Growth capital to expand market reach and harness generative AI to expedite innovation, as Telcos migrate legacy core communications networks to the cloud

Alianza, Inc., the leading cloud communications platform for service providers, today announced it raised $61 million in new growth equity and debt financing. The latest round reflects a 70% increase in valuation for the company since March 2021. The equity round is supported by a syndicate of undisclosed institutional investors, as well as strategic partners. The debt financing was provided by Texas Capital Bank.

Third quarter 2023 marked nine consecutive years of quarter over quarter revenue growth for Alianza. Future market opportunities remain substantial for the company with more than 100 million voice lines in North America nearing end-of-life and primed for transition from legacy TDM and softswitch infrastructure to the cloud. Alianza will allocate new funding to:

• Expand its sales team 400% to further penetrate current market opportunities.
• Accelerate delivery of its previously announced commitment to invest $200 million in research and development to empower cloud communications innovation for service providers.

Urgency to transform network infrastructure has only increased in the past 12 months as the gap between legacy network capabilities and over-the-top competitors continues to grow – increasingly leaving communications service providers on the sidelines, rather than competing for valuable services revenue. The cloudification of core communications networks is foundational for service providers to offer innovative retail solutions, as well as a prerequisite to leverage the future benefits of generative AI.

"As the industry rises to face new market dynamics and rapidly evolving innovations in technology, recent investments in Alianza mark another milestone for the company, reinforcing the power of our full-stack capabilities to enable service providers to meet the future from a position of strength," said Brian Beutler, founder and CEO of Alianza.

"Service providers are seeking next-gen voice and unified communications solutions as their existing infrastructure reaches end-of-life, and they look to improve their positioning in an increasingly competitive market," said Brent Kelly, Principal Analyst in Omdia's Digital Workplace practice. "In order for service providers to thrive, they must become more than broadband network operators. They must reduce their cost-of-service delivery while improving the end-user customers' experience. They need to transform from telcos to tech-cos. Alianza is well positioned to help service providers as they navigate this transition."

Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and In the Know video content will be brought to Xperi’s in-cabin entertainment platform, DTS AutoStage Video Service, Powered by TiVo™

Today, Yahoo announced a partnership with Xperi Inc., to bring Yahoo video content from Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, and In the Know to Xperi’s DTS AutoStage Video Service, Powered by TiVo. Xperi’s entertainment platform will first be deployed in the all-new BMW 5 series and future BMW models, bringing Yahoo content to the in-car entertainment experience for the very first time.

“From taking a break between errands to sitting in line at school pick-up, drivers spend a significant amount of time idle in their vehicles,” said Lara Davis, Chief Strategy Officer of Yahoo. “Through this partnership with leading automotive entertainment platform Xperi, we are now able to offer snackable content in a way that fits seamlessly into people’s daily routines, where they already spend time.”

BMW drivers in the United States, United Kingdom, Korea, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany will have access to Yahoo Finance Video-On-Demand, Yahoo Sports video podcasts, and In The Know video stream content at the touch of a button.

“Xperi provides a best-in-class in-car connected entertainment experience for BMW drivers,” said Jeff Jury, senior vice president and general manager of connected car, Xperi. “Through partnerships with content providers like Yahoo, we can deliver free premium content across news, sports, and entertainment and offer consumers a personalized viewing experience tailored to their interests.”

With growing consumer demand for premium content on the go, Yahoo aims to reach its audiences no matter the time or place. From game updates on Yahoo Sports to the latest market news on Yahoo Finance, Yahoo keeps customers up to speed with the information that’s most important to them.

• 88% believe stronger regulation of AI is essential, but majority (61%) believe it won’t solve AI risk

• Survey reveals leaders’ 2024 plans: cautious investment, return-to-office mandates, and hiring

New data reveals artificial intelligence is challenging organizations in significant ways, with only 15% of global tech leaders reporting they are prepared for the demands of generative AI and 88% saying stronger regulation of AI is essential, according to the 25^th annual Digital Leadership Report, the world’s largest and longest-running annual survey of technology leadership, published by Nash Squared, parent company to Harvey Nash.

The global study of more than 2,000 technology leaders found that despite the explosive predicted market growth of AI, it isn’t yet widely used: only 1 in 10 U.S. organizations report having large-scale implementation of AI but almost half (48%) are piloting or conducting small-scale implementation. Concerns around the effective application of AI are significant, with almost 9 in 10 global leaders saying stronger regulation of AI is critical, yet 61% say it won’t be effective, compared to 54% in the U.S. who say the same. Compounding these challenges, AI is the number one reported tech skills shortage in the U.S.

“Despite the attention around AI, the application and adoption of AI is really in its nascent stage,” said Jason Pyle, President of Harvey Nash US & Canada Market. “What our survey findings reveal is that the technology behind AI is moving faster than the strategies and policies to support it, and tech leaders are finding themselves squeezed in the middle. As we look ahead to 2024, we expect tech leaders to focus on a few key areas within AI: developing more guidelines around the use and application of AI, putting safety and privacy front and center, and demonstrating its ROI and metrics.”

Tech Leaders Plan for Cautious Investment

After the hypergrowth of 2021 and 2022, the recent slowdown, and aggressive monetary tightening, digital leaders are still optimistic about 2024 growth. Forty-five percent (45%) of U.S. tech leaders expect an increase in their budgets (almost identical to 44% of global tech leaders who say the same) and almost half (46%) of U.S. leaders expect to increase headcount, similar to 50% of global leaders who say the same.

Salary changes have been impacted by the economic slowdown and high inflation. Sixty-two percent (62%) of tech leaders report that the rising cost of living is making salary demands unsustainable. About half report salary has either stayed the same (42%) or decreased (7%) year-over-year. Twenty-nine percent (29%) received a salary increase of 5%, and any larger salary increases drop off significantly after that.

Return-to-Office Mandates Result in Fewer Female Tech Workers

The survey found that when there is a high number of mandated days in the office, fewer females choose to be part of the tech team there. For companies without mandated in-office days, 28% of global tech new hires in the last two years are female. That number drops to 22% at companies with a mandated five days in the office.

Almost half (48%) of U.S. companies surveyed require some level of in-office time. The most popular number of required in-office days is overwhelmingly three, with 51% setting that expectation, compared to 15% requiring five days, 15% requiring two days, 11% requiring one day, and 9% requiring four days.

In general, female representation on tech teams remained the same year-over-year, globally at 23% and slightly higher in the U.S. at 27%. Women in leadership roles stalled, remaining at 14% year-over-year globally and dropping from 21% to 20% in the U.S. since last year.

Skills Shortage Eases Slightly

Forty-five percent (45%) of U.S. tech leaders shared the skills shortage is preventing them from keeping pace with change. While this is down from 69% in 2021 and 59% in 2022, this year’s number is primarily a result of the slowing market and reduced overall hiring.

Artificial intelligence, technical architecture, big data/analytics/data engineering, enterprise/solution architecture, and project management are the top five skills in demand in the U.S. The same skills shortages are found globally, with the only exception that AI did not make the global top five needed skills.

In recent years, cybersecurity skills have occupied the top three most scarce skills, but this year it’s seen one of the largest falls in demand. In the U.S., the number of tech leaders struggling to find cybersecurity talent has dropped sharply from 43% to 18%.

A Board Seat Helps Outperform the Competition

Over two thirds (68%) of global tech leaders are members of the operational board/executive management team, the highest level since 2017 (71%).

When technology leaders are given a seat at the top table this delivers advantages over the competition, including a 20% uplift in adopting new technology and a 24% advantage in attracting and retaining talent.

Salsify and It'sRapid announced a strategic partnership to address the challenges of creating ecommerce images at scale

In response to the growing demand for Mobile Ready Hero Images in the ecommerce space, It'sRapid, a leader in workflow optimization, is thrilled to announce a groundbreaking partnership with Salsify, a pioneer in Product Experience Management (PXM). This collaboration introduces the It'sRapid Mobile Ready Hero Image Workflow, built on Salsify's platform extensions, an innovative solution designed to address the challenges of creating these images at scale.

As Mobile Ready Hero Images become indispensable in ecommerce, the complexity of creating them at scale has posed significant challenges. Customization with specific product images, adherence to retailer specifications, and the need for constant updates during product refreshes have hindered efficiency. The traditional design process, often slow and manual, diverted valuable creative resources.

In a bid to revolutionize this process, It'sRapid, known for its commitment to workflow enhancement, has partnered with Salsify to unveil the Mobile Ready Hero Image Workflow. Integrated seamlessly with the Salsify PXM platform, this solution accelerates image creation by allowing users to select products for which they want to create mobile ready hero images directly within the Salsify interface. The workflow connects to It'sRapid for image generation, ensuring a fully integrated experience. Custom adjustments can be made effortlessly in the It'sRapid UI.

"Our partnership with Salsify marks a significant leap forward in streamlining ecommerce workflows," said David Feinleib of It'sRapid. "The It'sRapid Mobile Ready Hero Image Workflow is poised to revolutionize how brands and retailers create and update product images efficiently."

"Partnering with It'sRapid reflects our dedication to offering cutting-edge solutions in the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape, via the Salsify PXM platform," stated Joe Gaudreau, VP of Corporate Development at Salsify. "This collaboration will empower brands utilizing Salsify and It'sRapid to navigate the complexities of online retail with agility and smart automation."

Microsoft Azure customers are now Incentivized globally for adoption of best-in-class Data Lineage as Octopai gains Preferred Solution status on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

Octopai, a global pioneering force in metadata management and enterprise-grade data lineage solutions, is pleased to announce its recent achievement of Microsoft's Co-Sell Incentivized status. This latest advancement solidifies an already robust alliance, now encompassing a collaborative selling approach. Microsoft's global sales force is newly motivated to champion Octopai's advanced metadata management solutions.

Upon achieving this Co-Sell Incentivized status, Octopai emerges as a preferred solution in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace for metadata management. For Microsoft Azure customers, this comes with distinct advantages: purchasing Octopai directly from the Azure Marketplace means Microsoft will contribute 100% of qualifying offer purchases toward your organization's Azure consumption commitment for each invoice period, inclusive of software and IP costs. For both Octopai and its customers, this streamlined approach significantly reduces the lengthy and tedious procurement process. Additionally, Microsoft's global sales force is now incentivized to actively promote Octopai's advanced metadata management solutions, providing even more momentum for businesses to take advantage of this robust collaboration.

“We are immensely proud to reach this milestone, a testament to the synergistic alignment between Octopai’s best-in-class metadata management solutions and Microsoft's robust Azure platform. Earning the Co-Sell Ready and MACC statuses is not just an achievement for us, but a gateway for our clients to experience enhanced efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and innovation,” said Zinette Ezra, Vice President of Product at Octopai.

“For Microsoft customers undergoing a cloud transformation, Octopai’s data lineage emerges as a critical component ensuring business continuity, offering a seamless, insightful, and secure transition. As we step into this enriched partnership, our focus remains steadfast on empowering businesses with unparalleled insights and analytics, driving data-driven decision-making to unprecedented heights.”

In a dynamic data landscape, what distinguishes Octopai's metadata management solution is its cutting-edge automation and mapping for data lineage, advanced insights, and seamless interoperability with cloud, on-prem, and hybrid systems.

Octopai's platform offers data map layers with intuitive visualization, aiding businesses in tracing their data lineage with precision. It is designed to be a comprehensive solution, streamlining data hygiene, assisting migrations, and ensuring data quality. This collaboration with Microsoft further amplifies its capabilities, granting users a more cohesive and integrated data management experience with Microsoft's suite of cloud, data warehouse, data movement and BI products.

By directly integrating with Microsoft's suite of data solutions like Power BI, SQL Synapse DB, Azure SQL DWH, Azure Data Factory, SSAS, SSRS, SQLS, MySQL, and SSIS, Octopai allows for the widest breadth of end-to-end data lineage.

These integrations allow enterprises to trust their data at every step, enabling data teams to dive deep into their data's journey and make decisions with newfound clarity and saving significant hours. These time savings are particularly impactful in areas like ad-hoc analysis, impact analysis, training, vendor data management, and production troubleshooting. These time savings are particularly impactful in areas like ad-hoc analysis, impact analysis, training, vendor data management, and production troubleshooting.

In line with strategic initiatives like Self-Service, Preserving Tribal Knowledge, Data Literacy and Democratization, Cloud Transformations, Migrations, and Data Landscape Technical Debt Reduction plans, Octopai offers more than immediate efficiency gains. Its deep, real-time insights into data flows can significantly accelerate and de-risk these strategic projects, making it a long-term investment in operational efficiency and risk management.

With Octopai's collaboration, users can harness the comprehensive features of Microsoft's data suite, achieving optimized data-driven operation, and for Microsoft Customers going through a Cloud Transformation Octopai'd data lineage is a critical component to ensure business continuity.

AI Companion will expand support for 32 new languages, new capabilities for Zoom Events, in-meeting questions, and meeting coaching

Today Zoom Video Communications, Inc. announced that Zoom AI Companion, the company’s generative AI assistant, has reached a milestone less than two months after its launch, with more than 125,000 accounts using AI Companion, generating more than one million meeting summaries. Zoom also announced new capabilities, additional language support, and further enhancements to existing capabilities for AI Companion.

“Providing the best value to our customers across our platform is core to our mission, which is why we made AI Companion available at no additional cost,¹ and we continue to introduce new AI capabilities at Zoom speed, so more of our customers can get the most out of Zoom’s AI innovations,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “Our unique federated approach allows us to dynamically utilize different models, helping to reduce AI overhead costs and provide broad access to generative AI.”

New Zoom AI Companion capabilities
Beginning today, AI Companion users will be able to use the in-meeting questions capability in new languages, as well as receive short meeting summary overviews at the beginning of full meeting summaries.

• Users can now use AI Companion’s in-meeting questions capability in seven new languages (preview).
  
  
• Based on feedback from users, the meeting summaries capability now includes an overview at the top of the summary in emailed summaries, providing users with a shorter version of the meeting summary in addition to the full meeting summary. Meeting summary overviews will be available in summaries delivered via continuous meeting chat in November.

AI Companion capabilities available in November

Zoom will continue to improve AI Companion, with the following new capabilities planned to be available in November:

• Both AI Companion meeting summary and in-meeting questions capabilities will support a total of 32 new languages, in preview.
  
  
• AI Companion will provide users with meeting coach capabilities, beginning with speech analytics in Smart Recordings. Speech analytics will include the meeting host’s talk-listen ratio, talk speed, and speech fillers so that hosts can glean valuable insights into how they engage with meeting participants during Zoom Meetings.
  
  
• AI Companion will be available in Zoom Events, with chat compose capabilities for lobby chats and assistance with composing emails for registration, marketing, and ticketing communications.
  
  
• Zoom will introduce an optional control for customers to specify that AI Companion capabilities for their organization only use the Zoom large language model.

What Zoom customers are saying about AI Companion

“AI Companion’s meeting summaries and smart recordings are the first technological innovations in the last decade that bring us tangible time-saving, efficient benefits. People can prioritize specific meetings and collaborations while remaining confident they aren’t missing out on competing activities.” - Chris Blackstone, director, Digital Workplace and End User Computing, Convera

“Zoom’s AI Companion meeting summary tool is helping us become better communicators. Guided by its impressively accurate output, our teams are more consistently adhering to best practices in meetings such as stating the objective upfront and clearly outlining and assigning action items. Plus, we were able to save money by offboarding a vendor and save time by not having to produce meeting notes ourselves.” - Lucas Oliveira, COO, Bizzycar, Inc.

“Meeting summaries has saved our team a ton of time. We feel that everyone is in the loop without necessarily having to attend every meeting, which results in better collaboration.” - Karl Morsgofian, CIO, Gainsight

“Zoom's AI Companion exemplifies our vision for enhanced collaboration and innovation. With automated, detailed meeting summaries, it streamlines information sharing and boosts productivity. This inclusion in our Zoom plan not only improves efficiency but also yields significant cost savings, reflecting our commitment to a smarter, more connected future.” - John Georgatos, CIO, Mike Morse Law Firm

New product provides automated tagging and classification with actionable metadata for secure data management at scale

Immuta, a data security leader, today announced the release of Immuta Discover, a new product for automated tagging and classification on cloud data platforms. Immuta Discover enables data teams to establish and maintain highly accurate metadata for the primary purpose of data access control, monitoring and regulatory compliance.

Immuta Discover automatically and continuously discovers structured data in cloud data platforms. It can also leverage existing metadata pulled from enterprise data catalogs like Alation. Leveraging all of this metadata, Immuta Discover provides visibility of all sensitive data, which is critical for building data policies to protect the data and analyzing its usage. As a core pillar of Immuta's comprehensive Data Security Platform, Immuta Discover eliminates manual, error-prone processes and helps organizations improve data security, gain full visibility into their data and unlock its value.

Discovering, tagging and classifying sensitive data with highly accurate and descriptive metadata is a critical component of a successful data security strategy. However, today's organizations are burdened with increasingly dispersed data as the number of data sources and users continues to grow. Existing solutions are not designed to tag and classify data across all of these sources with the accuracy and granularity required for security and governance. The lack of accurate metadata creates security gaps and blind spots, making it difficult to meet stringent compliance regulations.

Immuta Discover allows data teams to easily and accurately scan, classify and tag data so they can apply data control policies and monitor data access. This allows teams to gain full visibility and context into all of their data assets, and better protect and monitor their sensitive data for enhanced data security posture management. Immuta offers 60+ pre-built and domain-specific classifiers, providing organizations with the flexibility to tailor data classifications to their unique business needs and based on their desired confidence levels.

"Immuta Discover is the foundational component to making any data security program work within your organization and to remain compliant," said Mo Plassnig, Chief Product Officer at Immuta. "It's the first step that must happen in order to protect your data. Data is constantly changing in today's digital age. Organizations must fully understand what data they have – with accurate classification – and maintain a trustworthy inventory of sensitive data across cloud platforms in order to meet growing data security and access demands. And Immuta Discover helps our customers accomplish just this."

With Immuta Discover, customers can automatically identify and classify sensitive data by leveraging the following new capabilities:

• Accurate and actionable metadata for data security – Immuta Discover provides accurate, granular metadata and actionable tags on sensitive data so users can seamlessly secure data across cloud platforms at scale. The product enables full metadata visibility into what data requires access controls and auditing. The metadata can be leveraged directly in Immuta Secure to govern the data and in Immuta Detect to monitor data access.
• Agentless, multi-cloud data discovery – Immuta Discover scans and classifies data natively, with no software to install and no agent running next to the cloud data platform. The data never leaves the data platform. This approach simplifies operations and is secure and compliant, enabling data teams to be more efficient with an always up-to-date data inventory.
• Out-of-the-box and customizable regulatory frameworks – Immuta Discover automatically categorizes data that is subject to leading regulatory frameworks such as CCPA, GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI, to implement compliant access control policies. These frameworks are created and maintained by Immuta's in-house Legal Engineering Team, and additionally enable customers to customize frameworks based on their interpretations of specific regulations for accelerated compliance.

"I am thrilled to see the addition and announcement of Immuta Discover to Immuta's Data Security Platform," said Sanjeev Mohan, former Gartner analyst and founder of SanjMo. "Efficiently tagging and classifying data is a critical first step in protecting it against the growing number of threats in today's data management landscape. Being able to scan data natively in the cloud data platform is an innovation that enables data discovery at scale."

Immuta offers a comprehensive Data Security Platform that enables sensitive data discovery, security and access control and activity monitoring. Immuta Discover automatically discovers and classifies sensitive data relevant to the leading regulatory frameworks. Immuta Detect adds critical user and data access behavior monitoring and auditing. And, Immuta Secure provides scalable data access control and enforcement across cloud data platforms. Together, these capabilities give customers comprehensive data security and governance for analytic workloads.

Transaction feeds into company’s vision for unified identity security for the modern enterprise

Today, the UK subsidiary of SailPoint Technologies, Inc., a leader in enterprise identity security, completed its acquisition of Osirium, a UK-based security company dedicated to solving complex access needs. This acquisition will feed into the company’s vision to unify visibility, oversight, and protection across all types of access, both regular and highly sensitive, into one solution.

“Enterprises don't have time to sort through access rights across disparate identity solutions, nor should they – the concept of seeing and managing sensitive access separately from regular access is a dated notion and does not scale in today's accelerated business environment,” said Grady Summers, EVP of Product, SailPoint. “With Osirium, we’ll deliver a holistic view of regular and sensitive access for our customers, versus requiring them to sort through multiple systems to cobble together a singular view of all types of access at any given time across their organization. This will provide immense clarity and real-time control for organizations over what and how all of their identities are accessing data and applications.”

This acquisition comes on the heels of and adds fuel to the company’s recently unveiled vision for the market, a unified approach to enterprise identity security, one that addresses every type of enterprise identity, every type and location of data, while managing risk across the spectrum. This next generation of identity security is underpinned by Atlas, SailPoint’s identity security platform that serves as the foundation for SailPoint Identity Security Cloud. Once integrated, the Osirium technology will become part of the SailPoint Identity Security Cloud offering.

“Current approaches to protecting privileged access simply cannot keep up with the rate of change happening across today’s enterprise, nor do they consider privileged access controls needed across the entire digital enterprise ecosystem. We believe privilege needs to extend beyond the realm of servers and databases today, providing holistic oversight and unified, policy-driven security controls for all types of access, and extending those controls to applications and data,” said Matt Mills, President of Worldwide Field Operations, SailPoint. “Other approaches either lack the automation needed to drive quicker, smarter decisions, or they attempt to converge various identity technologies together in an attempt to drive efficiency. Neither of these approaches work in fully securing today’s enterprise.”

Mills continued to explain, “At SailPoint, we believe that unified, AI-driven identity security is the clear path forward in enabling every enterprise to manage and secure – in real-time – all enterprise access to critical data and applications. This acquisition is just one piece of the puzzle as we look to drive this unified approach forward to the benefit of our customers worldwide.”