Opening of Data Centers in Montreal and Toronto Highlights the Company's Commitment to User Privacy and Investment in the Growing Canadian Market

Zoho Corporation is solidifying its commitment to the Canadian market with the opening of two new data centers in Montreal and Toronto offering Canadian customers the benefit of localized data storage and processing.

“The new data centers and their operations carry all the required certifications, which assures our customers that their data is securely stored only within Canadian boundaries,” said Chandrashekar LSP, Managing Director of Zoho Canada.

“Given the significance of privacy regulations and performance requirements, many Canadian organizations are placing an increased emphasis on data sovereignty, data residency and enhanced security,” added Chandrashekar. “This emphasis is especially applicable for large enterprises, including those in government, banking and financial service sectors.”

A Localized Solution for Canada's Growing Market

The new data centers will help build on Zoho's momentum in Canada. This momentum includes a five-year Compound Annual Growth Rate of 36% for mid-sized enterprises and an overall Canadian customer base increase of 24%, with Zoho Workplace customers growing 32% over the same period.

Globally, Zoho surpassed 100 million users in August, thanks to the continued support of Canadian customers, as well as the dedicated effort of the company's partner network.

The new Canadian data centers represent Zoho's 13th and 14th globally and underscore the company's commitment to user privacy and security, as well as its efforts to serve customers locally.

“As Canadian organizations progress with regards to their cloud maturity, they are leaning towards SaaS workloads to modernize existing processes and in many cases to introduce new functionalities into the organization,” said Megha Kumar, Research Vice President, Software & Cloud Services, IDC.

“At the same time, organizations are also under pressure to operate secure environments while complying with data residency requirements (depending on the industry) and privacy mandates,” added Kumar. “These requirements have Canadian organizations leaning towards cloud vendors that have in-country datacenter investments as well as the right tools and processes in place to ensure compliance with local, national, and international regulations.”

Small Businesses Can Win Customized Ads featuring Evolve Small Ambassador, Queen Latifah, on Screens and Signs Across America

Building off of the introduction of Queen Latifah as its ambassador last year, Evolve Small – Lenovo’s initiative to champion and promote small businesses across North America – is now putting small businesses on big stages, with big talent to match. Lenovo’s Evolve Small initiative offers select small businesses the chance to promote their brands on billboards and social media platforms across the country featuring AI-customized ads with Queen Latifah herself. To ensure Queen Latifah’s marketing prowess is accessible to small businesses across North America, today Lenovo also launched a microsite for Evolve Small that helps owners to create and share customized marketing materials to promote their products and services.

“I’m excited to continue my partnership with Lenovo’s Evolve Small initiative for another year,” said Queen Latifah. “The opportunity to support small businesses in real time without navigating the challenge of being multiple places at once is truly amazing and I’m proud to be part of the work Lenovo has been doing to lift up women, and minority-owned, and businesses owned by people with disabilities.”

Gerald Youngblood, Chief Marketing Officer, Lenovo North America added, “As we continue to think through what entrepreneurs and business owners really need, it’s important that we create opportunities that have real impact on this community. That’s why this year Evolve Small is offering actual marketing execution - not just with a major star like Queen Latifah – but also with prime placement opportunities for small business owners to build awareness for their brands. Our efforts also include mental health support, grants, and the latest technology to ensure they can sustain their entrepreneurial goals.”

In partnership with AMD, Microsoft, and with entrepreneurship and community building non-profit, Goodie Nation, the initiative is rich with opportunities for small businesses beyond marketing awareness. With an ongoing focus on women-owned, minority-owned, and businesses owned by people with disabilities, Evolve Small continues to provide financial aid, technological resources, community support, and business mentorship. Lenovo has also partnered with CWC Coaching and Therapy, led by its founder, Chantel Cohen. Cohen, a licensed therapist, provides mental health services with a coaching lens to help her clients find prosperity in the broader sense of the word. In particular, she and her team help business founders alleviate the mental stresses that come with entrepreneurship while coaching for optimal leadership performance.

Accomplished leader from Cockroach Labs and NGINX joins company to build new category of AI assistants for software development lifecycle

Tabnine, the creators of the industry’s first AI-powered assistant for developers, today announced the appointment of Peter Guagenti as President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) to lead go-to-market strategy and growth. Guagenti brings decades of leadership excellence at high-growth companies and will help drive Tabnine in its mission to bring generative AI to the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC). As the pioneer in the generative AI coding assistant category, the company currently already serves more than one million developers monthly.

“As technologists, we spent the last 25 years moving the world through digital transformation. But that time will pale in comparison to the transformation we will experience in the next 20 years as we use AI to transform every aspect of how we live and work through algorithms and AI,” Guagenti said. “The SDLC is ripe for this level of disruption. IT organizations and engineering teams continue to face massive hurdles with hiring, training, and retaining developers and operators, while the pace and complexity of development is only increasing. Organizations will need a solution that can help close that gap. Tabnine has already proven its ability to accelerate development, support developer onboarding and training, and improve the reliability of our customers’ code, all while keeping user privacy and the security of their codebases at the forefront. Tabnine’s approach will propel us to a leadership position in this exciting new category, and I’m excited to join the company during this time of rapid innovation and growth.”

Guagenti is an accomplished business leader and entrepreneur with expertise in strategy, product development, marketing, sales, and operations. He most recently served as CMO at Cockroach Labs, where he helped drive near 700% revenue growth during his tenure. He previously held leadership positions at leading technology companies including SingleStore, NGINX (acquired by F5 Networks), and Acquia (acquired by Vista Equity Partners). Guagenti also serves as an advisor to a number of visionary AI and data companies; DragonflyDB, Memgraph, and Treeverse.

“While Tabnine’s roots are in code generation, we continue to expand its use case to the rest of the SDLC. To accomplish this, we are building a team that not only deeply understands development teams, but also the challenges that modern organizations face when building software,” said Dror Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Tabnine. “Peter is an invaluable addition to Tabnine, with deep experience and the ability to build teams and deliver results. He is critical as we take the next steps in our evolution.”

As an early innovator in generative AI, Tabnine continues to execute on its vision to provide a platform that serves developers at every step of the SDLC — from code completion all the way to deployment — with some users already using Tabnine to complete more than 50% of their code. Most recently, in June the company unveiled Tabnine Chat, an AI code assistant that writes code and answers questions against organizations’ codebase. Built with privacy and security at the forefront, Tabnine Chat combines the latest large language models (LLMs) with familiarity of each user’s codebase to simplify and accelerate software development and help developers create business outcomes faster.

Fiverr International Ltd., the company that is changing how the world works together, today announced the appointment of Matti Yahav as CMO and Yael Garten to its board of directors. The addition of Matti and Yael is part of Fiverr’s broader strategy to build an iconic brand and drive continued innovation.

Matti Yahav
Matti brings with him over 20 years of marketing experience to Fiverr. He has worked with some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Lego, Disney, Nestle, and SodaStream. During his time at SodaStream, Matti spent over seven years on the Global Management Team, five of which were as CMO. His leadership resulted in groundbreaking efforts that significantly impacted the brand and business results. Matti is stepping into the role previously held by Gali Arnon, for the past six years, where she has built Fiverr into a globally recognized brand. Gali Arnon has been promoted to a new role as Chief Business Officer, Marketplace, where she will focus on leading Fiverr’s marketplace strategy, growth, and product development. Matti joined the company on November 1, 2023.

Yael Garten
Dr. Yael Garten is a technology business leader with 20 years of extensive experience in data science, machine learning, and converting data into actionable products and business strategies. Yael was the AI/ML Director of Data Science and Engineering at Apple for the last six years and before that, was Director of Data Science at LinkedIn Corporation. Before joining LinkedIn, Yael was a Research Scientist and Text Mining Lead at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
She also serves on the Levi Strauss & Co. Board of Directors, which she joined in 2020. She will replace Philippe Botteri, who has been a member of the board since 2016.

“I am delighted to welcome such top-tier talent to the leadership team at Fiverr. Matti has proved during his broad career his ability to make marketing work for the business while still putting creativity at the heart of driving brand love,” said Micha Kaufman, founder and CEO of Fiverr. “Yael brings a wealth of expertise in data, AI, and machine learning, with a deep understanding of two-sided marketplaces, and will be an enormous asset to Fiverr as we evolve the future of work. There is an enormous opportunity ahead of us and both Matti and Yael’s experience will prove incredibly valuable as we continue to grow and build the company.”

aytm (Ask Your Target Market), the leading agile consumer insights platform for some of the world's most notable brands announces the hiring of Johnny Caldwell as Client Director, EMEA & APAC. Caldswell's appointment signals aytm's continued expansion into global markets, Johnny will partner with internal stakeholders to grow teams throughout key strategic regions.

"Johnny has earned a renowned reputation throughout the global consumer insights industry," said Lev Mazin, CEO of aytm. "His decades of expertise combined with a relentless pursuit of client success makes him the ideal leader as we enter this exciting new phase of growth for aytm."

"Johnny brings thought provoking creativity to our Global CPG team here at aytm, his enthusiasm for the industry shines and offers face to face time with clients with focus on growing our European partnerships. Here we grow again!" said Lisa Santos, VP of Client Engagement.

Johnny Caldwell is an accomplished research business strategist and insights thought leader with over 33 years of experience in market research and online panel.  His accolades include being awarded a fellowship of the UK's Market Research Society in 2021, and have seen him play an integral part in launching several insights startups throughout the course of his career.

Most recently serving as Senior Director of Partnerships EMEA & US with Pureprofile, Caldwell has punctuated his track record by helping insights teams bridge the gap between traditional research and tech-enabled, always-on insights. He is based in London England and focused on growing aytm's presence across Europe and beyond.

"I'm excited to join aytm and lend my support as we continue to expand into international markets," said Caldwell. "The company is uniquely positioned to deliver revolutionary insights technology to teams globally, and I look forward to building an exceptional team  empowering our clients in these strategic markets."

Caldwell's hire comes on the heels of aytm's recent Insights Portal release, which allows insights seekers to streamline the process of combining and analyzing results from multiple tracking studies and concept tests—all in a single, convenient portal.

End-to-end automated ad platform starts with creator-led sponsored content ad reads on YouTube, attracting leading advertisers and top creators

Agentio, the first-of-its-kind AI-powered ad platform for sponsored creator content, launched today with $4.25M in seed investment funding. The round was co-led by Craft Ventures & AlleyCorp, with participation from additional institutional investors including Antler, Protagonist, and Permanent Capital.

Other strategic investors include Neal Arthur (Global CEO of Wieden+Kennedy); Cody Ko (Mega-creator); Rory Paterson (Global Vice President of Media, Expedia Group); Jeff Ragovin (Co-Founder Buddy Media /Salesforce); Michael Sugar (Academy Award-winning producer); Steven Galanis (Co-Founder of Cameo); and Elizabeth Cutler (Co-Founder, SoulCycle and Peoplehood) in addition to other leading creators and marketing leaders.

Agentio was co-founded by Arthur Leopold, former President and first employee at Cameo, who led all go-to-market functions and scaled the celebrity talent marketplace that drove $500M in sales, and Jonathan Meyers, a former engineer and manager at Spotify who led the Automated Content Marketing team that drove multi-million monthly active user outcomes using AI/ML. The duo has now launched the first automated ad platform for creator content, starting with YouTube creator-led sponsored content ad reads, leveraging the team's firsthand experience with the pain points that both creators and marketers face.

Until today, the process of connecting creators to marketers has been manual and labor intensive, and has largely been conducted offline at great expense to both sides. Agentio's platform now makes it as easy to buy sponsored content as buying Facebook and Google ads. By automating a previously unscalable process, Agentio aims to shift a meaningful percentage of the $300B digital ad spend market to highly-performant, creator-led ad reads. Agentio is launching with 30+ second creator-led ad reads on YouTube, capitalizing on an underpriced and under-monetized ad unit with abundant inventory from top creators. The team will then rapidly expand to other ad channels.

"Marketers need a performant and scalable ad channel more than ever, and we're unlocking humanized and authentic content, in a programmatic way through our first-of-its-kind technology," says Arthur Leopold, Co-Founder & CEO at Agentio. "We're thrilled to partner with leading VCs, marketers, and creators to finally scale this ad unit and drive real, measurable business outcomes through underserved and undervalued attention on YouTube."

The Agentio ad platform offers marketers direct access to a premium network of creators with bespoke and highly engaged audiences. Its patent-pending AI technology automates creator and brand matches relevant to a brand's audience by giving marketers a superhuman understanding of a creator. Agentio also offers more liquidity and revenue to creators, enabling them to list their inventory in real-time, so that brands can auto-bid on available ad inventory, in seconds. Agentio's first-of-its-kind technology enables brands to significantly scale their creator campaigns, without additional bandwidth constraints.

"Agentio's platform is an industry-first, utilizing predictive models to match creators and brands seamlessly," says Jonathan Meyers, Co-Founder & CTO of Agentio. "With access to first-party ad performance data and a machine level understanding of creator content, our product's ability to deliver authentic and performant ad reads through end-to-end automation, is highly-contrarian and will completely transform the way sponsored ad content occurs across various social channels."

"Creator-led marketing is one of the most effective ways to advertise, but the challenge is scaling these programs across platforms," said Bryan Rosenblatt, partner at Craft Ventures. "Agentio is building a standardized, scalable platform that combines the easy, modern ad buying experience marketers have come to expect with the magic of pairing the right creator with the right advertiser. This is something that many of our portfolio companies have been asking for, and that the broader advertising industry needs."

Agentio has already launched a beta-version of the platform with leading spenders of YouTube sponsored content and top creators. The funding will be used to accelerate Agentio's product development and go-to-market strategy with creators and brands.

"We are thrilled to back Agentio and firmly believe that the Agentio team is poised to reinvent how sponsored content is built, bought, and sold," says Susannah Shipton, Partner at AlleyCorp. "In the same way that DoubleClick revolutionized display advertising (and ultimately built the infrastructure for ad content on the internet), we expect that Agentio will build the new infrastructural engine for sponsored content – a far bigger market opportunity. Just as importantly, we believe that using Agentio will be a massive unlock for creators and marketers in terms of time and expense, meaning they can spend more time doing what they do best: creating enduring content that engages audiences around the world."

Certification demonstrates commitment to the highest standard of data security and compliance

OneSignal, the world's leading customer engagement platform, today announced the successful completion of its Type II System and Organization Controls (SOC 2) examination. This certification highlights OneSignal's commitment to ensuring the security and privacy of its users' data.

In line with its commitment to provide robust data security, the company also announced that its platform is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant and can provide a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to Enterprise Plan customers, ensuring the proper handling of protected health information.

"Maintaining the trust of our customers is one of our top priorities, so we take the privacy and security of our customers' data very seriously," said Nelson Cheung, Head of Data Security at OneSignal. "Achieving SOC 2 Type II certification underscores OneSignal's dedication to robust controls and processes to ensure the protection of our clients' data. Furthermore, the HIPAA certification ensures that OneSignal is equipped to handle sensitive healthcare data securely." 

These certifications underscore OneSignal's continuous effort to maintain the trust and confidence of its global user base, reinforcing the company's pledge to uphold the most stringent data protection practices. With over two million users currently on OneSignal's platform delivering over 12 billion messages daily, OneSignal recognizes the sensitivity surrounding data storage and utilization.

"OneSignal understands the importance of secure data management and the level of trust our users place in our platform," said George Deglin, CEO at OneSignal. "Obtaining the SOC 2 Type II certification not only validates our dedication to data security but also reflects our ongoing commitment to preserving our users' privacy."

The new capabilities are designed for today's modern workforce, leveraging AI to increase productivity regardless of location

Mural, the leading visual work platform for the Enterprise, today announced its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, which provides Copilot users with an AI-powered experience that can be used in conjunction with Mural. Mural is one of the first integrations with Microsoft 365 Copilot which became generally available (GA) today and is the only visual collaboration solution in the initial set of third-party integrations being offered. Alongside this integration, Mural is launching Mural AI, which includes the AI-powered features: actions, mind maps, and clustering. Mural is firmly committed to creating tools and developing partnerships that help teams harness the power of AI to solve the most pressing challenges faced by teams in the enterprise today. Through in-platform AI solutions and responsible, secure integrations with existing tools, Mural is giving teams across the enterprise the technology they need to work together better, faster, and smarter, for increased productivity and job satisfaction.

Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot 
Microsoft selected Mural to be among a group of premier partners — as well as the only visual work platform — supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot at launch. With its Microsoft 365 Copilot integration, Mural is taking the next step to providing a seamless visual collaboration experience and saving organizations time as part of the central Copilot experience. With the integration, members can leverage simple, natural language prompts to streamline their daily tasks. Using Mural and Copilot, a sales representative can easily find the customer discovery mural for their account; a designer can quickly summarize a brainstorming mural with hundreds of sticky notes; and a product manager can efficiently retrieve a project kickoff mural template — and much more.

Mural AI Features
Mural's purpose-built AI features empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons, and work more efficiently together. Mural AI features help teams automate redundant and routine tasks, quickly synthesize information, and generate new ideas so they can spend their time doing the higher-level thinking that humans do best.

• Mind maps: Mind maps are a great visual tool for following ideas and seeing where they lead. Mural AI can generate mind maps automatically from a single prompt and allow users to keep following the thread, empowering teams to create and develop great ideas faster and more effectively than ever before.
• Actions: Actions helps members save time and simplify workflows with natural language prompts to quickly and efficiently complete common tasks. Summarize a group of sticky notes, get ideas to jumpstart a brainstorming session, generate icebreakers and more from a single entry-point that's intuitive and easy to use.
• Clustering: When teams are generating ideas together, it can take a lot of time and energy to find those common threads that are critical to moving forward with confidence. Mural's AI clustering makes finding and sorting ideas a breeze, paving the way to new insights and enabling a smoother, faster-decision making process so teams can focus on the bigger picture.

Mural's product is built to streamline workflows and allow knowledge workers to focus on the work that matters.

"The new AI features in Mural are a brainstorming game changer. Pushing people to really dig deep to be creative can be challenging. The ability to quickly generate a mind map to jumpstart thinking will be very powerful. Using AI to quickly group ideas will cut significant time out of a workshop normally spent just 'organizing' thoughts. Now we can focus on creating thoughts." - Cindi P., Operations Lead, Professional Services Company

The Future of AI
A recent study carried out by Mural found that nearly two-thirds of all knowledge workers are excited and optimistic about AI's ability to help teams work together more effectively. Specifically, they recognize the power of AI to reduce repetitive tasks and automate processes. Managers are even more optimistic about AI than individual contributors (88% vs 74%). Mural's AI features, along with its Copilot integration, empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons and work more efficiently together, all while ensuring thorough security and privacy from start to finish.

"We're thrilled to announce our integration with Microsoft Copilot, which brings AI-enabled collaborative tools to the ever-evolving workplace," said David Baga, CEO of Mural. "Mural is committed to developing innovative solutions that address the pain points of teamwork, and this integration represents a significant milestone in that regard. Over the years, we've had a great partnership with Microsoft, and we are delighted to be one of the first plugins available at launch for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The future of work is AI-enabled, and Mural is proud to be leading the charge with Microsoft to bring innovative ways to collaborate to the workforce."

"We are at a major inflection point where AI is reshaping work and transforming how we collaborate," said Srini Raghavan, VP of Product Management for Microsoft Teams Ecosystem. "Through our expanded integrations our customers will be leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot and Mural plugin, to improve efficiency, productivity, and collaboration within their teams."

Mural's products are built for the enterprise and take a proactive approach in addressing the security needs of its users when building and deploying its AI capabilities. The company maintains active SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications and complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations. In addition, Mural is Microsoft 365 Certified. Mural plans to continue to develop the Mural AI offering and further extend its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve how teams work together today and in the future.