Extending Alation’s lineage capabilities, business lineage provides a visual map of the technical, system, and business metadata of data as it flows across systems

Alation, Inc., the data intelligence company, today announced business lineage to provide business users with broad and rich visibility into data’s journey as it flows and transforms through systems. This visibility increases trust in the data and accelerates time to insights. Business lineage is an extension of Alation’s end-to-end data lineage, providing an abstraction layer to filter views of data flows and visualize relationships across technical, system, and business metadata. This unified approach offers a complete view so that all users can confidently and effectively harness information to unlock the full potential of an organization’s information assets for improved decision-making.

AI and cloud technologies have provided opportunities for organizations to enhance their products, services, and business models using their enterprise data. However, the increasing number of data sources has intensified data fragmentation and data silos, making it difficult to use data effectively. This complicates tracing data origins and understanding how it is transformed across its lifecycle. IDC reports that 41% of organizations believe that data is changing faster than they can keep up with, and 33% believe data is disaggregated or siloed across the organization, preventing the ability to extract more value from data. 64% of these organizations also believe that the volume of metadata is growing faster or significantly faster than raw data is created or collected. Organizations need lineage to provide users with this end-to-end view and certify data trust.

The Alation Data Intelligence Platform provides deep and broad connectivity to over 100 data sources providing a unified view of data, abstracted and exposed via rich metadata. This gives organizations a comprehensive map of their data environment and flexible ways to visualize the end-to-end data flows at either the business or technical level through a single-pane-of-glass. It enables users to apply various filters to uncover more details, such as technical code references or data health indicators, to accelerate time to insights. This approach helps less technical users, such as business analysts, understand data issues and track metrics across systems to uncover data quality issues without the need to write queries. With lineage, users can instantaneously certify the trust of a dashboard and quickly conduct quality checks to ensure that data is endorsed and trusted.

“Alation's actionable, end-to-end business lineage serves both business and technical personas in the organization, helping them to understand the flow of their data from the initial point of capture through to consumption,” said John Gilbert, Data Governance Manager at Cbus. “This provides an audit trail and enables change impact analysis, reducing risks and ensuring that corporate data is managed as a critical asset and implemented in an effective and sustainable manner. This foundational strengthening of data governance underpins the four pillars of data culture maturity, providing a robust framework for our organization to become more competitive, compliant, and innovative in the face of change.”

“Collecting data is just the start; empowering everyone to truly understand and trust it unlocks its real value,” said Diby Malakar, Vice President of Product Management at Alation. “Alation’s business lineage sheds light on the data's journey, offering crucial context for impactful decisions. Integrating trusted data into strategic planning empowers companies to make swift, informed choices, reinforcing data governance as a fundamental pillar of business operations. This strengthens data culture, dismantles silos, and ensures data is fully leveraged in a governed way, blending data, people, and policies to foster insightful, collaborative decision-making and unlock data’s full potential.”

Alation’s lineage empowers technical and business teams to foster data trust and accelerate time to insights with: 

• Increased transparency. By providing data maps, all users can benefit from a better understanding of the data in a visual context that is meaningful to them. Users can also trace critical KPIs and metrics back to their sources and highlight essential data elements with contextual metadata overlays, such as data health, sensitivity, policies, or a chosen custom field, while filters allow users to see exactly what they need and drill down into areas of interest.
• Stronger data governance. With visibility into the movement and usage of sensitive data across the organization, audit times are significantly reduced. Additionally, governance teams can use classification metadata overlays in a business lineage view to see the movement and use of this data. Finally, Alation’s lineage provides users with the ability to monitor changes and trace them through an audit trail, enhancing governance with a retrospective view, and understanding impact analysis. This means users are aware of the consequences of their changes and identify who will be affected, fostering greater interconnectivity among teams. 
• Reduced costs. Business lineage reduces development and maintenance costs by streamlining change processes. Impact analysis and Trust Flags expedite error identification and correction, preventing expensive outages and reducing the time needed for root cause analysis. In addition, Alation's query log ingestion process provides essential operational metadata to help data operations teams derive insights that support cost savings through data pipeline performance optimization and technical debt reduction.

Latest raise builds on data analytics disruptor’s recent 109% YoY growth in revenue and placement as a Fast Mover and Challenger in the GigaOm Radar on Data Warehouses report

Ocient, the leading data analytics software solutions company, today announced that it has closed $49.4 million in funding. This latest raise is an extension of Ocient’s Series B financing, previously led by Greycroft and OCA Ventures, and includes new venture investors Buoyant Ventures, Levy Family Partners, Riverwalk Capital, and Wolf Capital Management, as well as all prior major investors. This latest raise will be used to advance product capabilities and deliver successful hyperscale data analytics solutions to Ocient’s growing global customer base. Including this current round, Ocient has raised a total of $119 million in invested capital since its founding in 2016. 

Ocient saw 109% YoY growth in revenue in its last fiscal year as more organizations seek end-to-end software solutions capable of delivering all-the-time, compute-intensive analysis of large, complex datasets while optimizing for performance, cost, and energy efficiency. The startup also made its debut in the GigaOm Radar for Data Warehouses report, named as a Fast Mover and Challenger in its inaugural placement. Ocient’s Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture™ (CASA), which removes network bottlenecks to facilitate rapid data access, was called out as a key strength for the disruptor, along with its always-on loading and data transformations (ETL/ELT), Zero Copy Reliability™ and in-database OcientML™ and OcientGeo™ capabilities, all of which deliver enhanced performance alongside energy and cost efficiencies for next-generation data analysis at growth-scale.

“Organizations are being challenged to deliver energy efficient hyper-growth data analysis without accelerating costs, which has become increasingly challenging as real-time analytics, SQL, AI/ML, and geospatial workloads typically require more energy consumption,” said Chris Gladwin, CEO of Ocient. “The close of this latest round of financing is an indication that the need for the solutions we bring to market is growing across industries, and geographies.”

"The world is connected through data, and a growing number of organizations are grappling with growing, complex datasets that are challenging the status quo of their existing systems,” said Jim Dugan, founding managing partner of OCA Ventures. “Ocient’s unique approach to enabling the analysis of these always-on, compute-intensive datasets while optimizing for performance, cost, and energy efficiency is a win-win for businesses and the environment, and OCA Ventures is thrilled to be a part of this next chapter of Ocient’s growth as it delivers its data analytics software solutions to a growing number of customers around the globe.”

The growth of compute-intensive data workloads is increasing the need for digital solutions that can positively impact energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change. In the Gartner® Top Trends in Data and Analytics, 2023 report, regarding D&A sustainability, “If current D&A and AI practices remain unchanged, and with their ongoing adoption, the energy needed for machine learning alone may grow to 3.5% of global electricity consumption by 2030.” The research recommends data and analytics leaders “adopt emerging practices to improve the energy efficiency of D&A and AI. These include the prioritized use of (cloud) data centers that are powered by renewable energy, the use of more energy efficient infrastructure, and the use of transfer learning, active learning, federated learning, composite AI and other approaches. Their benefits include less need for (training) data and more efficient machine learning, lower requirements for time, compute resources and energy.” * Minimized time, compute and energy consumption are all benefits Ocient delivers.

“The demand for computing power and storage space in data centers will continue to increase rapidly and cloud providers are struggling to buy enough clean energy to balance their growth, making decarbonization solutions for this sector hugely important for the future of our global climate,” said Amy Francetic, co-founder and managing partner of Buoyant Ventures. “Buoyant Ventures invests in organizations creating high-impact digital solutions in our fight against climate change. Ocient’s highly differentiated approach to delivering energy-efficient data analytics software solutions is a compelling fit, and we’re excited to see how the company continues to innovate and lead the way in this space.”

SheerID for WooCommerce helps online merchants acquire and verify consumers in high-value communities like students, teachers, and the military for special offers and discounts

SheerID, the global leader in identity verification for commerce, has partnered with Payment Plugins, one of the leading plugin developers for WooCommerce. WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress that simplifies creating and managing an online store. Today, SheerID announced SheerID for WooCommerce, allowing WooCommerce merchants to instantly verify consumer eligibility for gated offers and discounts to communities such as students, teachers, healthcare workers, military service members, and many more worldwide. SheerID for WooCommerce is a no-code, turnkey solution for merchants to launch a gated offer program rapidly. SheerID’s research has found that more than 80% of consumers within these communities buy from brands with a gated offer and more than 90% would share an offer with fellow community members.

RVbyMilitary.com is the first veteran-owned and operated peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace by military, for everyone. They are using SheerID for WooCommerce to welcome veteran, military members and first responders to list their RVs for rent on their website. To be eligible to list an RV, veterans, military members, and first responders must verify their identity through SheerID.

“Time is our only non-renewable resource. We created RVbyMilitary.com to make the most of that time and help service members turn their liability into an asset while enabling others to make memories through adventure and a love of the outdoors,” said Chris Wingate, Founder of RVbyMilitary.com and an Active Duty Army Officer. “We’re so grateful to find SheerID and Payment Plugins - partners we trust - to protect those who protect us, and provide an opportunity for others to give back to a community that has given so much.”

SheerID for WooCommerce provides merchants the following key features and capabilities to build gated offer programs worldwide instantly:

• Global community verification: SheerID for WooCommerce offers verification for 9 consumer communities, including students in 193 countries and 37 languages. For instance, if a shopper redeems a student discount from a merchant’s store, SheerID will instantly verify the person is an enrolled student before purchase.
• Highest instant verification: SheerID connects to 200k authoritative data sources worldwide to verify a person's eligibility within milliseconds. Instant verification provides a superior customer experience leading to higher conversion rates.
• First-party data acquisition: for shoppers to get verified for a student, military or other community-based discount, they share their information, such as their name, email address and school they attend. Merchants collect this valuable first party data to learn more about their customers and re-market to them based on these affiliations.
• No-code publishing options: SheerID for WooCommerce allows merchants to create simple, fast landing pages for verifying customers and can match the branding and color scheme of the online store.
• Product Restrictions: SheerID for WooCommerce makes it easy for merchants to restrict discounts to specific products, allowing them to restrict discounts based on inventory levels or focused marketing efforts.
• Checkout Reminders: With one click, merchants can send the shopper a reminder if they haven't finished cart checkout. This makes it easier for customers to finish the ordering process while reducing cart abandonment for the merchant.

"We’re thrilled to offer a SheerID integration for WooCommerce to allow merchants to verify the identity of customers and ensure their exclusive offers are only accessible to those they are intended for,” said Clayton Rogers, Founder of Payment Plugins.

“Offering merchants like RVbyMilitary.com an opportunity to earn extra money is a great way to give back to the people who work so hard to protect us,” said Jake Weatherly, Chief Executive Officer at SheerID. “We look forward to providing similar opportunities to the more than 4.5 million merchants on WooCommerce who want to make consumer transactions simple and secure while verifying customer identity for special offers and discounts.”

The announcement comes during the Game Developers Conference week, where the company will host a special side event

Blockus, an emerging, innovative force at the intersection of blockchain technology and gaming, today announced a significant milestone, securing $4M in pre-seed funding. This successful raise follows Blockus's participation in the prestigious a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, which not only provided access to mentors and advisors but also allowed the startup to connect with potential investors.

The pre-seed round was led by Maple VC and included Altos Ventures as well as known angel investors such as Zhuoxun Yin from Magic Eden, Michael Ma from CreatorDAO, and Bryan Pelligrino from LayerZero.

Blockus is dedicated to transforming the gaming experience by enabling studios to onboard their players and build on-chain gaming features with ease. The company has already gained traction in the market, with over 30 partners already signed, including Ambrus Studio, the team behind E4C: Final Salvation. The funding will allow Blockus to accelerate its growth, expand its team, strengthen sales operations, and invest heavily in product development.

"This pre-seed raise marks a pivotal moment in our journey," said Jess Zhang, Co-founder & CEO at Blockus. "The trust our investors, like Maple VC, have placed in us is both humbling and inspiring. We're ready to unlock the next level of innovation in the gaming industry, and we're excited to bring our blockchain solutions to even more studios and developers."

With a rapidly expanding market – approximately 62% of all dApp activity comes from gaming projects, and Web3 gaming is expected to reach $600B by 2030 – Blockus is in a prime position to capitalize on this growth.

"We're thrilled to witness Blockus's latest achievement," said Johnson Yeh, Founder & CEO at Ambrus Studio. "As innovators in the gaming space, we're proud to partner with a company that's pushing the boundaries of what's possible. The potential for Web3 in gaming is immense, and we're confident that Blockus will play a major role in shaping its future."

The announcement is made in the lead-up week to Game Developers Conference (GDC) taking place in San Francisco. There, the company will host a dedicated event on March 21 at 7 p.m. at the iconic SPIN bar to engage with the Web3 gaming community, and current and potential partners.

"Blockus has the potential to be the catalyst for a new era of gaming, built on the principles of decentralization and player ownership," said Andre Charoo, General Partner at Maple VC. "The founders' deep understanding of both gaming and Web3 technologies, combined with their track record, makes them an exceptionally compelling team to back. We believe Blockus is poised to lead the way in the Web3 gaming revolution."

To celebrate its funding milestone, Blockus is extending a special offer of $20,000 in credits to potential clients for the two weeks following the announcement period. This offer presents a unique opportunity for game developers interested in exploring how Blockus can elevate their game experiences.

Avaya, a global leader in customer experience and communications solutions, today announced its presence at Enterprise Connect 2024, the leading conference for enterprise communications and customer experience over the past 30+ years. Avaya will showcase how businesses can use AI to safely and securely meet soaring expectations for customer and employee experiences without disruption to their existing systems and processes. Enterprise Connect is set to host 5,000+ attendees across roles and industries, and will take place on March 25-28 at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.

Avaya will share how they enable enterprise customer experience (CX) leaders to pursue innovation while prioritizing customer experience, employee experience, and business outcomes. By delivering CX initiatives through a single platform, Avaya Experience Platform™, Avaya customers around the world are equipped with the tools and capabilities that power their customer experiences globally.

Avaya will host five demonstrations powered by Google ChromeOS. Avaya Experience Platform is Chrome Enterprise recommended, optimized on ChromeOS & ChromeOS devices, and will be featured on Chromebooks across demonstrations.

With use cases that show how different Avaya solutions drive top-tier customer experiences and business growth, visit Avaya’s booth #1511 for a series of AI-powered customer experience demonstrations, delivered by the Avaya Experience Platform:

• Experience the transformation of government services through AI-powered virtual agents, seamless live agent transitions, and effective issue resolution across voice and digital touchpoints.
• Discover secure, personalized banking with voice biometric authentication, AI-guided loan processing, proactive customer outreach, and AI-assisted support across digital channels.
• Witness innovation without disruption as businesses enhance contact center capabilities by integrating on-premises systems with cloud-based AI services.
• Navigate the digital-first travel landscape with AI-powered booking experiences, ChatGPT-enhanced customer engagement, and seamless integration of social media, virtual agents, and CRM.
• Step into the future of efficient customer service with AI-driven email classification, sentiment analysis, auto-suggested responses, and seamless integration of agent workspaces and knowledge management.

Additionally, Avaya leaders Steve Brock (Director, Solutions Marketing) and John Akerboom (Senior Director, Cloud Architecture) will be participating in two on-stage panels alongside fellow industry leaders. Brock’s session, “Job Shifting: Where and how AI is Eliminating & Adding CX Positions”, will take place on Monday, March 25 at 8:00 a.m. ET. Akerboom’s panel will cover “Cloud 2027: How Will Architectures Shift” on Thursday, March 28 at 8:00 a.m. ET.

Customers around the world are seeing tangible benefits from changing the ways they connect with and serve their customers. Avaya customer, Standard Focus, is transforming its contact center from a series of siloed technologies that were not working optimally to a modernized experience for their customers by gaining that additional insight through AI technologies. “We are thrilled with how Avaya’s innovative solutions and AI integrations have elevated our contact center experiences and look forward to the insights and use cases the Avaya team will share with the Enterprise Connect community this year,” said Nigel Mansfield, Contact Centre Strategic Lead at Standard Focus. “Avaya’s solutions helped us create a fully blended contact center, so both chatbots and voice bots are blended in together. It’s just a new way of thinking about how contacts are being answered. It’s the Avaya Experience Platform architecture that allows us to pass parameters and conversations through to the AI engine and allows us to make decisions in a very tidy and clear way. With Avaya our contact handling time is down 50 percent over the last three years and the abandon-rate, most months, is under 1 percent resulting in a 50 percent enhancement in our efficiency through cost reduction.”

Enterprise Connect is where the enterprise IT community gathers to exchange knowledge, network with peers and experts, and explore new technologies and strategies for communications, collaboration, and CX. Avaya’s sponsorship of Enterprise Connect 2024 cements their continued support of the conference as a valuable industry touchpoint that powers critical industry conversations through exhibitions and speaker sessions.

Avaya will host several global technology partners and customers at Enterprise Connect this year—a testament to the reach and impact of its ecosystem, solutions, and innovative corporate vision. Avaya’s presence at Enterprise Connect comes in partnership with Microsoft Teams, Journey ID, and Google CCAI.

CacheFly and StreamGuys Unveil Groundbreaking Ultra-Low Latency Video Delivery Technology Advancement

CacheFly, a global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services, in strategic partnership with StreamGuys, a trailblazer in media delivery solutions, announces a transformative breakthrough in streaming technology.  

Experience the future of streaming with unrivaled speed and efficiency across all browser platforms, making high-quality, ultra-low latency streaming experiences universally accessible on PC, Linux, Mac, Android, iPad, and iPhone. This new advancement simplifies streaming processes globally for broadcasters and content providers by eliminating the need for dedicated mobile applications.

Key Takeaways:

1. Synced Streaming Across All Devices:
   Innovative ultra-low latency video distribution from CacheFly removes the need for specialized mobile apps. Users enjoy synchronized and flawless streaming in less than a second, regardless of device — PC, Linux, Mac, Android, iPad, or iPhone.
   
   No more juggling different apps to distribute content to iOS devices. With its integrated technology, CacheFly guarantees a consistent experience on all platforms where customers watch videos worldwide.
2. Under 1-Second Global Live Events:
   The browser-based video delivery provided with CacheFly’s global CDN is ideal for live streaming. Whether it’s a global event, sports match, or breaking news, viewers experience real-time action without delay or compromising quality.
   
   With the capacity to handle over 1 million concurrent viewers simultaneously, CacheFly sets a new standard for scalability and throughput in the CDN industry and for media, entertainment, eLearning, gaming, gambling, and streaming companies.

Company Officer Quotes:

• Eduardo Martinez, VP of Technology at StreamGuys, emphasizes the impact of this technological leap. "iOS17's support for MMS opens a new chapter for ultra-low latency streaming, filling a previously unbridged gap for iOS users. Our collaborative solution with CacheFly significantly lowers entry barriers, promoting broader adoption of ultra-low latency video and audio streaming globally."
• Drazen Dodig, CEO of CacheFly, states, "Achieving this level of integration marks a pivotal moment in our mission to ensure universal access to superior streaming experiences.
• Matt Levine, CTO & Founder of CacheFly, “This development is a testament to our relentless pursuit of leading-edge streaming technologies and our commitment to enhancing our industry leading service offerings for our customers and partners."  
• Edward Fitzgerald, VP of Sales at CacheFly, assures current customers that embracing this innovation will be seamless, highlighting the readiness of the technical team to demonstrate the new capabilities and facilitate integration without requiring any system changes.

Egress, the first provider of adaptive cloud email security, has announced a partnership with Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to enhance behavioral-based threat detection and response, transforming the way organizations manage human risk in cloud email. 

The partnership enables Egress to aggregate Netskope’s User Confidence Index (UCI) as part of its Human Risk Management solution. Netskope’s AI/ML-derived UCI output is combined with threat intelligence sourced from the Egress platform and an organization’s wider cybersecurity ecosystem to generate holistic human risk scores for each individual user.

Netskope’s AI/ML capabilities provide per-user behavior analytics that correlate multiple, disparate activities to detect the anomalies that indicate insider threats, compromised accounts and devices, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and advanced persistent threats across organizations’ cloud-hosted platforms and applications. By consuming the UCI risk score through native API integration, Egress will now leverage Netskope’s live behavior analytics as part of its adaptive security architecture, which automates personalized inbound and outbound email security controls based on real-time human risk telemetry.

This integration is immediately available for all joint customers, who will now benefit from:

• Centralized threat intelligence that surfaces meaningful insights from the  Netskope One platform to Egress Human Risk Management, elevating threat hunting capabilities and dramatically reducing time to response
• Improved detection of suspicious user activity to automate defenses against advanced inbound and outbound email threats
• No administrative burden from real-time policy management that dynamically adjusts according to each individual’s risk score via an adaptive security architecture

Tony Pepper, CEO of Egress, comments:

“With the rapid adoption of cloud platforms and applications, organizations have struggled to contain cyberattacks and insider threats. Every part of an organization’s technology ecosystem presents risk – with email at the top of the list as the riskiest application. By combining the deep behavioral analytics generated by both Netskope and Egress, joint customers will benefit from unprecedented visibility into human risk and automated defenses that eliminate advanced email threats, tailored to each individual employee.”

David Willis, Vice President, Technology Alliances at Netskope, comments:

“Behavioral patterns can disclose indicators of compromise within every platform and application. Enterprises are vulnerable to employees falling victim to inbound email attacks, making cybersecurity mistakes, and knowingly or unknowingly exfiltrating data. Today’s announcement marks an exciting development for joint Netskope and Egress customers, who can now enhance their human risk scoring using Netskope One insights and continuously extend their behavioral-based threat detection and response across their cloud environments.”

New Feature Enables Business Teams to Move Faster by Conducting Granular Data Analysis on the Fly  

DataGPT, the leading provider of conversational AI data analytics software, today announced Dynamic Benchmarking, giving business users the power to analyze data by date range and perform head-to-head comparisons of specific segments within the data over the same period of time.

Created in response to a request from a Fortune 100 media and entertainment company, DataGPT is the first conversational AI data analytics software provider to offer Dynamic Benchmarking. Unlike stagnant dashboarding tools that lack this level of granularity, Dynamic Benchmarking allows marketing and data teams to quickly find the highest-performing segments of cohorts across two different time ranges using Conversational AI prompts in everyday language.

"We are proud to unveil Dynamic Benchmarking, a testament to DataGPT's commitment to innovation and meeting the evolving needs of our customers," said Arina Curtis, CEO and co-founder, DataGPT. "Today, we set a new standard in conversational AI data analysis. Dynamic Benchmarking underscores our dedication to providing nimble and efficient solutions that deliver valuable insights and power informed decision making for businesses everywhere."

Echoing an overwhelming demand from its customers, DataGPT's development of Dynamic Benchmarking cements the company as one that actively listens to its users, and quickly strives to meet the needs of its customers and the broader market. Dynamic Benchmarking enables users to cover deeper and wider analytics than ever before.

"DataGPT has transformed the ease and speed in which I can use our data. Other BI and dashboard tools were just simply too complex and time intensive to get answers," says Dan Calzone, Director of Growth, Plex. "But with DataGPT, it's like having a personal data analyst at my fingertips. I can finally answer not just what happened but why, without waiting hours or days for a new dashboard to be created."

Key features of Dynamic Benchmarking include:

• Segment Isolation - Segments are a group of individuals who share a common characteristic or experience within a defined time range. For example, a new product or campaign launch. While many BI tools can analyze user behavior over time, Dynamic Benchmarking offers the ability to isolate segments and shift the timeline for head-to-head comparisons.
• Versatile Analysis - Most traditional tools are unable to assess data using launch date or lifecycle as a basis for comparison. Dynamic Benchmarking provides a flexible tool that can be applied to various scenarios, allowing users to analyze data from different perspectives and gain comprehensive insights.
• Increased Efficiency - Dynamic Benchmarking is powered by DataGPT's proprietary Lightning Compute Engine, which is 90 times faster than traditional databases. Enabling 15 times cheaper analysis and 600 times faster query running than standard BI tools, Dynamic Benchmarking enhances efficiency, reduces costs and makes data analysis more accessible for businesses of all sizes.

"Traditional data analysis tools are slow, inefficient and lack the capacity to compare all data points based on launch date or lifecycle," continued Curtis. "Now, by using Conversational AI to perform analysis, business users are free from relying solely on data teams to conduct sophisticated head-to-head segment comparisons."

Today's news comes on the heels of an impressive 2023 for DataGPT, which launched out of stealth to enable every person, in every role, in any industry to use data to make decisions - big or small.