To meet the rising bar for exceptional customer experiences, Sinch, which powers meaningful conversations between businesses and their customers through its Customer Communications Cloud, has launched Smart Conversations, a powerful AI capability integrated into Sinch's Conversation API. This significant advancement enables businesses to automate and personalize conversations across multiple channels, leading to superior customer experiences while optimizing costs.

With the increasing demand from vertical sectors such as retail and financial services for valuable insights, time-saving solutions, cost reduction, and personalized interactions, Sinch recognized the requirement for an AI-powered tool.

Smart Conversations utilizes AI technology to analyze incoming messages from any channel supported on Conversation API, providing businesses with invaluable insights into customer journeys and customer intent, and allowing them to deliver exceptional customer experiences (CX) like never before. Unlike traditional chatbot solutions, Smart Conversations in combination with Conversation API transcends basic responses, offering businesses a comprehensive solution for enhanced customer engagement.

Key highlights of Sinch's Smart Conversations:

• Sinch's Conversation API, known for its seamless communication across popular messaging channels like WhatsApp, RCS, KakaoTalk, Instagram, and more now integrates AI features such as automatic intent recognition and sentiment analysis using Smart Conversations.
• Sinch's Smart Conversations goes beyond just generative AI, offering a range of advanced models such as document comprehension from images (OCR), profanity detection, document classification and automatic audio transcription. These features streamline processes and eliminate the need for additional integrations, making Smart Conversations the ideal solution for businesses seeking AI-powered enhancements.
• Smart Conversations is based on Sinch's recognized AI expertise. Sinch is the only CPaaS (Communications-Platform-as-a-Service) company acknowledged by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI. With over 150,000 businesses leveraging Sinch's Customer Communications Cloud, Sinch's expertise in applying AI to CPaaS is unparalleled in the industry.

"As part of Sinch's commitment to innovation, generative AI models are now being seamlessly integrated into our technology components," said Jon Campbell, Senior Director of Messaging Products, Sinch. "This type of integration helps both our B2B software builders as well as our enterprise customers as it enables natural language processing (NLP) tasks to be trained with fewer examples, leading to more accurate responses and improved customer experiences. By combining the power of generative AI models with Sinch's own Conversation API, Smart Conversations now offers turnkey sentiment analysis, providing businesses with deeper insights into customer feedback."

Sinch's advantage in the communications industry lies in its extensive data processing capabilities, a crucial element for success in AI-driven solutions. With a wealth of data and a strong portfolio of use cases and customer references, Sinch has established itself as an expert and thought leader in the application of AI to CPaaS. The company actively utilizes AI in various ways for its customers' benefit and these consist of external as well as internal facing use of AI, including spam filtering and optimizing sending routes for its customers.

In addition to its own proprietary Natural Language Understanding (NLU) engines that power its chatbots, which consistently delivers exceptional results, Sinch also offers integrations to external AI models like ChatGPT. By incorporating these different forms of AI into Conversation API, Sinch enhances the overall value of this API platform, surpassing the capabilities of individual channel-specific APIs.

• LiveRetail surpasses its 50% capital raise milestone and extends a unique public stock offering to private equity and media companies.

• New investment structure enables PEs to help current portfolio companies WHILE generating an immediate return through a unique affiliate structure - an instant due-diligence on fit.

LiveRetail, a leading-edge marketing platform leveraging the power of AI and automation, has successfully passed the midpoint of its capital raise and introducing a new investment model, designed for Private Equity (PE) firms and Media companies with interests in franchisors or retail brands; with the ability to generate immediate returns from affiliate fees.

Investors will become stakeholders in LiveRetail's proprietary ad platform that is already helping brands like Five Guys, KIA Motors, JD Sports, and Unilever generate ready-to-run branded, localized ads in minutes. LiveRetail is the first platform of its kind transforming the brand advertising landscape with a solid roster of over 700 brands and a repository of more than 30 million ready-to-run ads and posts. The platform is strategically positioning itself to dominate the expansive field of 5.5 million businesses operating under a brand or selling branded products.

"With the shifting media landscape, this integrated affiliate model approach creates immediate ROI for PEs that want to see quick return on investment," says Wayne Reuvers, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer. "This new strategy is a very exciting offer that helps PEs with interests in franchisors or retail brands, and Media companies who sell media to franchisee and local businesses."

This investment structure offers investors a significant return derived from affiliate fees, while retaining equity; creating a potential for significant financial gains. Under this investment, half of the platform's fees will be channeled back to the investors capped at a 2X return and retaining an equity stake. LiveRetail's platform also aids the franchisees and local businesses to cut marketing costs with its ready-to-run platform; augmenting advertising outcomes and cutting marketing costs.

Matillion, the leader in data productivity, and Vanson Bourne have released findings of a survey in a new report, "Data Productivity: A Survey of Data Experts." The survey data offers insights from data team practitioners and leaders on how they manage the increasing complexity of unprecedented amounts of data, team workloads and overall performance at work.

The survey polled more than 900 experts across the United States and the United Kingdom to determine the impact of data and business demands on data teams. Survey results illustrate that data teams are overextending themselves to meet business demands.

• 84% of respondents described the volume of their workload as exceeding their capacity
• 90% reported an increase in their workload over the last year, a challenge that will only grow if not addressed soon

Additional key points from the survey include:

Teams spend too much time at work integrating, collecting and transforming data rather than performing strategic work.

• For nearly 40% of respondents, this work takes between a day and a week to perform per project
• 34% of respondents said this process takes 3 to 5 hours to complete per project — a sizable chunk of the typical 8-hour workday
• Employees using slow, inflexible pipelines can't get the right information when they need it

Data professionals spend too much time pulling from and unifying a high volume of data sources to build their data pipelines, which only delays the transformation process.

• 41% of respondents reported that their company uses 51-100 data sources
• 22% of respondents reported that their company uses 101-200 data sources
• 6% of respondents reported that their company uses 201-500 data sources
• The sheer number of sources these experts use becomes a burden because they drastically increase their workload

Employee burnout hasn't reached disastrous levels, but it's on the rise, and it's leading to challenges with talent retention for employees who enjoy their work.

• More than a third of respondents described feeling at least some burnout
• 19% of respondents described feeling very burned out
• 74% of employees responded that they feel very motivated at work.
• Companies must find ways to alleviate data team members' workload if they want to avoid employee burnout

Low-code and no-code tools are emerging as a primary strategy for companies to transform business-ready data.

• Sophisticated, visually guided low-code environments help create accurate, maintainable and self-documenting code
• These solutions make it possible for team members with less coding expertise to pull and transform necessary business data
• Cost-effective and agile, these solutions also help end tribal knowledge, which can alleviate the challenges associated with employee turnover

"This research highlights the data productivity pitfalls that modern data teams experience on a day-to-day basis," said Ed Thompson, CTO and co-founder of Matillion. "By taking note of these results — and partnering with organizations like ours to find solutions – businesses can empower their data teams to perform and prioritize impactful projects rather than the transformation of data; assure key decision makers with precision in their business decisions; and make it simple and cost-effective to deliver the right data to the right person at the right time."

Thompson continued, "At a time where change is rapid, complexity is growing and the appetite for the right insights at the right time is voracious, addressing data productivity issues changes the game. If organizations don't take these challenges seriously, not only will they cost money and time in lost resources, but will expose the talent pipeline to employee burnout and turnover. "

• Zetta is the industry's first platform to unify communication, storage and computation from the cloud-to-microcontroller continuum.

• Cloud agnostic, Zetta allows users to provision infrastructure on the cloud of their choice, and also provision infrastructure elements on-premise.

• New platform provides seamless integration with mainstream protocols such as DDS, MQTT, OPC-UA and a range of databases.

ZettaScale Technology announced today the availability of Zetta, the industry's first platform to unify communication, storage and computation from the smallest microcontrollers to the largest data centers. The Zetta platform is cloud agnostic and supports provisioning, monitoring and managing the infrastructure across the cloud-to-microcontroller continuum.

At the core of Zetta is ZettaScale's extremely innovative Zenoh protocol. Zenoh ensures time, space and energy efficient communication across the continuum.

Additionally, the Zetta platform seamlessly integrates with mainstream protocols, such as DDS, MQTT, OPC-UA, and databases, such as InfluxDB, RocksDB, MariaDB, etc.

"Zetta is the first and only platform that is able to unify communication, computation and storage and to do that with a single underlying technology, which is Zenoh," said Angelo Corsaro, Ph.D., CEO/CTO at ZettaScale. "In addition, it is the only platform on the market that provides users with unconstrained freedom to communicate, compute and store data where it makes the most sense for their systems. This will be a game changer for many domains, including robotics, automotive and IoT, in general. It will lead to faster system development, increased performance and, more importantly, less energy used overall."

Accenture announced an extension of their strategic collaboration with AWS to help clients leverage the value of large language models and generative AI for faster business transformation, utilizing the most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud.

Accenture today announced an extension of their strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help clients leverage the value of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI for faster business transformation, utilizing the most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud.

With a 15-year relationship, and as part of its existing strategic collaboration, Accenture and AWS—through the Accenture AWS Business Group—will make a series of strategic investments to develop new industry-specific and cross-industry solutions, pre-built models and trainings to help clients move rapidly from experimentation to scaled, responsible deployment of generative AI technologies within their organizations. These strategic investments will help clients accelerate innovation and value, efficiency, resilience, and improve interactions with customers and employees, transforming work across industries. Built around AWS’s advanced machine learning (ML) and AI technologies, these investments will span across arenas, including financial services, life sciences, customer support, supply chain, cybersecurity, and more.

“With the rise of generative AI, more and more organizations are looking to accelerate their use of all forms of AI across their enterprises,” said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture. “Our expanded relationship with AWS will bring our clients across industries new, rigorously developed business cases, more powerful safeguards for using AI responsibly and enhanced expertise that will help them create the most value with these innovative technologies.”

“We're excited to bring over 20 years of experience with AI technologies to our expanded relationship with Accenture to help organizations of all sizes realize the benefits of generative AI,” said Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services, Inc. “By providing customers with great choice, flexibility, and security when building and scaling with generative AI on AWS, they can quickly and responsibly deploy applications tailored to their industry-specific use cases. AWS and Accenture will empower customers with new, advanced AI technologies to help them to address their most pressing organizational challenges, drive business transformation, and accelerate innovation."

Today’s news comes as part of Accenture’s recently announced $3 billion investment in AI. Accenture will work with AWS to help clients deploy Amazon Bedrock, utilize the most advanced Foundational Models, such as Amazon Titan, and deploy industry leading technologies such as Amazon SageMaker, alongside other AWS ML technologies. Accenture will also scale its AWS AI talent through hiring, acquisitions, and equipping its global team with AWS skills, training and certifications to help their clients make the most of cloud-based generative AI technology.

Accenture will also work with AWS to develop new industry and cross-industry solutions, including:

• New AI-driven capabilities across financial services – spanning the sector from banking to capital markets to insurance, and extending the AI capabilities of the Accenture Cognitive Insurance Platform – which today leverages AWS technologies including Amazon Textract, Amazon Comprehend, and Amazon SageMaker - to further improve typically labor-intensive tasks for the industry, such as collecting, classifying and extracting data from multiple sources. This will help accelerate claims processing, enhance customer experience, and reduce the risk of fraud.
• Multiple applications across the life sciences value chain – to transform work for areas such as lab transformation, speeding up research and discovery, to document generation for regulatory filings. Accenture will use generative AI technologies to help scientists work in a paperless environment without disrupting their scientific processes. The ability to generate regulatory documents in required formats will help save countless hours, accelerate drug approvals, and improve patient outcomes.
• Connected customer and employee experiences – to create differentiated customer experiences at scale through AI-powered conversations, predictive insights and omni-channel journeys. Accenture will expand client contact center capabilities, leveraging generative AI. These solutions will take advantage of AWS’s services such as Amazon Connect, Amazon Lex, Amazon Kendra and others. This will drive improved customer service experiences, including enhanced agent assistance and call summarization. Accenture and AWS will also focus on additional pre-assembled accelerators, such as employee assistance, for internal users to embrace generative AI in a more secure manner.
• A responsible AI blueprint – to help clients navigate and accelerate responsible AI strategy, decisions, practices, and journeys. Accenture and AWS have already developed impactful AI policies to govern the development of AI models using advanced AWS technologies, but this new blueprint will make it easier and faster to navigate and develop AI that minimizes unintended bias, improves transparency, and provides end-to-end governance. Accenture will also work with AWS to provide training for AI-focused managers to adopt responsible AI principles.
• Supply chain intelligence – to provide a pre-integrated solution for clients to gain better visibility to their end-to-end supply chain operations, gain actionable data driven insights and execute recommendations for key functions including planning, inventory management, sourcing, procurement, replenishment, logistics and reverse logistics. Within the supply chain function, Accenture is extending its SynOps platform with AWS Supply Chain and generative AI capabilities. This platform has existing integrations with the Amazon Supply Chain, Amazon Business, and key supply chain enterprise and industry ecosystem partners.

Accenture will also use Amazon CodeWhisperer to empower its developers to become more productive and utilize generative AI technologies in all facets of their work. This adds to the recently launched Velocity platform which is already leveraging Amazon CodeWhisperer and driving developer productivity. Clients can now leverage the expanded capabilities and dedicated resources from Accenture and AWS through the Accenture Center for Advanced AI, providing broad access to Accenture’s global resources.

Perception Point's Advanced Browser Security solution boosts the security of organizations' native browsers with best-of-breed phishing and malware detection, data loss prevention controls, and improved browser governance and visibility

Perception Point, a leading provider of advanced threat protection across digital channels, today announced that it was recognized in Gartner's April 2023 report, 'Emerging Tech: Security — The Future of Enterprise Browsers'.

The report discusses the enterprise browser product category, which consists of products that are delivered to users either as an extension that is integrated and executed by the browser, or as an enterprise managed web browser.

Gartner writes that "by 2030, the browser will become a platform from which enterprises can distribute software, collect intelligence, control access, and securely enable remote work."

The report further notes that "as the browser increasingly stakes its claim as the center of the knowledge worker's corporate universe, enterprise browser vendors are increasingly developing security controls that live within the browser."

Additionally, the report identifies how web security, workforce productivity, and unmanaged device access use cases are the top drivers among new entrants in the browser security category. It goes on to underscore that "by 2025, enterprise browsers or extensions will be featured in 25% of web security competitive situations, up from less than 5% today," and that "by 2026, 25% of enterprises will be using managed browsers or extensions, up from less than 10% today."

Perception Point's Advanced Browser Security extension adds enterprise-grade security to an organization's standard browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari, etc.), fusing multi-layered advanced threat detection with browser-level governance and DLP controls. Easily deployed and scaled across the company via a browser extension, the solution's unique browser-level visibility ensures safe access to websites, detecting sophisticated phishing websites, malware, ransomware, and hidden file zero-days, and protects against the extraction of sensitive data, securing the organization from both external and internal threats.

The solution, powered by an award-winning detection platform, composed of seven layers and hundreds of advanced detection engines, including image recognition, AI/ML algorithms, next-gen sandboxing, anti-evasion mechanisms, and more, scans 100% of content dynamically in near real-time. Combined with a fully-managed, built-in Incident Response service, customers' security teams are supercharged with cybersecurity experts supported by machine learning and automated processes to ensure incidents are analyzed and content-sharing environments are secure. The IR service analyzes and remediates incidents, provides reporting and creates new algorithms on the fly to rapidly address new and emerging attacks, saving up to 75% of SOC teams' time and optimizing their performance.

"We are honored to be acknowledged by Gartner in its report on the future of enterprise browsers," said Yoram Salinger, CEO of Perception Point. "Organizations have been shifting the way they work through digitization, hybrid work schedules, and utilizing more SaaS and web-based applications. This has made the browser a prime target for attackers who leverage malicious websites and file downloads to breach organizations, delivering attacks not just via business email, but also through personal email, social networks, and non-mail web apps."

"We believe this report offers a pathway to modernize enterprise security infrastructure," continued Salinger. "Advanced evasion techniques now ensure that phishing and malicious content only detonate once they reach the user's browser, requiring organizations to adopt security controls that are embedded in the browser. Security leaders who internalize this crucial aspect of the modern threat landscape and adopt advanced browser security solutions are best positioned to keep employees, customers, and valuable data safe from the increasing volume and sophistication of attacks."

According to the report, small and mid-size organizations are projected to be early adopters of this technology. The report states that "enterprise browsers also present an opportunity for technology consolidation for organizations with less mature security requirements," which according to the report makes them "particularly well-suited to organizations looking to modernize their infrastructure security but with limited staff and expertise available."

Advanced Browser Security is offered to customers as a module in Perception Point's Advanced Threat Prevention solution, which detects and prevents all threat types across email, web browsers, and cloud collaboration channels. The holistic solution correlates data from the different channels it protects, which improves detection capabilities and provides security leaders with enhanced incident analysis and control for accelerated remediation capabilities.

Perception Point has previously been recognized in Gartner Market Guide for Email Security Report four years in a row, most recently in February 2023 when it was listed as a Representative ICES Vendor for its Advanced Email Security, Advanced Internal Email Security, and Advanced Collaboration Security solutions.

Xtag, a global leader in event management and onsite registration solutions, is thrilled to announce their strategic partnership with Zoom Events, a premier platform for virtual and hybrid events, aimed at delivering holistic event solutions that cover the entire Hybrid and In-Person event lifecycle.

The collaboration between Xtag and Zoom Events brings Xtag's industry-leading event management and onsite registration capabilities into the Zoom Events expansive portfolio. This partnership signifies a commitment to providing event organizers with a comprehensive suite of tools and solutions that address every stage of the event planning and execution process.

With this partnership, Zoom Events will be able to offer event organizers a holistic solution that seamlessly integrates event planning, registration, virtual event execution, and onsite experiences. Event organizers will benefit from a unified platform that streamlines their workflow, eliminates the need for multiple tools, and ensures a consistent and exceptional event experience for attendees.

By leveraging Xtag's event management and onsite registration software, event organizers using Zoom Events will have access to a wide range of features, including efficient event registration, self-check-in kiosks, badge printing, lead retrieval, and comprehensive reporting and analytics. This integration empowers event organizers to efficiently manage their events, drive attendee engagement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance future events.

"We are thrilled to partner with Zoom Events, the fastest growing event platform in the industry," said Elad Rosanski, CEO and Founder of Xtag. "This partnership provides an incredible opportunity for event organizers to enjoy the best-in-class event platform, Zoom Events, along with the cutting-edge onsite solutions technology provided by Xtag. This collaboration allows Zoom Events clients to seamlessly integrate Zoom's exceptional platform with Xtag's industry-leading onsite solutions.”

"With the partnership between Xtag and Zoom Events, we are thrilled to offer our clients a complete event lifecycle solution, especially as more and more events transition back to in-person and hybrid experiences," said Robin Bunevich, Product Marketing Manager for Zoom’s event solutions. "We recognize the importance of providing our clients with the best onsite badge printing, tracking, and lead retrieval solution in order to deliver seamless event experiences for both organizers and attendees. By fully integrating these capabilities into the Zoom Events platform through our collaboration with Xtag, we are ensuring that our clients have access to the industry's leading onsite solutions that will enhance the success of their events and elevate attendee experiences."

The partnership between Xtag and Zoom Events represents a significant milestone in the event management industry, as it provides event organizers with a one-stop solution for all their event needs. By leveraging Xtag's event management and onsite registration software alongside Zoom Events' platform, event organizers can deliver seamless, engaging, and successful events throughout the entire event lifecycle.

Bloomreach, the world’s #1 Commerce Experience Cloud, and Shopware, a holistic omnichannel digital commerce platform for e-commerce businesses, today announced they have partnered to empower businesses to unlock new growth across their e-commerce experience. The partnership will enable businesses built on the Shopware commerce platform to further enhance their digital experience across every touchpoint using Bloomreach’s data and AI-driven solutions. With this enhanced functionality, businesses worldwide will be better poised to drive greater personalization for every customer, resulting in stronger customer journeys and ultimately increased revenue generation.

"We're excited to share the news of our new partnership with Bloomreach, a well-established pioneer in the commerce experience domain,” said Stefan Hamann, Co-CEO, Shopware. “This strategic alliance enables us to fuel remarkable customer experiences, spanning various digital channels, while delivering rapid growth, adaptability, and personalized interactions in today's fast-paced landscape."

Shopware is a leading open commerce platform for mid-market and lower enterprise merchants across EMEA, with comprehensive solutions for B2C and B2B businesses. Through its partnership with Bloomreach, Shopware will further expand its global presence, allowing more businesses around the world to use the combined power of the Bloomreach and Shopware platforms to drive commerce growth.

Bloomreach empowers businesses to deliver personalized experiences across their digital channels by combining the power of unified customer and product data with the speed and scale of AI-optimization. For e-commerce businesses built on the Shopware platform, the addition of Bloomreach’s marketing automation, product discovery, and content management solutions will allow them to enhance customer journeys by creating highly personalized, end-to-end e-commerce experiences. Fueled by the AI built into all Bloomreach products and further propelled by Shopware’s AI Copilot program, businesses will be able to scale their personalization efforts — quickly — while operating with maximum efficiency.

''We are thrilled to announce an official partnership with Shopware to help more businesses reshape their e-commerce experience with AI-powered personalization,” said Anand Subbiah, VP, Technical Alliances & Ecosystem Platform, Bloomreach. “Bloomreach is a natural partner to help Shopware expand globally and together provide growth, agility, and personalization for brands around the world.”