Volumez, a revolutionary modern cloud data infrastructure company, today announced its availability in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, which provides services and solutions for managing Azure cloud data infrastructure.

Through the Azure Marketplace, users can select Volumez' composable data infrastructure software-as-a-service (SaaS) to set up direct Linux-based data paths via a simple declarative interface for Azure Kubernetes environments (AKS) and Azure virtual machines (VMs).

This disruptive approach bypasses traditional storage controllers, thereby enabling significantly higher and predictable throughput of up to 2 million IOPS and 200 microseconds low latency, per volume. Volumez provides a scalable approach that maximizes existing compute power and enables fast provisioning for Kubernetes environments, up to 20 volumes in less than 40 seconds for multiple volumes with fast snapshots. As a result, applications can be scaled quickly in the cloud with enterprise-quality performance exceeding on-premises capabilities. 

"With our presence on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers can now access and deliver enterprise grade storage for large numbers of their most demanding workloads," said John Blumenthal, Volumez chief product and business officer.  "Our composability service creates the highest performing data infrastructure in market, delivering unrivaled IOPS, latency, and throughput for databases and complex applications like AI/ML."

"Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure," said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft Corp. "We're happy to welcome Volumez composable Data Infrastructure solution to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem."

Expanded alliance brings complementary skillsets to strengthen client outcomes

Today, IBM and KPMG LLP announced they are expanding their alliance to help enable business transformations for clients implementing SAP S/4HANA^® across the energy and utilities industry. Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects run the potential risk of failing without the right technology in place and the right business expertise to fully integrate it. IBM Consulting and KPMG together are bringing a breadth of consulting, operations, tax, risk and finance experience to the ERP implementation process to help energy and utilities companies automate and manage core business processes for optimal performance.

IBM Consulting is a global leader in SAP transformations, delivering cohesive collaborative solutions based on in-depth industry experience, AI, and hybrid multi cloud deployment. IBM has well-established technology and deep experience within a broad partner ecosystem, including a 50-year history partnering with SAP. KPMG brings business-led, SAP-enabled functional transformation experience in more than 25 countries while leveraging deep energy and utility industry knowledge to deliver business value.

"As companies across industries accelerate the shift to cloud and contemplate the move to SAP S/4HANA, they will need the support from trusted experts to help achieve success in any transformation project," said Bill Piotrowski, Americas SAP Leader for IBM Consulting. "We're excited to partner with KPMG to provide Energy & Utilities clients access to industry insights that will help them capitalize on their SAP investment supported by experience in supporting numerous SAP S/4HANA transformations worldwide."

KPMG and IBM Consulting bring complementary skillsets across SAP technology implementation, cross-sector business processes, regulatory, risk, finance, and tax considerations, and operational issues. The combination of the firms' skills and experience can strengthen outcomes for the benefit of clients, and successful enterprise resource planning transformation across the energy and utilities sector.

"Identifying the potential value created by financial considerations up front in the planning of an ERP implementation can significantly improve the likelihood of success," said Brad Stansberry, Energy & Chemical Industry Advisory Leader at KPMG. "Working with IBM Consulting and the business and technical expertise they bring will expand our ability to help our joint clients accelerate productivity and unlock growth opportunities."

Together, KPMG and IBM have already delivered a comprehensive business transformation program at Liberty Utilities, a leading provider of local utility management, service and support across the United States and Canada. The four-year program builds on Liberty's "Customer First" project to revolutionize the company's Customer, Finance, Asset Management, Field Services, and Supply Chain Operations.

"IBM Consulting has been our trusted partner, and we continue our collaboration to accelerate our remarkable transformation journey," said Jody Allison, Vice President, Transformation at Liberty Utilities. "IBM's unique relationship with KPMG brings valued finance and advisory expertise which will help extend our 'Customer First' platform into every aspect of our organization, allowing us to deliver to our customer's expectations, enable our employees to serve, and facilitate growth as we will be able to easily integrate acquired businesses and assets in the future."

IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry and business expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become a trusted partner to the world's most innovative and valuable companies, helping them modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven co-creation method, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes. As the only major global systems integrator inside a technology company, we don't just advise -- we invent and build what's next together with our clients.

Indianapolis-based Ground Game Ventures leads the round to help businesses communicate effectively with non-desk employees

Yourco, the pioneering SMS-based platform designed to bridge the communication gap between non-desk employees—those who work in the field, on the plant floor, or frontlines rather than behind a desk to do their job— and the front office, successfully raised $2 million in a seed funding round. Indianapolis-based Ground Game Ventures led the round with additional support from Allos Ventures, Start Something Ventures, Elevate Ventures and Flywheel Fund. The investment will accelerate the company's mission to empower the 2.7 billion employees working outside an office setting with effective workplace communication and automation tools.

Non-desk employees are the backbone of the global economy, making up 80% of employees worldwide. Yet, these professionals often do not have the consistent, clear and accessible communication channels vital for long-term success. A staggering 55% of these employees engage with internal communications fewer than once a month, leaving many invaluable workers disengaged and dissatisfied.

Yourco co-founders Brodie and Benjamin Meyer have witnessed firsthand the disproportionate communications between the front office and the frontline. The brothers founded the business out of a need for stronger employee communications and automation tools to improve businesses' bottom lines. By offering a tiered pricing structure, including a newly introduced free plan, Yourco caters to businesses of all sizes. The platform is used by companies like Clyde's Donuts, ThreeBond, and the Indianapolis Airport Authority.

"We initially built Yourco as a communication solution for my Grandparent's family print shop," said Brodie Meyer, co-founder and CEO of Yourco. "As we acquired additional customers, we quickly realized Yourco was having a transformative impact on SMB, midmarket, and enterprise businesses alike. This funding round will allow us to accelerate our growth and product development so that we can continue to transform the way businesses engage with their non-desk employees."

Since its inception in 2021, Yourco has seen rapid growth with a 2,668% increase in monthly recurring revenue, and hundreds of customers in fields like manufacturing, construction, transportation and agriculture. By addressing employees who often lack access to computers, company emails or internet connectivity, Yourco's innovative solution eliminates the barriers associated with traditional communication and automation tools, such as downloads, passwords, internet access and data plans.

"Yourco has helped to change the way we communicate at McCarthy Auto Group," said Felisha Parker, VP of HR at McCarthy Auto Group. "We have nearly 700 employees, and 80% are non-desk based; communication is a challenge. Yourco provides a quick and easy way to reach everyone within our organization and a secure way for employees to reach HR and leadership without a computer."

Yourco's groundbreaking technology streamlines internal communication and enhances employee engagement, information dissemination and overall workplace efficiency. Additionally, the platform reduces legal risk in businesses by helping them keep personal cell phone numbers private and automatically documenting all employee communications for future reference.

The communication and automation platform is already turning heads. Earlier this year, Yourco was selected as one of five finalists in the Future of Work category for the 15th annual SXSW Pitch (formerly SXSW Accelerator).

Aman Brar, founding partner of Ground Game Ventures, who is also joining Yourco's board, expressed enthusiasm for the company's potential.

"We believe Yourco is the solution deskless workers and front offices need," Brar said. "Yourco is poised to revolutionize everyday industries that have long been overlooked. The platform's potent combination of communication and automation tools is well on the way to becoming the de facto operating system for blue collar workers and front offices. We look forward to Yourco's accelerated impact on SMB, midmarket and enterprise businesses and their valued employees."

Highlights include support for new cloud hosts, ServiceNow and Atlassian integrations, support for ephemeral instances, and more

Lacework, the data-driven cloud security company, today announced a series of updates that expand the platform's enterprise-grade capabilities to help customers do more in the cloud, securely. Lacework is extending its platform support to new cloud providers in order to give customers more choice as they secure their multicloud environments, adding integrations into leading project management tools to increase operational efficiency around risk management, and enhancing agentless workload scanning, among other updates.

Expanded Enterprise Multicloud Support

Enterprises implement multicloud strategies for various economic, technical, and legal reasons, and Lacework is committed to supporting its customers' cloud or clouds of choice. Lacework has extended cloud security posture management to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), giving teams visibility into their OCI resources and their associated risks. Whether enterprises are using Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Azure, OCI or a combination, the unified Lacework platform gives them visibility from a single location, resulting in better context, better outcomes, and faster investigations.

"We are excited that Lacework has added support for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It gives us the opportunity to utilize Cloud Security Posture Management capabilities across our multicloud environment with a single platform," said Karen Prichard, Managing Director Group Security, Liberty Global. "Our team can continue to reduce our risk and address our threats quicker with the added visibility and context provided by this new integration."

Additionally, the Lacework platform is expanding its industry-leading attack path analysis to Google Cloud and Azure. Attack path analysis from Lacework allows security teams to see their cloud environment through the eyes of an attacker, identifying targets and mapping out how each threat could be exploited to breach a cloud environment. Now Lacework customers leveraging Google Cloud or Azure can gain attack path analysis that is bespoke to each cloud's unique environment.

"My colleague already had the chance to identify configuration issues, it immediately flagged something we had to look at — giving us the opportunity to fix it," Simen Kildahl Eriksen, Security Engineer at Cognite, shares. "It provides an invaluable means of identifying potential configuration problems before they escalate into more significant security breaches."

In the cloud, organizations routinely create and tear down services and containers quickly in order to meet changing demands. Whether testing-development or running batch jobs, ephemeral workloads and containers are opportunities for bad actors to gain access. It's important that security teams do not lose sight of these short-lived instances.

To meet this growing need, Lacework agentless workload scanning has been upgraded to check customer workloads every five minutes for new instances. This granular visibility of what is running and its associated risk assures teams that they have comprehensive visibility into rapidly changing environments and gives confidence that short-lived instances are not falling through the security cracks.

Operationalized Risk Management with ServiceNow and Jira Integrations

It's not enough for an organization to have a list of vulnerabilities, they need to be able to quickly fix them. To enhance its industry-leading threat visibility tools, the Lacework platform now features integrations with ServiceNow and Jira that improve the process of mitigating vulnerabilities. Now, security and development teams have the premium vulnerability feeds with all the context Lacework is known for integrated into their ticketing system of choice. By connecting these systems to streamline response efforts, the appropriate teams can move faster when securing vulnerabilities.

"With the rise of cloud adoption and migration, securing the enterprise has never been more important for organizations," said Deepak Kolingivadi, Head of Security Products at ServiceNow. "The Lacework integration with ServiceNow Vulnerability Response enables our enterprise customers to streamline their response processes by simplifying assignment, collaboration, and remediation of critical vulnerabilities. Using business context in ServiceNow, customers can detect and report the security posture of IT and application environments within the Now Platform. We look forward to continuing our partnership with Lacework and helping mutual customers address cybersecurity threats more quickly and efficiently."

Industry veteran will be tasked with accelerating the company's global market growth

ColorTokens Inc., a leading Unified Zero Trust Platform provider, today announced the appointment of Jagdish Mahapatra as the company's Senior Vice President of Sales. In his new role, Mahapatra will lead ColorTokens sales team and provide strategic direction to business development, go-to-market, and alliance functions across the globe.

Mahapatra brings extensive knowledge to ColorTokens with more than 25 years of experience scaling businesses for companies such as Cisco, McAfee, and CrowdStrike. Most recently, he served as Vice President for CrowdStrike's Asia region. While in this role, he was instrumental in creating strategic partnerships globally and successfully drove exponential growth of over 100X Annual Recurring Revenue in just five years. Mahapatra also built a culture of high performance and engagement with the Singapore office being recognized as a Top 5 workplace by Great Place to Work.

"I am honored and excited to join the team at ColorTokens," said Mahapatra. "There are many vendors who market Zero Trust solutions, but none have dedicated themselves to ensuring that the solutions are pragmatic for large-scale deployments and complexities. This was one of the primary reasons I decided to join their mission of securing global enterprises and governments by realizing the true potential of zero trust security. I was also amazed at the talent within the organization – from product leaders to security SMEs. That, coupled with a welcoming culture, made my decision easy."

Prior to CrowdStrike, Mahapatra served as McAfee's Chief of Channels & Alliances for Asia Pacific. In this role, he was responsible for managing more than 500 partners within channels, strategic alliances, ecosystems, and Managed Services across the Asia Pacific and Japan region. He spent more than a decade with Cisco Systems India where he held multiple roles in Channels, Commercial and Enterprise leadership positions in the journey of extraordinary growth of 200X in the India market.

"Jagdish is an industry leader with an impressive background in scaling organizations and managing teams at some of the largest technology firms in the world," said Rajesh Khazanchi, CEO and Co-Founder at ColorTokens. "We are honored to have him join our leadership team. We will immensely benefit from his deep domain knowledge, customer and channel relationships, and industry acumen."

Mahapatra is a well-known public speaker who has delivered multiple cybersecurity TED Talks reaching audiences across the globe. As a leader, he takes great pride in fostering a culture of a highly engaged team and believes that prioritizing employee growth is essential to the success of any organization. Business World has recognized him as one of the Top 40 Executives in India Inc. under the age of 40.

JourneyTrack has pioneered a customer-first, enterprise-grade SaaS experience management platform that prioritizes the customer experience.

JourneyTrack Founder and CEO Ania Rodriguez is a self-made Latina woman entrepreneur who turns heads and makes the seemingly impossible happen. With decades of experience, Ania and the JourneyTrack team are leading the way in journey management solutions. "Our mission is to humanize the customer experience," says Ania Rodriguez.

"Elevate Capital is proud to be the lead investor with a $1M investment in JourneyTrack," says Nitin Rai, Elevate Capital Founder and Managing Partner. "As a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion fund, Elevate Capital, based in Portland, Oregon, invests in US-based early-stage startups of diverse and underrepresented entrepreneurs–95% of our portfolio companies are led by diverse founders, including 75% in women. Being a former UX engineer, I understood the problem Ania and JourneyTrack were solving when I met her earlier this year. The business makes sense, but she was challenged to find a lead investor. This is where we shine as a fund. We stepped in to lead. Our investment in JourneyTrack will be our first investment in Miami, Florida. We expect to invest more in diverse founders in this growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in the future."

As a UX/CX strategist and researcher, Rodriguez always aims for quality and impact in her work. She founded Key Lime Interactive, a user experience research and strategy consultancy that has achieved remarkable growth and recognition in the US market over the last 14 years. Through her experience serving Fortune 1000 clients, she realized the importance of having a tool that could support her vision of effectively managing customer journeys for enterprises. JourneyTrack is the platform that fulfills that need.

"VC funding for Latina-founded startups has historically been incredibly low, so I am deeply honored to have found investors like Elevate Capital who not only believe in the merits of JourneyTrack but are also truly committed to changing the challenging reality faced by minority female founders. As we look to the journey ahead, I am excited about the possibilities this newfound support will bring, particularly in accelerating our product roadmap and scaling the business," says Rodriguez.

In addition to the investment from Elevate Capital, JourneyTrack also received a $500,000 investment through DeepWork Capital, an Orlando, Florida-based early-stage fund and investment manager that also invests in diverse founders through the Florida Opportunity Fund.

Kochava AI Prompt powered by Generative AI takes data-driven insight discovery into marketers’ own hands through natural and native language processing

Kochava, the leading real-time data solutions company for omni-channel attribution and measurement, today announced a powerful addition to its robust AI toolset. Kochava AI Prompt unleashes the power of AI to understand multiple languages through the use of natural language processing for global marketers to access and analyze their data.

Kochava AI Prompt is powered by a secure connection to leading AI models to return a SQL script to run against the data within Kochava. None of our customers' first-party data leaves Kochava, nor is it used to train large language models (LLMs) or Kochava models. Marketers can engage with their data via AI knowing that their (and their users’) privacy and intellectual property are 100% secure.

“The intersection of AI and advertising technologies to create a truly powerful experience across international audiences and cultures is at a tipping point,” said Jason Hicks, GM, Marketers Operating System (m/OS) at Kochava. “For any company looking to reach customers on a global scale, understanding and implementing AI that can handle the nuances of native languages is key while also leveling the playing field through natural language processing so you no longer need to be a data scientist or understand SQL to utilize your data.”

What Kochava AI Prompt Can Do for Marketers:

• Have simple, secure conversations with their universe of first-party data in Kochava
• Rapidly check key performance indicators and success metrics across campaigns
• Get answers to complex data queries in just seconds without SQL
• More easily curate customer segmentation lists for retargeting or suppression
• And much more…

“The roll-out of Kochava AI Prompt represents an industry necessity for all marketers, making data-driven insights more approachable than ever and opening up new possibilities for digital marketing,” continued Hicks.

Kochava has been using machine learning and AI tooling across its diverse solutions suite, including its advanced attribution and fraud prevention products, for years. The company has also been adopting new technologies, such as leveraging LLMs to build new tools.

For example, Search Ads Maven powered by Kochava, a central data and intelligence hub to scale and optimize Apple Search Ads campaigns, features AI suggestions within its Keyword Analysis dashboard, enabling marketers to leverage Generative AI to find new keywords. AI can help marketers think outside the box to find those gems that standard sources aren’t turning up.

This is a first in cookieless audience curation and unification of data linkages between business insights and customer profiles at the household identity level.

In an age where the lines between personal and professional data is increasingly blurred, DrivenIQ emerges as the catalyst for brands to understand this intricate juxtaposition. Today, the company announced a major upgrade to its VisitIQ™ Audience Management Data Platform (AMP), which now provides valuable Business to Business (B2B) identifiers and professional insights, including firmographic data about where individuals work, their professional roles, company contact details, LinkedIn profiles, and more.

This marks a monumental departure from conventional account-based marketing outreach platforms. While ABM primarily serves as a tool for businesses to prospect high-value accounts, DrivenIQ's innovation lies in its ability to peel back identity layers to reveal high-value individuals within these accounts who are actively engaging with a business online. It's a transformation from one-dimensional cold marketing outreach to a multi-dimensional and deeper level awareness of individuals and intenders who are reaching out directly to businesses, instead.

This transformative shift goes beyond existing B2B2C technologies built on third party data. DrivenIQ's platform leverages a cookieless, deterministic first party data identity infrastructure to provide a deeper, more accurate understanding of individuals while ensuring all data meets the latest privacy requirements.

With these enhancements, not only will VisitIQ™users be able to see the wide variety of consumer attributes associated with their website visitors, create real-time first party lookalike audiences, and enrich external customer files and disparate data sources, but they will also be able to marry these data points with B2B firmographic details for even deeper insights of their audiences.

This is a first in cookieless audience curation and unification of data linkages between business insights and customer profiles at the household identity level.

"In today's post-COVID digital age, the lines between our personal and professional lives are converging and more fungible than ever," said Albert Thompson, Founder and CEO of DrivenIQ. "Remote and hybrid work forces have become the new paradigm in identity management, making firmographic B2B data equally important as part of a household profile. Understanding this intertwined relationship isn't just innovative; it's table stakes. With our B2B2C data integration, we're diving deep into this fusion, providing a richer, more comprehensive perspective of individuals as they navigate their multifaceted lives. This depth enables brands to connect and engage in revolutionary ways, erasing the traditional boundaries and resonating on a deeper, more meaningful level."

Whether it's a CEO researching new technologies, revenue teams looking into market trends, or marketing executives analyzing consumer behavior patterns, each action or attribute paints a holistic, 360-degree picture of an individual that can be translated into powerful insights. These insights can be used to drive business decisions or build a custom lookalike audience using the additional capabilities available inside the VisitIQ™ Audience Management Platform.

VisitIQ™ is an Audience Data SaaS Platform built on the company's cookieless first party identity resolution data technology. DrivenIQ's technology can identify website visitors and sequentially resolve customer data identifiers, which are stitched together with over 500+ attributes. The end result is one of the most powerful 360-degree customer views at the individual level within the household.

DrivenIQ also provides detailed information about each customer's journey down to URL, attribution source, medium, and granular level audience segmentation, empowering marketers to build unparalleled data customer cohorts and niche micro-segments.

With a clientele that spans across brands, publishers, and agencies, DrivenIQ continues to pave the way for meaningful personalized marketing.