Delinea, a leading provider of solutions that seamlessly extend Privileged Access Management (PAM), today announced that the company has successfully obtained a Service Organization Control (SOC 2) Type II report for Secret Server Cloud, Privilege Manager Cloud, Privileged Behavior Analytics, Account Lifecycle Manager Cloud, DevOps Secrets Vault, Privileged Access Service, Cloud Suite, Thycotic One, and the Delinea Platform. The attestation report was completed by Schneider Downs & Co., Inc., covering Security, Availability, and Confidentiality Trust Service Criteria.

SOC 2 compliance measures the availability, security, confidentiality, processing integrity, and privacy of customer data across solutions. SOC 2 Type II standards help companies recognize, communicate, and exercise cross-functional value among DevOps and security teams.

"As a cybersecurity solutions vendor, Delinea understands that the protection of our customers' most critical assets, data, and privileged credentials is paramount," said Raun Nohavitza, Chief Information Officer at Delinea. "Having industry-recognized, third-party validation of our solutions demonstrates that we prioritize the highest degree of security controls and standards for our customers."

SOC 2 reports also demonstrate a company's ability to implement critical security policies and prove compliance over an extended period. The Delinea team used its own Secret Server solution to help with the examination and to also demonstrate Delinea's security posture for ongoing audits.

Acquisition Enables Full Circle Insights to Focus on Accelerated, Scalable Growth As Well As Further Investments in Product Innovation and Strategy

Scaleworks, the B2B SaaS-focused venture equity firm, today announced its acquisition of Full Circle Insights, known for helping companies drive pipeline growth through their marketing attribution and campaign measurement platform. Scaleworks' investment and partnership will accelerate Full Circle's strategic roadmap, enable product innovation, and enhance go-to-market strategy.

Scaleworks is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Full Circle Insights, a move that reflects a larger vision to empower businesses with advanced technology and data-driven decisions," stated Ed Byrne, Co-Founder and General Partner at Scaleworks. "We are excited to welcome the talented employees, valued customers and trusted partners of Full Circle into the portfolio." 

Go-to-market strategy expert Jason Ferrara is stepping into the role of CEO. Ferrara is a two-time software CMO with over three decades of global enterprise and B2B SaaS experience. Ferrara's experience will help guide Full Circle during its next stage of growth, continuing to focus on the core measurement and attribution issues that marketing teams struggle with every day.

"I feel incredibly honored to join the team at Full Circle, alongside their loyal customers and valued partners," shared Jason Ferrara. "Full Circle has built a remarkable product that solves some of the most important challenges marketers face. Together, we plan to expand our roadmap and scale operations to meet the ever-growing demand."

Full Circle Insights empowers B2B marketing teams to optimize their marketing efforts and generate greater revenue through patented Salesforce-native technology. Recently, the company's strategic partnerships and significant industry recognition have led Full Circle to experience substantial market growth.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Screenverse, a leading Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) company in ad management, ad monetization, and programmatic ad solutions, has selected Place Exchange's PerView solution as a measurement standard across its managed DOOH networks. This groundbreaking measurement solution, developed in accordance with the OAAA OOH Impression Measurement Guidelines, enables Screenverse to deliver accurate and dynamic reach, frequency, and impression measurement for its network partners.

Out-of-home media encompasses a diverse range of venues and asset types, making it historically challenging to obtain reliable measures of reach, frequency, and impressions for a custom mix of OOH assets. Place Exchange's PerView solution has transformed the industry by offering buyers and sellers the ability to measure every type of OOH media asset using dynamic, deterministic data to deliver up-to-date measurement insights specific to each location.

With PerView, Screenverse receives comprehensive impression, reach, and frequency measurement across their different DOOH networks, which can be broken out by different geographies, consumer segments, and timeframes. By leveraging PerView, Screenverse is able to provide its clients with actionable data to optimize their DOOH campaigns and achieve superior results.

"We built Screenverse from the earliest days of the COVID pandemic. Through that experience, we learned the necessity of dynamic measurement data that reflects the realities on the ground. As we think about the future, progress in these data-sets will be the rocket-fuel we need to explore the far reaches of our potential," said Adam Malone, President and Cofounder at Screenverse.

Screenverse is so committed to the importance of measurement, that its Master Service Agreements (MSAs) require all partners to undergo third-party measurement within the first six months of the agreement. Place Exchange's PerView solution has earned Screenverse's endorsement as a trusted and reliable tool for measurement in this process.

"We are thrilled to adopt PerView as a standard for our DOOH networks, our platform partners, our agency partners, and our brand partners," said David Weinfeld, CEO and Cofounder at Screenverse. "The challenge of obtaining accurate and timely measurement data in the OOH industry is now addressed by PerView. PerView stands out as a measurement solution we believe in, enabling us to deliver reliable and comprehensive insights to all of our end clients."

Screenverse's decision to adopt PerView as a measurement solution stems from its unmatched capabilities and commitment to industry excellence. As the digital marketing industry faces the impending challenges of the phasing out of third-party cookies, Screenverse recognizes the critical role that reliable measurement plays in delivering value to advertisers and navigating the evolving advertising landscape.

"We built the PerView product to address the marketplace's need for dynamic, up-to-date measurements of reach, frequency, and impressions across the wide range of formats and venue types that comprise Out of Home," said Ari Buchalter, CEO of Place Exchange. "We are excited to see innovative partners like Screenverse adopting PerView to help propel their business forward."

The adoption of the PerView measurement solution by Screenverse marks a significant milestone, solidifying the company's dedication to delivering reliable and comprehensive measurement solutions to its clients. By utilizing PerView, Screenverse aims to elevate the industry's measurement capabilities, empower advertisers, and maximize the impact of DOOH campaigns.

• About 50% of consumers have tried generative AI; 44% of these don't usually trust it

• Biggest consumer concern in the US, UK, and France: loss of human connection

• Biggest consumer concern in Germany, India, and China: data privacy

• AI's #1 potential is faster customer service, say consumers in 5 out of 7 geographies

• To regain trust, brands and retailers can aim to meet consumer expectations and mediate their concerns

Today, global management consulting firm Kearney's internal consumer think tank, the Kearney Consumer Institute (KCI), released a new report on generative AI (GAI) and its relationship to consumer trust in coordination with its recent presentation at the Consumer Goods Forum in Kyoto, Japan. Based on a survey of 7,000 global consumers, Generative AI and Consumer Trust: Can AI Regenerate Consumer Trust in Brands? addresses consumer attitudes and concerns around burgeoning GAI-driven retail technology, including most/least trusted uses and how brands can best use the technology.

As brands and retailers struggle to figure out where they are in relation to AI and GAI-powered technologies, consumer responses to technological change are often far more complex and nuanced than they realize. KCI's research offers a suggested roadmap for how to begin thinking about AI in a more consumer-centric way.

"Our research has shown that consumers value honesty and consistency in a brand above all else," said the report's author Katie Thomas, who leads the Kearney Consumer Institute. "That said, half of them have at least experimented with generative AI. What does that mean for brands that use artificial intelligence? Where do conversational bots fall on the trust spectrum?"

The KCI has been exploring how brands can begin to address consumer trust in AI through three primary avenues—consumer benefit and brand fit, personalization and data, and human-to-AI connectivity. The report also shares consumer sentiment data and addresses themes such as:

• Consumers' varying levels of trust within digital, from the internet through social media to generative AI
• Top consumer use cases and levels of optimism/concern about AI
• Breakdown of consumers' concerns across geographies about AI vs. its perceived potential
• What brands need to do to manage sometimes conflicting consumer attitudes toward AI, including understanding its benefits, consumer trust busters, and areas to watch out for

To become thoughtful, intelligent users of GAI, brands need to assess consumers' expectations and concerns as they directly relate to the brand. AI is not a blanket solution.

"Consumers enjoy experimenting with newer AI tools and see their potential, but they also bring a healthy dose of skepticism, with concerns ranging from mis/disinformation to data privacy to human connection to job loss," added Thomas. "While we see a lot of potential for how brands can think about AI and use it to build trust, there are meaningful concerns, and consumers' contradictory feelings must be acknowledged."

Mobile experience engineering solution raises over $20 million in growth financing, increases customer base 130% Y-o-Y, and expands key leadership to accelerate growth.

Embrace, the solution to help engineers build better mobile experiences, is sharing its continued success in driving mobile transformation alongside an announcement of an upround of $20 million in growth financing. The inside round, a show of wholehearted support from all prior lead investors, was led by NEA with participation from Greycroft, AV8 (Allianz), and Eniac.

The new funding is dedicated to powering continued product innovation to help mobile teams build the best mobile experiences, buttressed by the launch of Embrace's innovative new brand focused on the "builders" of mobile experiences consumers love.

"Embrace has an impressive client roster, including companies like Discover, Marriott, and The New York Times, reflecting how invaluable they've become for the mobile success of the biggest brands in the world," said Aaron Jacobson, Partner at NEA. "Usage of mobile apps is growing rapidly, and a massive part of the market segment is still operating on legacy tools. There's a huge gap between what providers in the Observability space are delivering, and what mobile engineers want and need to really delight their users."

Companies Making Mobile a Priority

Consumers spent a record $33.9 billion conducting purchases in mobile apps in Q1 2023 alone. Beyond mobile apps, a massive amount of spend and innovation now occur on point-of-sale systems (tablets), workforce productivity devices, automotive telemetry and infotainment, and the spatial computing devices recently released by Apple. With these accelerative factors, the everyday focus of consumers is squarely on mobile, and the pressure on mobile teams to build creative, reliable, and performant experiences has never been greater.

Mobile is all about the details, and Embrace's mobile experience engineering solution helps get them right. Embrace gives mobile teams, especially their engineers, a unique insight into all the variables, across hardware, software, networks, and UX, that shape each and every end-user's mobile experiences. This level of insight empowers teams to identify and prioritize the user impact of any issue; this level of detail empowers engineers to instantly resolve issues; this level of understanding shifts a team's focus from reactive bug solving to surfacing the highest ROI opportunities to improve performance.

Embrace has grown its customer base 130% year-over-year. With 93% quarterly logo retention, the company has secured a roster of clients invested in the value Embrace delivers. Embrace counts Discover, Marriott, The New York Times, Yum Brands (Taco Bell), Yahoo!, and other premier brands as clients in addition to top mobile-native businesses like Cameo, GOAT, Hatch, Ibotta, and Wildlife Games.

Mobile Engineer Insights

Dom Scandinaro, SVP of Engineering & Data, Cameo
"Sitting at the intersection of mobile technology and pop culture, Cameo must consistently move at lightning speed. Embrace has fundamentally changed how we manage our mobile app so we can quickly identify issues and in turn continue to create flawless, personalized fan experiences."

Chris To, VP of Technology at GOAT
"Before we deploy a new release to every user, we check Embrace to see the impact of any issues that may arise. We remained 99.99% crash-free during a record traffic period, and we were able to focus on making the experience flawless for our very dedicated users."

Chris Lavender, Vice President of Software Engineering at Hatch
"Embrace helps our team ensure that our app experience is as simple and soothing as our real-world products. As a company dedicated to rest and wellbeing, it's crucial that the mobile experience we provide is smooth, calming, and easily connects users to their dream machine devices. Embrace gives us the insights and confidence to continually deliver on this promise."

Team Leadership Expansion

Embrace has more than doubled its employee headcount in 18 months, making key hires in product and engineering.

Notably, Embrace added Andrew Tunall as VP & Head of Product. Tunall, previously VP Product at New Relic where he led Observability, is focused on innovating on data-driven tools for engineers to proactively optimize mobile experiences.

"A lot of monitoring and observability tools are fire alarms and insurance. They tell you when things are on fire, and engineers hope they don't have to use them. We see adoption of Embrace by mobile engineers is around 8x that of tools built for Ops," said Andrew Tunall, Head of Product at Embrace. "This means your engineers are more proactive in discovering user-impacting issues before bad app store reviews or support emails get sent, and you create a culture of building for user delight rather than fire-fighting."

Anuj Jaiswal also joined Embrace as VP of R&D. Previously at VMware via the acquisition of Arkin, he drove the business line to 150% Y-o-Y revenue growth. With two decades of leading R&D teams, Jaiswal brings focus on growth, product design, and engineering excellence.

Embrace added Dan Wright, previously COO of AppDynamics and CEO of DataRobot, as the newest member of its board of directors. Wright brings a unique combination of AI and APM expertise to augment Embrace's strategic plans to continue to grow into the mission-critical toolset for the entire mobile team.

"Leaders today are required to make mobile a strategic driver of their businesses," said Eric Futoran, co-founder and CEO of Embrace. "With a shared mission alongside our investors and board, Embrace is addressing the ambitious future of mobile development by empowering builders who value the user."

Hitachi Vantara survey finds business leaders express concern over infrastructure resilience, as data storage needs expect to double by 2025

Nearly 60% of U.S. companies are overwhelmed by the amount of data they manage and 76% are concerned their current infrastructure will be unable to scale to meet upcoming demands, according to a new survey from Hitachi Vantara, the modern infrastructure, data management and digital solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501). New and exciting data-intensive technologies and applications like generative AI are spurring a goldrush to greater insights, automation, and predictability, but these technologies are simultaneously exacerbating the already-strained infrastructure and hybrid cloud environments on which they run.

The Hitachi Vantara Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics Report reveals that most companies expect their data needs to nearly double in the next two years, and that both protecting and managing that rapid growth of data in an actionable and sustainable way are further complicating efforts.

Click here to download the Hitachi Vantara Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics Report

The company conducted the global survey of 1,288 C-level executives and IT decision makers, including 308 in the United States, to quantify the extent to which organizations are struggling to manage their data infrastructure in a secure and sustainable way. Key U.S. findings include:

• Respondents say that data is their most valuable asset but are concerned about the security and resilience of their data infrastructure; 71% are concerned they cannot detect a data breach in time to protect data.
• 65% of respondents are concerned over whether their organization's data infrastructure is resilient enough to recover data from ransomware attacks.
• 27% of respondents admitted that important data was not backed up and 35% had experienced data inaccessibility due to storage outages.
• 66% of IT leaders currently measure their data center's energy consumption; however, 32% acknowledged that their data infrastructure uses too much energy and nearly half (46%) admitted their sustainability policies don't address the impact of storing unused data.

"Part of the problem is that many companies are storing data without the right strategy or data infrastructure tools in place. In fact, our study revealed that a significant number of companies store every piece of data, just in case, and more than half of their data is 'dark,' or never used," said Bharti Patel, senior vice president, Product Engineering, Hitachi Vantara. "As emerging technologies like Generative AI contribute to doubling the volume of data expected in the next two years, businesses need to find the right balance between scalability, sustainability, and security. You can't just add more racks to a data center, it's not eco-friendly. You can't organize efficiently if you are not properly storing, quantifying, and categorizing every piece of data that comes in."

A Hybrid Cloud World
The study also shed light on the future of data storage, with data spread across the hybrid cloud model leveraging a mix of public/private cloud, co-location and on premises expected to persist. For U.S. business leaders, the study found data stored in an already established hybrid cloud with percentages of data center workloads located almost evenly between the public cloud (24%), private cloud (25%), on premises (25%), and co-located/managed services (22%). Notably, the percentages were expected to largely stay the same in the coming two years.

Prioritizing Infrastructure Modernization Can Help Address Challenges
Respondents were asked how important modernizing data infrastructure is to their current business transformation strategy. Of note, 59% of respondents were designated 'infrastructure leaders,' and this group considered modernizing data infrastructure to be very important. As a result, these leaders were 64% more likely to say that their infrastructure is resilient enough to recover all data from a ransomware attack and 16% more likely to say that their organization would be able to detect a breach in time to protect their data. Leaders were also more likely to recognize the importance of working with third-party vendors for security, storage and application services.

"Organizations that proactively tackle infrastructure modernization are taking important steps to ensure the resilience and reliability of their data infrastructure," said Patel. "To succeed with infrastructure modernization, businesses should consider state-of-the-art platforms that offer enhanced performance, reliability, and protection, while also reducing space and energy requirements in a cost-effective and secured manner. By prioritizing these critical areas, organizations can unlock valuable insights from their data, while fostering sustainability and gaining a significant competitive advantage."

For more information on how Hitachi Vantara is helping customers provide a data-driven approach to modern data infrastructure, please click here.

Methodology
The research study was completed by Reputation Leaders, an independent research and thought leadership consultancy. Results were collected through an online survey with industry experts. A 41-question study was conducted among C-suite executives and IT leaders. Companies were recruited from all major industries across 12 markets (U.S., Brazil, Mexico, the UK, Germany, Italy, India, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Australia, and New Zealand). The data was weighted to ensure a 70:30 split between IT leaders and C-suite executives, respectively. Industries were also weighted equally. The sample for the survey included only large organizations (annual global turnover of over $500 million) and may not be representative of all organizations.

Integration connects Contentsquare behavioral analytics with UserTesting video-based human insights for a richer understanding of customers

UserTesting, a leader in experience research and insights, today announced a joint integration with Contentsquare, a global leader in digital experience analytics. This partnership empowers organizations to unlock more customer experience insights across digital properties, enabling them to more effectively transform and customize digital experiences for their target audiences.

According to a recent study by Gartner¹, 89 percent of boards agree that they are in a postdigital world, and digital is now an implicit part of growth strategies for their companies. Interestingly, an equal percentage of board directors no longer see digital as a separate strategy. This integration sets a new standard for leveraging data-driven strategies and enhancing the effectiveness of digital experiences. The joint integration enables organizations to more effectively validate assumptions and test hypotheses of digital customer interactions, allowing them to better deliver on customer needs throughout the digital journey.

With the UserTesting and Contentsquare integration, organizations can:

• Identify customer preferences within Contentsquare and launch a UserTesting test to gauge the performance of digital experience options, uncovering deeper insights on overall customer engagement
• Analyze UserTesting insights alongside Contentsquare experience data to troubleshoot issues and quantify how many customers might be impacted
• Set experience thresholds and alerts with Contentsquare and quickly assess and respond to anomalies in CX by launching a UserTesting test to better understand why they’re occurring
• Trigger Contentsquare Live Signals when a user encounters a bug or error and prompt them to join a UserTesting test to give feedback

“The combination of Contentsquare digital analytics and UserTesting insights equips brands with the intelligence they need to deliver the best possible customer journey from start to finish,” said Chris Formosa, Head of Global Technology Partnerships & Cloud Alliances at Contentsquare. “With Contentsquare’s rich behavioral data and UserTesting’s video-based insights, teams get the full picture of the online experience and can prioritize the most impactful improvements. Great experiences breed strong customer relationships, giving brands the leg up they need to thrive in the digital world.”

“By harnessing the combined strengths of Contentsquare and UserTesting, organizations can seamlessly connect their customers’ online behaviors with their underlying motivations,” said Rob Vandenberg, Global Vice President of Channels and Alliances at UserTesting. “Our joint integration empowers businesses to test hypotheses and validate assumptions about their digital experiences—bridging the gap between customer behavior and intent. Together, we help more than 190 customers deliver exceptional user experiences.”