• 360 View introduces a new and improved user interface with the latest release of their CRM platform, developed specifically for banks and credit unions.

• Along with the software update, 360 View unveils a new, redesigned website to round out their visual upgrade. The new website streamlines the company’s online resources for current and potential clients.

360 View, a trusted provider of customer relationship management software for financial institutions, announced today the release of the official update to their popular CRM platform. Entering the business space 22 years ago, 360 View offered one of the first CRM’s built specifically for banks and credit unions. Leveraging that experience along with a finger on the current industry pulse ensures the update is reliable and relevant.

Recording every customer touchpoint in real time, then channeling those interactions into tools that help their clients offer dynamic personalized service is how 360 View impacts the customer experience for their clients. Functionality has always been a major selling point explains David Acevedo, SVP National Sales Director, “Our clients embraced 360 View in its current look and feel because of its expansive functionality, but we recognized that though we have a very robust tool, it was time to enhance the aesthetic.” Listening to and responding to their clients is a primary driver of this niche software company, so the evolution of their flagship product has been largely fueled by customers’ changing needs and regular feedback. Keeping the functionality that clients love was central, says Acevedo, “and that’s the beauty of this update: everything that you’re used to is there, but with a fresh, more updated look.”

According to the 360 View development team, expert designers drove the user experience in this update which brings a clean, easy-to-navigate, and visually pleasing interface. Optimal use of the screen real estate and reduced scrolling support the claim that a simple, but whole view of each customer is not only possible, but a reality with 360 View. Waylon Envik, SVP of Software Solutions, says, “When redesigning the solution, we wanted to move forward with something that would be familiar based on industry standards and what users might find or experience in other systems in terms of major design principles on down to the system's micro-interactions.” Envik goes on to indicate the next phase of the update offers more than just a visual upgrade, “It is satisfying to get the update into the hands of users because it's a springboard into a whole host of items that we and our end users want and need, such as giving our end users more power and capabilities when it comes to dashboarding.” 360 View clients can expect additional features in the next phase, including user-defined dashboards.

Acevedo expects the new system will impact sales and marketing efforts by improving the cursory first-look experience of prospects–high level demos often do not present the detailed functionality that differentiates 360 View from competitors. Great first impressions open the door for real conversations. He elaborates, “We’ve always had a story to tell. Our struggle has always been getting our story out. Once you put us in front of somebody, we handle ourselves against the competition. After all, we are bankers and understand the business.”

For current clients, all the on-point user-friendliness is still central. Rebecca Key, VP of Marketing explains, “We care about our clients and know they don’t want to lose any functionality; they want to gain functionality and gain usability. They also have internal sales to their team in play, and it makes it easier on them to bring in a piece of software that looks new and current and more in line with the interfaces people are using every day. We think usability matters more now than maybe it ever has because people expect things to look good, function well, and be at the top of the game.”

Along the same line, Key says the update to the company website is about visual appeal, but is also a pivot away from a feature-focused presentation of their CRM to one focused on its specific application for banks and credit unions. She explains, "We wanted the new site to clearly show how 360 View helps bankers on a day-to-day basis, that means the practical application of the CRM, but also includes our other services including our consultative and onboarding resources." The new website is live now and showcases the new interface for current and potential clients.

Acevedo says the excitement and energy around the new release, and the new website, is visible with the 360 View team. He sums up the moment, “We have really devoted a lot of time and resources to building a very robust CRM solution specifically for banks and credit unions. We recognize the functionality and tools you need to grow your business and are not compromising any of that while giving the software an impressive new look and feel.”

Omnicom becomes first advertising holding company to join the Content Authenticity Initiative

Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC) today announced it has further strengthened its partnership with Adobe through a joint initiative that will bring enterprise generative AI capabilities to their shared clients. As the first holding company to have access to Adobe Firefly models, Omnicom will be able to use Adobe Firefly creative generative AI models with Omni data, Omnicom's open operating system, to create on-brand content that helps marketers orchestrate better outcomes.

This access will also allow Omnicom and Adobe to embed the power of Firefly into client ecosystems, allowing for the generation of content in the brand's unique style and brand language using API's to increase automation.

"Firefly is at the forefront of creative intelligence. Leveraging that for our clients will be critical to bring the promise of mass personalization at scale to our client's businesses," said Paolo Yuvienco, EVP, Chief Technology Officer at Omnicom Group. "Adobe is one of our key partners in delivering outstanding creativity and true business outcomes for our clients."

"We're excited to once again have Omnicom join us as an early collaborator and to bring this latest innovation to our shared clients," said Ely Greenfield, Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. "They share our eagerness to be a leader in generative AI and to reinvent the ways our clients can develop and deliver creative content. Their close involvement in our Content Authenticity Initiative indicates they are aligned with our commitment to providing transparency into how content is created."

Omnicom is the first advertising holding company to join the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). Launched in 2019, the CAI is an Adobe-led cross-industry initiative comprised of media and tech companies, NGOs, academics and others focused on increasing trust and transparency in digital content. The CAI is actively partnering across its membership community with over 1,500 partners to ensure the technical innovations are built on ethical foundations. Particularly with the rise of AI-generated content, there is increased momentum around the adoption of Content Credentials, CAI's free, open-source technology, so that creators can receive proper attribution, and consumers can make informed decisions based on facts and origins about the content they see online.

These updates follow on the heels of Omnicom announcing an enterprise licensing deal of Adobe's Content Supply Chain solution. The solution allows Omnicom agencies across the globe to have a unified view of every step of the content process, from planning and production to activation and optimization. Adobe's generative AI offerings, Firefly and Sensei GenAI, are a key part of the solution.

Going Beyond Code Generation, AIDA Infuses AI Across Entire SDLC, Tackling Error Resolution, Security Vulnerabilities, and Cloud Cost Governance

Harness Inc., the Modern Software Delivery Platform® company, today unveiled its pioneering AI assistant, AIDA (AI Development Assistant), a game-changer for the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). This innovative approach to AI for software delivery stands in contrast to traditional AI applications in the field that primarily focus on generating and assisting with code development. This comprehensive AI solution is available free of charge to all Harness customers and will be seamlessly integrated across all Harness platform workflows and capabilities, including Continuous Integration (CI), Continuous Deployment (CD), Cloud Cost Management, and Feature Flags.

"Harness's goal has always been to break down barriers in software delivery. With the launch of AIDA, we're not just talking about a future where AI significantly enhances the SDLC—we're making it a reality," said Jyoti Bansal, CEO and cofounder of Harness. "I firmly believe that this is just the beginning, and I'm incredibly proud of our team's relentless efforts to drive this change. We're committed to harnessing the potential of generative AI to address real-world developer challenges across the entire lifecycle of code."

Harness forecasts a 30-50% boost in software engineering teams' productivity with generative AI. With AIDA, Harness is expanding the influence of AI beyond coding, to all other facets of the SDLC, which includes building and testing code, ensuring security, ensuring reliability, deploying changes, and optimizing costs.

AIDA debuts today with three groundbreaking features designed to alleviate key pain points in the software development lifecycle:

Assisted Resolution of Builds and Deployment Failures: AIDA can analyze log files and correlate error messages with known issues. This feature enables developers to troubleshoot and resolve deployment failures quickly, saving them from sifting through millions of log lines. AIDA also suggests fixes and predicts potential errors in the code even before the build is initiated. This feature is designed to work across Harness's CI and CD offerings.

Automated Security Vulnerability Fixing: AIDA can automatically identify security vulnerabilities and generate code fixes. Trained on all publicly known Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs), AIDA significantly accelerates the vulnerability remediation process, reducing developer effort by 50-75%. This feature is designed to integrate seamlessly with the Harness Security Testing Orchestration module.

Manage Cloud Assets Using Natural Language: AIDA simplifies the process of creating and maintaining policies to manage cloud costs. Using natural language, users can define policies for governing cloud assets and costs, automating a typically complex process.

Additional AI features will be incorporated in AIDA over the next three to six months, including Automated Code Reviews, AI-Assisted CI/CD Pipeline authoring, and AI-Assisted Authoring of Chaos Engineering Experiments.

Enterprise-ready, Privacy-first AI
Adopters of AI in developer tooling, especially in enterprises, are concerned about data privacy, security, and legal issues regarding code copyright infringement. AIDA is designed to address these concerns from the beginning. The Harness AI stack—composed of Harness custom LLMs, training data, vector databases, etc.—are all specifically selected and designed so all source code used in training have permissive licenses. This allows users to freely incorporate the results from the Harness AI stack without being concerned about copyleft requirements or the risks of using non-open sourced, proprietary code. There is no proprietary or copyleft code used for training the Harness AI stack. Additionally, any code and data shared by customers with AIDA remains fully secure and always owned by the customers.

Harness's Proven History of Leveraging AI and ML in Software Delivery
Harness, with its rich history of pioneering AI/ML in software delivery, emerged as a market disruptor five years ago using AI to predict failures from code changes. The company pioneered the use of AI in its Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform, the first of its kind, which launched in 2017. Building upon Harness's legacy of AI for DevOps, AIDA is now redefining and reimagining the use of generative AI for software delivery.

New innovations in Confidential AI and Analytics, Data Clean Rooms on Microsoft Azure confidential computing, and Privacy-Preserving LLMs are Highlighted at the inaugural Confidential Computing Summit held in San Francisco.

Opaque Systems, a pioneer of secure multi-party analytics and AI for Confidential Computing, today announced key innovations for its Confidential Computing platform. Protecting the confidentiality of organizational data during LLM use and new applications such as Data Clean Rooms will be showcased during Opaque's keynote at the Confidential Computing Summit. 

Through privacy-preserving generative AI and zero trust data clean rooms (DCRs) optimized for Microsoft Azure confidential computing, Opaque enables multiple organizations to easily and securely analyze their combined confidential data without sharing or revealing the underlying raw data. With broader support for confidential AI use cases, the Opaque platform will also provide safeguards for machine learning and AI models to execute on encrypted data inside of Trusted Executions Environments (TEEs), preventing exposure to unauthorized parties.

These innovations will be unveiled next week at the inaugural Confidential Computing Summit in San Francisco, hosted by Opaque Systems and the Confidential Computing Consortium. The Summit also features sponsors, keynotes and speakers from Microsoft, Intel, VMware, ARM, Signal Messenger, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Fortanix, Anjuna Security, Cosmian, Meta, Google and Ernst & Young amongst others.

Opaque's President and co-founder Professor Raluca Ada Popa will open the Confidential Computing Summit with her keynote entitled "Confidential Computing and The Solution to Privacy-Preserving Generative AI". While ChatGPT today is trained on public data, the usefulness of LLMs can skyrocket if trained on organization's confidential data without any risk of exposure; by protecting the data during LLM training and inference, confidential computing can unlock this potential. Raluca is also a security and privacy professor at UC Berkeley, where she co-directs the SkyLab, a lab at the forefront of LLM and privacy research that recently developed the popular Vicuna open-source LLM model (22.5K stars).

During his keynote, Rishabh Poddar, Co-founder & CEO of Opaque Systems, will unveil Opaque's new innovations in Data Clean Rooms, secure multi-party analytics and discuss how Opaque can protect organization's confidential data when using generative AI. At the Summit, Poddar will showcase how executing the AI and LLM models on encrypted data using the Opaque Confidential Computing Platform can safeguard against the exposure of confidential data to unauthorized parties.

"The challenge with traditional DCRs in the cloud is ensuring that other parties analyzing data do not inadvertently or purposefully gain access to raw data being processed," said Rishabh Poddar, Co-founder & CEO, Opaque Systems. "With Opaque's new DCR offering, organizations can securely collaborate on data within their business ecosystem while ensuring that their unencrypted, raw data is never exposed. To further protect data being used in generative AI models and LLMs, the platform will enable organizations to make use of groundbreaking Confidential AI capabilities to protect data privacy."

"Opaque's Data Clean Room solution on Microsoft Azure confidential computing brings secure multi-party data sharing, analytics and AI to organizations that are under increasing pressure to meet new data privacy regulations," said Vikas Bhatia, Head of Product, Microsoft Azure Confidential Computing.  "With the Opaque solution, organizations can now tackle a range of important use cases – from detecting financial crime, identifying fraud, to enabling better marketing insights while reinforcing consent of consumers on use of their data." 

The Opaque Platform's DCR capabilities enable secure, multi-party analytics on fully encrypted confidential data secured in TEEs, allowing queries to be executed on encrypted data without compromising its confidentiality. This ensures the data and insights are only accessible by authorized parties. For advertisers and marketers for example, this means multiple parties can collaborate on sensitive data to measure ad campaign effectiveness, personalized consumer targeting, measurement, and more, with each party only being able to see the data they directly own.

Advantage of the Opaque Confidential Computing Platform include:

• Zero trust Data Clean Rooms: With Opaque's data clean room capabilities, customers can create data clean rooms in minutes and perform multi-party analytics and AI on confidential data to generate unique cross-organizational insights across their ecosystem of partners while ensuring each party only sees the data that they directly own.
• Confidential AI and LLM Inference: By running LLM models within Opaque, customers will also be able ensure that their queries and data remain private and protected at all times, and are never exposed to the model / service provider or used in unauthorized ways.
• Data Security: Multiple layers of protection for sensitive data against potential cyber-attacks or data breaches, through a powerful combination of secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification
• Privacy and Compliance: A powerful policy framework to govern confidential data permissions and access, while allowing confidential data to be analyzed together with non-confidential data to achieve business insights.

While these innovations will be discussed in more detail during the Confidential Computing Summit next week, the focus of the summit will remain on the growing urgency to secure and protect confidential and sensitive data, as regulations and policies around data privacy continue to rise. Between the regulations around protecting consumers data privacy in AdTech to use cases such as money laundering in financial services, and now the risk of exposing confidential data with generative AI technologies, the Summit brings to the forefront the need for confidential computing across industries

Fifth Annual TAG European Fraud Benchmark Report Also Shows Progress in Fight Against CTV Fraud With 86% IVT Reduction in TAG Certified Channels 

 According to the 2023 TAG European Fraud Benchmark study, invalid traffic (IVT) rates in Europe have been held under the industry's accepted benchmark of 1% for five consecutive years in TAG Certified Channels (TCC), where multiple participants have adopted TAG's rigorous anti-fraud standards. The study found the invalid traffic (IVT) rate in TCCs in Europe was 0.68% last year, and it remained in a tight range of 0.53% to 0.69% across all five years of the study.

"If you had told a major brand or agency in 2018 that you could hold their IVT rates under 1% for the next five years, they would have thought you were either a liar or a fool," said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG. "Happily, the TAG model works, not only in Europe but worldwide, and study after study has shown that inventory that runs through TAG Certified Channels is able to maintain the consistent, low, and predictable IVT rates that seemed nearly unimaginable just a few years ago."

The study also showed significant progress in the industry's fight against fraud in the connected TV (CTV) space, with an 86% drop in IVT when comparing the TCC rate of 1.28% with the Non-Certified Channel (NCC) rate at 8.85%.

"As with all fast-growing media, ad fraud presents a challenge in the CTV space, but TAG continues to stay ahead of the threats by continuously reviewing and updating its anti-fraud requirements for CTV and other emerging media," said Jules Kendrick, MD, UK & Europe for TAG. "This year's study demonstrated the success of TAG's efforts in the CTV space, as IVT rates were dramatically lower in TAG Certified Channels where multiple participants had adopted TAG's high standards than in Non-Certified Channels. We look forward to building on that record of success not only in CTV but other newer areas of digital advertising like audio and gaming as well." 

The study was conducted by The 614 Group and evaluated IVT rates in TCC by measuring more than 259 billion ad impressions in TCCs from January-December 2022 from three of the largest advertising agency holding companies across the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

In addition to the quantitative results, the study also conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with senior executives from the participating agencies and other ad tech companies. From those interviews, several themes emerged:                                                                                           

1. Advertisers in Europe are cost-conscious but willing to pay for high-quality, low-IVT impressions. Amid uncertain global economic prospects and ongoing risk of recession, agencies and their clients are increasingly cost-conscious, but they continue to value and are willing to pay a premium for high-quality, low-IVT inventory.
2. European advertisers are increasingly interested in global certifications that provide validation of low IVT rates. While recognition of global certifications is lower in some European markets, regional advertisers are showing increasing interest in certifications that help them identify and purchase low IVT inventory.
                                                       
3. Advertisers' priorities are extending beyond low IVT to encompass safe, transparent, and responsible inventory. Holding IVT rates down is still one of the top priorities for agencies, but they also want to address related supply chain challenges like Made-for-Advertising sites; diversity issues (DEI); and privacy concerns.                                                                                                                     

"While IVT reduction remains a top priority, corporate priorities around advertising are increasingly expanding to include new consumer protection issues such as brand safety, privacy, diversity, and sustainability," said Rob Rasko, CEO of The 614 Group. "This shift is becoming increasingly evident as companies take a proactive stance not only against fraud but around other ad-related issues."

The digital accessibility technology provider lowers the barrier to accessible coding practices, facilitating the development of accessible, usable, and compliant experiences for all users

UserWay (TASE:UWAY), the market leader in digital accessibility, announced the beta launch of FixMyCode.ai, the first coding assistant trained in digital accessibility and ADA compliance. The product was featured as #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt on the day it went live, June 18th, 2023.

Developers can use the free tool to produce more inclusive and usable end-user experiences, faster. FixMyCode generates accessible code by understanding conversational inputs, like, "Produce an accessible form for a website," or by remediating code that may be fully or partially inaccessible. The assistant produces explanations of the code changes it made, serving as an educational tool for developers, as well.

Today's digital divide causes harm to people with disabilities, who encounter daily obstacles when using websites, apps, and digital documents. Today, approximately 97% of websites are inaccessible, but 200,000 new ones are published every day. Without an increase in awareness around digital accessibility, the digital divide will continue to grow. Automation and AI could be the catalyst for scalable change, and UserWay is doubling down on its use of AI to help eliminate this gap.

UserWay's development team is using an innovative generative AI model trained on WCAG, the global digital accessibility standards, along with the company's own expertise in accessible coding practices. Since 2016, the company has been committed to unlocking online experiences for over 1 billion people, globally, living with disabilities. With its suite of AI-powered products and services across the entire development lifecycle, UserWay has helped over 1 million websites worldwide improve accessibility, usability, and compliance with legal regulations. The company's solutions are used by developers, designers, and organizations of all sizes, including Coca-Cola, Nespresso, Disney, the UN, and governments and organizations from every sector of the global economy.

UserWay CEO, Allon Mason, said, "We built FixMyCode for our own accessibility developers and QA team. Now, we are sharing the beta version of the tool with the world, free of charge, so everyone can author WCAG-conformant code that's accessible and compliant with the strict ADA requirements for digital accessibility. Front end developers who haven't undergone years of WCAG training can now get up to speed, rapidly, with authoring code that will eventually have the potential to work for users of all abilities. Together, we're harnessing generative AI technologies for a more inclusive digital world."

To promote FixMyCode, accessible coding practices, and help educate developers, UserWay launched the "AI for Accessibility" Discord community. This community is dedicated to increasing developer awareness of the importance of accessibility, inclusivity, and usability online.

With its new generative AI-powered tool, GoDaddy  just busted the myth that small business owners need to spend hours writing content for their website. This is available for new and existing Website Builder customers.

Any small business owner will tell you they're time poor. In fact, 46% of U.S. entrepreneurs recently surveyed by GoDaddy are excited that AI will save them time. For small business owners, knowing what to write about and how to write it can be a time-consuming problem.

Now customers using a new AI integration in GoDaddy's Website Builder can:

• Answer a few questions with conversational language and have a website built with relevant imagery and content
• Get content suggestions for our most popular pages and sections like About Us, Frequently Asked Questions, Reviews, Reservations, and more
• Update existing pages more frequently without having to devote significant time to writing original content
• Match the color palette of their website to their logo automatically

"We know that not every small business owner is an experienced marketer, and many struggle writing content for their website," said GoDaddy Vice President of Product, Websites + Marketing, Geoff Clawson. "With AI-powered website tools, entrepreneurs no longer have to worry about getting off the starting block. Instead, they can start with text that's auto-generated for them."

Using these features gives customers recommended text to get their site online. Small business remain in complete control of their website. They can edit any of the content created for them. This way, customers can ensure the information is accurate, unbiased and speaks directly to their customer.

GoDaddy's April survey of U.S. small business owners on their attitudes toward AI found their most-desired use of the technology was for content creation. Roughly two-thirds (64%) want to use generative AI to get marketing help, while 61% would leverage it for content creation.

"There are endless possible applications of this exciting, emerging technology," Clawson said. "GoDaddy will be there every step of the way to continue integrating AI into products that help entrepreneurs thrive."

Acquia DAM earns prestigious industry recognition

Acquia, the digital experience company, today announced that Acquia DAM (formerly the Widen Collective®) was named the best digital asset management (DAM) solution of 2023 as part of the annual SIIA CODiE Awards. The prestigious CODiE Awards recognize the companies producing the most innovative Business Technology products across the country and around the world.

“Winning the CODiE Award, now for the second time, demonstrates that Acquia continues to lead the industry in digital asset management innovation and features delivery,” said Jennifer Griffin Smith, Chief Market Officer, Acquia. “Our focus on supporting the largest and most demanding content ecosystems, including with new AI-based capabilities, is second to none.”

Brands today must present customers with relevant, personalized experiences across digital channels. To meet this challenge and help marketers, software developers, and sellers simplify how content is created, organized, and delivered across channels and touchpoints, Acquia provides a flexible, best-in-class DAM solution.

Acquia DAM features highly configurable permissions, metadata, and automation tools to allow customers to support multiple teams, brands, and regions. Acquia's global infrastructure, load balancers, and microservices architecture together allow the DAM system to scale automatically as burst usage occurs for uploads and downloads. Acquia offers the most complete DAM solution in the market, available standalone or as a part of the Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform, Acquia DXP.

“The 2023 Business Technology CODiE Award Winners maintain the vital legacy of the CODiEs in spotlighting the best and most impactful apps, services and products serving the business tech market,” said SIIA President Chris Mohr. “We are so proud to recognize this year’s honorees – the best of the best! Congratulations to all of this year’s CODiE Award winners!”

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, announced the full slate of CODiE winners during a virtual winner announcement. Awards were given for products and services deployed specifically for education and learning professionals, including the top honor of the Best Overall Business Technology Solution.

A SIIA CODiE Award win is a prestigious honor, following rigorous reviews by expert judges whose evaluations determined the finalists. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products, and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners.