Verified by Veeam, DataCore Swarm Enables Secure, Reliable, and Cost-Efficient Data Protection and Backup Archiving

DataCore Software today announced that its software-defined object storage, DataCore Swarm, has achieved Veeam Ready qualification for the latest versions of Veeam Backup & Replication (version 12) and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 (version 7). DataCore Swarm provides organizations using Veeam backup products with a highly secure and resilient storage target to cost-efficiently preserve backups. Offering massive scalability and flexibility, Swarm ensures that data is stored on-premises and continuously protected from malicious attacks, ransomware, bit rot, procedural mistakes, and hardware failures.

"With the increased ransomware threat, customer interest in providing secure and scalable backup environments remains incredibly high. We saw this first-hand in a series of joint European webinars delivered alongside Veeam, where we discussed the targeting of our software with Veeam’s backup and recovery offerings, attracting more than 1,000 registrations," said Abhijit Dey, General Manager and Chief Operating Officer at DataCore. "Securing the Veeam Ready qualification highlights our commitment to providing joint customers with a robust and scalable storage solution they can rely on. With Swarm, organizations can confidently back up their critical data and ensure long-term preservation, while maximizing cost efficiencies."

Veeam Backup & Replication, Veeam's flagship product, offers groundbreaking features in the version 12 release, including support for backing up data directly to object storage. Without the need for an additional performance tier, this reduces costs while ensuring speedy backup to, and recovery from, the object storage. With the “Veeam Ready – Object” and “Veeam Ready – Object with Immutability” badges, Swarm provides Veeam customers a simple and cost-effective way to archive their backups to on-premises object storage. Swarm now also supports the Smart Object Storage API (SOSAPI) in Veeam Backup & Replication that provides bidirectional information exchange to benefit Veeam users making the interoperability with Swarm more seamless and intuitive.

DataCore Swarm has also been successfully tested and verified for compatibility with Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 version 7, ensuring robust data protection for Microsoft 365 cloud applications.

“As one of the leading cloud service providers in Germany, we offer our partners and their customers a wide range of services with different service levels that fit their respective requirements and budgets," said Lukas Krusberski, Product Manager Veeam Solutions at Terra Cloud GmbH. "We have been using DataCore software-defined storage solutions for years. With the re-verification of Swarm now for Veeam Backup & Replication 12, we plan to use it as a direct storage target for our Veeam-based backups.”

Supporting single-site and multi-site deployments with massive capacity scaling, DataCore Swarm empowers organizations to meet their evolving data protection needs. Featuring comprehensive security, compliance features and capabilities such as immutability, WORM, encryption, hashing, integrity seals and others, Swarm is a game changer for industries with stringent data governance requirements. For over a decade, leading organizations including the Department of Defense, and Argonne National Laboratory have relied on DataCore Swarm to provide scalable data protection.

Investment further solidifies the comics platform’s place as an innovator in the comics industry’s direct market and to increase global visibility for independent creators, publishers, and consumers

GlobalComix, the leading digital comics platform, announced today its $6.5m Series A fundraising round led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Endeavor, among others.

The global comic book market is continuing to grow, with an estimated 500M readers, 1M+ creators and an annual spend on comic books around $25B. Popular athletes wear comic book merchandise, top-grossing movies are often adaptations and anime is one of streaming platform’s most successful genres—all underscoring the cultural renaissance and relevance of comics today.

Despite these favorable tailwinds, the main actors of the ecosystem—consumers, publishers and creators—have material pain points. For consumers, there is no centralized online platform to consume both professional and independently created comics. For publishers, large digital subscription services shut down, and for creators, existing platforms oftentimes offer only subpar publishing and distribution tools.

GlobalComix addresses these points by enabling publishers and creators to digitally publish their comics at a much higher rate than through traditional channels, while allowing readers to discover exciting new content as part of their subscription service.

"We are immensely pleased to partner with Point72 Ventures, whose investment accelerates our mission to revolutionize the digital comics industry and helps us realize the company’s vision of bringing the comic book experience to the online world," said Christopher Carter, CEO of GlobalComix. “This funding will fuel our growth, broaden our reach, and deepen our commitment to creators and fans alike. This includes delivering AI-powered tools that drastically improve creator workflow and productivity, while enhancing the reading experience for everyone, including previously underserved multi-generational audiences. We remain steadfast in maintaining our creator-first approach that respects and values the people telling the stories we love.”

“We believe GlobalComix is well positioned to address the need for innovation in the digital comic book industry,” said Ishan Sinha, Principal at Point72 Ventures. "GlobalComix's unique value proposition lies in its commitment to creators and fans, fostering an inclusive community that brings together diverse voices from around the world. We're excited to be part of their growth journey.”

Co-Founder of GlobalComix and tech industry veteran Robert Hoffer, affectionately referred to as "theBotFather" in Silicon Valley circles for inventing SmarterChild—the first commercial AI chatbot and widely considered the progenitor to all modern chatbots from Siri to Alexa and ChatGPT4, said, "With strategic allies like Endeavor, we're more than ready to pioneer a transformation in the digital comics landscape. The future of AI-enhanced digital comics publishing will further support the GlobalComix mission of putting creators first. Our timely integration of AI tools throughout our ecosystem couldn't be more opportune.”

With this round of financing, GlobalComix plans to enhance the platform, focus on reaching target audiences, and continue its mission to deliver an unrivaled comics experience to both creators and readers around the globe. This investment signifies a bright future for the advancement of the comics industry as a whole in the ever-changing landscape of the entertainment industry

Vanta, the leading trust management platform, announced today that it has appointed Jeremy Epling as its Chief Product Officer overseeing engineering, product and design, reporting directly to Vanta’s CEO Christina Cacioppo. Epling is the second C-Suite executive to join Vanta’s leadership team this year with David Eckstein coming onboard in February as Chief Financial Officer.

“Jeremy’s long track record of developing products used by some of the world’s leading companies including KPMG, Mercedes Benz, P&G, and Stripe, coupled with a depth of experience in bringing AI and intelligence-powered, multi-product offerings to market, are tremendous assets to Vanta,” said Christina Cacioppo, CEO, Vanta. “I’m excited to welcome Jeremy to our team as we continue building for our customers in Vanta’s next phase of growth and beyond.”

Bringing over two decades of building to Vanta, Epling joins Vanta from GitHub where he was VP, Product for Actions, Codespaces, npm, Packages, leading all things Code to Cloud. During his tenure, Epling more than quadrupled the engineering, product and design teams, as GitHub Actions scaled from zero to millions of global developers. Epling also led GitHub Codespaces, GitHub Packages, and npm, delivering security features such as supply chain security, improving and requiring MFA, and new provenance capabilities for npm. In addition to leading product strategy and execution, he was responsible for pricing and packaging, and oversaw GitHub’s cloud partnerships.

Prior to GitHub, Epling spent over 16 years at Microsoft, last serving as Principal Group Product Manager for Azure, empowering developers to continuously build, test, and deploy to any platform or cloud. He studied Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“Vanta is synonymous with category creation – from pioneering automated compliance in 2018 to serving as the market’s leading Trust Management platform today,” said Epling. “The talent of the Vanta team is unmatched, with a customer-centric approach to building in our DNA. I’m thrilled to bring my 20 years of experience building and bringing products to market for small scale-ups and large enterprises to our customers. Together, we’re taking security checks from point-in-time assessments to continuous visibility, and, ultimately, powering businesses in the future of work.”

Epling joins Vanta during a time of significant product acceleration to meet demand from the company’s rapidly expanding customer base. To date in 2023, Vanta has added over 125 new integrations, for a total of nearly 200 across the most essential cloud applications in a company's tech stack. With Vanta’s recently launched Vendor Risk Management (VRM) solution and Questionnaire Automation, customers can evaluate security in the buying process while closing their own deals faster — all in a single platform. In May, Vanta also announced an expanded partnership with CrowdStrike to improve compliance and security operations for organizations of all sizes.

In addition to its product and partnership acceleration in 2023, Vanta’s innovation has been recognized across a range of rankings and awards including the #17 spot in CNBC’s Disruptor 50 and Inc’s Best Workplaces.

Over the past year, Vanta has doubled its customer base, serving over 5,000 companies across 58 countries, while expanding its global footprint with offices in Australia, Ireland and the U.S. Vanta has raised $203 million in funding from leading investors Craft Ventures, Sequoia and Y Combinator, security industry pioneers like CrowdStrike, and leading cloud company investment arms Atlassian Ventures, HubSpot Ventures and Workday Ventures.

Incisive Software, a leading provider of innovative data management solutions, announces the rollout of extensive enhancements to its Low-Code/No-Code and Microsoft Excel solutions. These improvements, part of the Incisive Analytics Essentials suite, significantly strengthen security measures, streamline access control procedures, and enhance the management of EUC deployments.

“We are solidifying our dedication to supporting organizations with secure and trustworthy data management solutions with our new enhancements,” stated Tony Bredehoeft, vice president of sales at Incisive Software. “These updates bring advanced security features, access controls, and comprehensive management capabilities, empowering organizations to maintain the highest level of data integrity, compliance, and operational efficiency.”

Incisive Analytics Essentials brings these enhancements to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets:

Digital Signature: This offers an informational digital signature feature for easy recognition of Concourse projects and quick access to revision details. In addition, it also tracks file changes, providing real-time alerts for unauthorized alterations and enhancing data security.

Asset Protection: This safeguard ensures that only authorized Concourse users can access downloaded or published Excel files, substantially reducing the risk of unauthorized access. With file-level password protection and workbook structure protection, it offers a flexible and tailored defense against unauthorized tampering.

Sheet-level Access Management: This allows granular control of permissions at the sheet level, enhancing data confidentiality. It also grants customized access privileges to project members, promoting secure collaboration and transparent data management.

For Low-Code/No-Code applications, the Incisive Analytics Essentials suite offers:

Enhanced File Discovery: With customizable file types, organizations can identify low-code/no-code files accurately, ensuring better visibility and management of applications.

Improved File Filtering: This simplifies the identification of specific low-code/no-code files, making the management and maintenance of applications more efficient.

Real-time Monitoring: This provides up-to-date visibility into any changes to low-code/no-code files, allowing for prompt issue resolution and data integrity maintenance.

Controlled Check-in and Workflow: This feature facilitates seamless teamwork and ensures the most recent and accurate versions of applications are available to the right individuals.

These comprehensive upgrades will bolster businesses in making data-driven decisions, minimize data errors and mismanagement risks, and provide the tools to successfully navigate today’s data-centric landscape.

Event Experience category leader also launches standalone Klik option for B2B conferences

Bizzabo, the Event Experience Operating System (OS), today announced two significant updates to Klik Experiential, its wearable event technology for B2B conferences and flagship events. The company is releasing The Edge, its sleekest, most environmentally friendly SmartBadge™ yet, and introducing Klik à la Carte, a new standalone option for event professionals.

Building upon the success of its original SmartBadge, The Edge is a new lightweight, versatile badge with built-in wearable technology that offers enhanced event branding opportunities with unparalleled data collection, engagement, and networking opportunities.

One of the most noticeable upgrades is in the badge itself. The original SmartBadge featured a sleeve design with wearable tech on the front of the badge. The Edge is die-cut and made out of ABS plastic, which is more durable and environmentally friendly.

The wearable hardware device has been moved to the back of The Edge badge, leaving a small pill-shaped cutout on the front that glows with every interaction. This gives event organizers more space for unique branding on the front and back of the badge. In addition, The Edge design makes it easier to refurbish the wearable tech, improving overall sustainability.

"The Edge is a true next-generation SmartBadge — one we built based on feedback from our customers and their event-goers," said Bizzabo CEO and Co-founder Eran Ben-Shushan. "Customization and flexibility are key, and The Edge delivers that while continuing to improve the attendee experience and capturing rich, real-time behavioral insights."

Klik à la Carte expands wearable technology compatibility to any registration system

Klik Experiential delivers a next-level, data-rich experience for attendees, sponsors, and organizers alike. Klik has powered flagship events for some of the world's most recognizable brands, including Adobe, Shopify, Forbes, PwC, and Deloitte.

Tens of thousands of conference attendees worldwide have worn Klik SmartBadges since their launch in 2022. Klik has powered nearly 1 million contact exchanges and facilitated 65,000 digital content downloads at events.

With the launch of Klik à la Carte, Bizzabo introduces new interoperability to its Kilk SmartBadges, the Klik Exhibitor App, and the Klik Analytics Dashboard, enabling event organizers to incorporate them into their in-person conferences.

"Now more than ever, our mandate is to empower our customers to design better, more intentional in-person event experiences that foster community and drive business outcomes," said Bizzabo CMO and Co-founder Alon Alroy. "This is why we're launching Klik à la Carte — to make this cutting-edge technology more accessible to event organizers and agencies alike."

Klik à la Carte can be purchased separately or as part of Bizzabo's Event Experience OS. It can be integrated into any event registration system, with full support from Bizzabo's team of onsite experts.

Tecton, the leading machine learning (ML) feature platform company, today announced the results of a comprehensive ML survey of 1700 respondents. The survey identified the challenges and opportunities in the applied ML space and pinpointed common trends across a diverse set of ML initiatives: https://resources.tecton.ai/the-state-of-applied-machine-learning-2023-report.

The survey found that companies in many industries are increasingly adopting applied ML for a wide range of use cases, including customer analytics, personalized recommendations and fraud detection. At the same time, many are also facing multiple challenges on their journey to implementing applied ML, such as generating accurate training data, building production data pipelines and demonstrating business ROI.

Because of the difficulty inherent in data, ML is still difficult to get right for most organizations. However, despite the challenges, survey respondents indicate that their companies are committed to improving their applied ML capabilities, with a growing focus on improving model deployment time, adopting real-time ML and implementing central ML platforms to improve cross-team collaboration and organizational scalability.

“The survey findings confirmed the trends we found working with customers and the ML community,” said Mike Del Balso, co-founder and CEO of Tecton. “Namely, that an increasing number of companies are moving to real-time ML and investing in their MLOps stack to overcome challenges so teams can deploy models to production faster.”

Key Survey Findings:

1) Applied AI/ML Is a Top Priority for Organizations

• Applied ML is declared as the number 1 company initiative for 23.8% of respondents and a top 3 initiative for 60.1%
• Roughly 50% of survey participants indicated their organizations have 6 or more models in production, and companies are planning on deploying more models quickly. Based on survey responses, the projected median for the number of models in production in the next 12 months will increase from 6 to 10
• Companies are leveraging applied ML for use cases that directly impact revenue: The top 3 use cases are recommender systems (45.1% of respondents), customer analytics (43.3%) and personalization (36.4%)

2) Companies Are Investing in Their MLOps Stack to Address Challenges

• The top 3 challenges encountered when deploying new models to production are generating accurate training data (41.1%), building production data pipelines (37.6%) and demonstrating business ROI (34.3%)
• Deploying a new model to production is a long process (more than 1 month for 65.0% of respondents and more than 3 months for 31.7%). However, 54.5% of respondents shared that their organizations aim to reduce deployment time by at least 25% over the next 12 months
• Only 9.5% of respondents say their organization has a full MLOps stack today consisting of 5 components: model serving; model registry and versioning; feature store / feature platform; model monitoring and observability; and data monitoring. However, 59.1% of respondents indicate that their companies are planning to have all 5 components within 12 months
• The Feature Store / Feature Platform and Monitoring & Observability components will see the largest increases (~43 percentage points increase for both) in adoption in the next 12 months

3) Real-Time ML is Picking Up Real Traction

• 68.3% of ML respondents surveyed indicated their teams already have at least one real-time (e.g., sub-100 milliseconds) ML model in production, while 14.7% have more than 10
• 34.1% of respondents say their ML teams use exclusively batch data to power their real-time ML models today, but this number is expected to drop to 11.5% within 12 months as they plan to adopt streaming or real-time data