Services Ads for Clio, law firms can:

• Only pay for leads generated, making it a low-risk marketing solution
• Set an ad spending limit, helping stay within an easy-to-track budget
• Showcase their firm on Google's search results, increasing visibility and client outreach
• Automatically convert leads into prospective clients in Clio Grow, ensuring no prospective leads are left unanswered
• Manage ad campaigns directly in a Clio Grow dashboard, benefitting from a central platform with a simplified onboarding flow, and consolidated reporting
• Apply for the Google Screened Badge, indicating to potential clients that they are booking with a fully licensed and vetted Google-backed business

"We're thrilled Google has chosen to work with us to forge an easier path for lawyers to grow their client base—a process many find to be complex and elusive," continued Newton. "We worked closely with their team to create a solution that is both effective and connected to legal client intake workflows. Lawyers can continue to easily operate within Clio's centralized platform and leverage the power of Google's Local Services Ads to discover new clients, grow their reach, and increase their revenue."

Bringing its expertise in data-centric security practices focused on the development of AI applications, Labelbox is helping lead a safer and more secure cloud computing environment.

Labelbox has announced today that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world's leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment.

Labelbox is the leading data-centric AI platform that empowers organizations to build intelligent applications. With a strong commitment to security, Labelbox continuously reviews and updates its security posture to align with global standards, ensuring the utmost protection for an enterprise's valuable data and IP. By becoming a member of the Cloud Security Alliance, Labelbox brings its expertise in data-centric security practices related to AI, contributing to a safer and more secure cloud computing environment.

"Joining the Cloud Security Alliance empowers Labelbox to fortify its security posture and foster a collaborative ecosystem for advancing our best-in-class SaaS solutions to our hundreds of enterprise customers. As Labelbox is becoming the foundational capability for companies to build AI/ML applications, we strive to enhance the entire industry's security standards and continue to protect users and their core AI initiatives," said Manu Sharma, Labelbox CEO and cofounder.

"Now more than ever, organizations need to make cybersecurity an everyday priority. Enterprises of all sizes need to understand the unrelenting risk, and they need to have a plan to protect their data continuously. We're excited to have Labelbox join the Cloud Security Alliance and to work together on developing standards that allow for the proper scoping of cloud environments through education, training, and collaboration to effectively protect data and improve security," said Jim Reavis, CEO and co-founder, Cloud Security Alliance. 

Affinitiv, the leading provider of data-driven marketing and software solutions to the automotive market, announces Adam Pavkov as the new Chief Product Officer for the company. With a background in Fortune 100 product development, marketing, and sales, Pavkov will be responsible for driving business growth and delivering innovative solutions, accelerating dealer profitability.

Pavkov brings over 15 years of experience in building, consulting, and selling ad-tech and software solutions for the automotive industry. As the former Head of Automotive Retail at Meta (Formerly Facebook), Adam led the North American dealer advertising business with responsibility for defining dealer strategies, vertical product development, thought leadership, and direct management of the OEM programs, top dealer groups, and the software and agency partner ecosystem.

Prior to Meta, Pavkov led the audience and data product organization at Cox Automotive, building OEM and dealer solutions that leveraged first-party and customer data across Cox Automotive Brands.

“Adam’s agency, product, and digital expertise in the automotive industry, along with our industry-leading sales and service solutions puts us in an exciting new position,” said Adam Meier, Chief Executive Officer of Affinitiv. “I, along with the entire executive team, am looking forward to what Adam brings to the table as we focus on innovating our solutions across the entire customer journey, from sales to service and back again.”

VTEX is also recognized as a Visionary in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant^™ for Digital Commerce based on its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision

VTEX, the global enterprise digital commerce platform is named a Visionary in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant^™ for Digital Commerce for its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. VTEX has also ranked second for the following Use Cases: B2C Digital Commerce (4.14/5), B2C and B2B Digital Commerce on the Same Platform (3.96/5), and Complex Business Models (4.01/5); And it is rated third for the Composable Commerce (4.25/5) Use Case, and fifth for the B2B Digital Commerce (3.85/5) Use Case in the 2023 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce.

"I am proud to see the disruption VTEX is causing globally," said Mariano Gomide de Faria, founder, and co-CEO of VTEX. "The pragmatic composability aspect of VTEX allows enterprises to go fast and choose the best components for their business in a more cost-effective way. Forward-thinking CIOs are migrating off their legacy platforms to VTEX to give their business the flexibility it needs and to reduce commerce platform total cost of ownership (TCO)."

As Gartner mentioned in the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle^™ for Digital Commerce report, several factors drive the move towards composable commerce, including "the need to adopt a modular approach that provides more flexibility to a digital commerce technology stack by allowing companies to swap out functionality with best-of-breed modules from a different vendor, or a solution that they develop themselves".

"The main reasons for migrating to VTEX were business and solution agility. We wanted a future proof product in terms of investing in technology," said Venkat Gopalan, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) & Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Belcorp, which recently implemented VTEX across six countries and was able to go-live with the global platform in only five months. We were looking for a composable, but complete architecture, and we chose VTEX because they are visionaries disrupting the ecommerce and direct to consumer market, bringing in new capabilities at a faster pace. With that, they help us to take advantage of those innovations to our consumers and our consultants."

VTEX has succeeded by taking on the complexity of headless and composable commerce by building pragmatic architectures that allow brands and retailers to connect their entire commerce ecosystem, helping them to uncover new revenue streams. In the last twelve months, VTEX has more than twice as many reviews as any other vendor and has an Overall Rating of 4.7 out of 5 and a Willingness to Recommend score of 96%, based on 67 customer reviews in the Digital Commerce Platforms market on Gartner Peer Insights^™, as of August 21, 2023.

Predictions and Voice Intelligence Launches Drive Deeper, Actionable Understanding of Customers

New Generative AI Tools Activate Adaptive Engagement in Twilio Engage, Flex, and Segment

AI-Ready Customer Data Platform (CDP) Innovations Extend Brands’ Line of Sight, Enhancing Customer Profiles and Powering Real-Time Personalization

Today at SIGNAL 2023, Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalized experiences for today’s leading brands, announced CustomerAI¹ solutions that will unlock the power of artificial intelligence (AI) for hundreds of thousands of businesses. New predictive and generative AI tools, along with CDP innovations that underpin powerful AI use cases, are among the launches.

"The tectonic shift in technology that we’ve seen this past year rivals the scale and magnitude of the invention of the Internet. AI has truly captured the hearts and minds of builders across the globe,” said Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio. “I believe the real value unlock for AI will be pairing large language models with first party data sets – which is where Twilio is most differentiated. With CustomerAI, artificial intelligence becomes customer-aware, empowering businesses to drive data-driven personal interactions at every touchpoint.”

“Today we are announcing a slate of new CustomerAI capabilities that make AI more accessible, powering dynamic customer engagement that adapts to every individual customer. Getting smarter and more tailored all the time, every interaction creates new data and signals, and every new signal then cycles back around to inform the next AI-powered communication,” said Kathryn Murphy, SVP of Product at Twilio. “This flywheel creates precise 1:1 personalization that ensures each unique customer is taken care of, in turn accelerating competitive advantage and business results for brands by boosting customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty.”

With CustomerAI, brands can expand their perception of customer data, activate it more extensively, and be better informed by a deeper understanding. SIGNAL 2023 announcements include:

Twilio Launches CustomerAI Predictions and Voice Intelligence to Drive Deeper Understanding of Customers with Predictive AI and Insights

In today’s competitive environment, marketers need new ways to attract, convert, and retain high-value customers. AI and machine learning (ML) models can help anticipate and act on future customer behavior, but effective, complex models require real-time data and data science expertise. With CustomerAI Predictions², Twilio is putting the power of predictive AI at marketers’ fingertips. Without having to tap technical teams, marketers can now create hyper-targeted audiences out-of-the-box, trigger customer journeys, and personalize multichannel experiences based on a customer’s lifetime value (LTV), likelihood to purchase or churn, or any other event tracked in Segment. This is powered by unified, real-time data in Segment, critical to training high-quality AI models. Brands like Box are using Predictions to save time, optimize campaign performance, and unlock revenue opportunities.

Voice continues to be a critical customer service channel, with call volumes rising³. Historically, companies have struggled to learn from call content because voice data is unstructured. Voice Intelligence⁴ changes this, using a transcription and language operator tool that deploys conversational speech recognition to intelligently extract insights. Using Natural Language Understanding (NLU), it reports on trends like common feedback, competitive insights, and compliance risks. Twilio Flex and Voice customers can also manage regulatory requirements with automated personal information (PII) redaction. One organization in the beta reported lead attribution management margins improved by 21% due to streamlined processes and human error reduction. Brands like Spoke Phone are already putting Voice Intelligence to work.

Twilio is also announcing the general availability of its Virtual Agent with Google Dialogflow CX native Voice integration.

Twilio Announces Generative AI Tools to Help Activate Customer Data and Adaptive Engagement in Twilio Engage, Flex, and Segment

Marketers today both want and need to spend their time strategizing for growth, but can be held back by manual tasks. With generative AI soon available⁵ inside Twilio Engage and Segment, they can save precious time, boost productivity, and optimize for stronger results. For example, with the new CustomerAI Generative Email design coming to Twilio Engage, marketers will be able to enter simple text prompts that turn ideas to HTML in seconds. This builds on the AI capabilities available in Twilio Engage today, such as Smart Headlines, the Smart Image Generator, and Smart Buttons that each suggest the most conversion-worthy content to include. Meanwhile, marketers will be able to skip the manual process of architecting customer Journeys thanks to new CustomerAI Generative Journeys. Soon, marketers will be able to describe campaign type (promotional, win-back, etc.), audience definition, and which channels they want to use, and Twilio Engage will then automatically build the journey using generative AI.

Generative AI capabilities are also launching for Twilio Flex, as recently announced with Google Cloud. For example, Flex customers will be able to deploy CustomerAI Agent Assist⁶ that will generate recommendations to contact center agents with tailored “next best actions” they should take when interacting with a specific customer as well as AI-generated rapid summarizations for efficient call wrap-up. Additionally, the forthcoming GA launch of Flex Unify will natively surface Segment's rich customer profile data to agents in real-time. With agents empowered to interact in a more personalized way, contact centers can increase customer lifetime value and boost sales conversions.

Twilio Introduces Segment B2B Edition and Zero Copy Architecture to Offer a Composable, AI-Ready Customer Data Platform (CDP) that Enhances Businesses’ Perception of Customers

As AI continues to rise in prominence, marketing and product innovators are moving beyond generic personalization based on demographics or location. But to achieve excellent personalization, companies need a clean and consistent data foundation. Twilio’s new Segment B2B Edition with Linked Profiles⁷ will allow businesses to establish relationships across all their customer data in an expanded data graph. Segment has always brought data together in unified profiles, but, in addition to real-time consumer profiles, many organizations have business data sets (containing information like company accounts, subscriptions, products, households, and more) sitting in their data warehouse. Now, using Linked Profiles, companies can build a graph of relationships linking customer events, experiences, and profiles with these additional data sets. With a better line of sight across data, graphed to each customer, companies can train AI models, build advanced segmentation, and power state-of-the-art personalized recommendations and activations across channels.

Twilio is also introducing Zero Copy Architecture⁸ to help businesses ensure their data infrastructure is AI-ready. In partnership with Databricks, the Data and AI company, and Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, the new capabilities will allow customers to push down query processing to the data warehouse or data platform directly, eliminating the need for data copying and additional ETL (“Extract-Transform-Load”) jobs, avoiding redundancy, and resulting in more timely, secure, and accurate insights. It also reduces the need to build and maintain data pipelines. Extending Twilio’s CDP, Zero Copy offers a new pathway for data ingestion and access. For AI models built in the data warehouse, Zero Copy “Data Sharing” technology will enable easier activation in downstream applications. Lastly, Twilio Engage and Twilio Flex customers will be able to onboard customer data into these applications more quickly and easily.

As Twilio develops and launches CustomerAI tools, it is leveraging its own proprietary technology as well as working with trusted industry leaders like AWS, Google, and OpenAI that meet its privacy and data protection standards. Twilio is committed to building CustomerAI safely and responsibly, and has today published its CustomerAI Trust Principles, along with information on the rollout and availability of its AI Nutrition Facts Labels. As a part of this commitment, Twilio builds privacy and security by design into its product development lifecycle and will ensure companies have full transparency and control of the data that informs AI-powered interactions with their customers.