Larry Ellison to speak about the latest advances in generative AI

Registration is now open to join the October 19 livestream

Oracle provides a complete AI stack for its customers with a focus on security and privacy, predictable pricing, and performance. Unique Supercluster capabilities allow training and serving AI models at scale. AI models embedded into applications offer ease of use for scenarios businesses face every day.

While the focus on enterprise scenarios makes Oracle's portfolio appealing for businesses, many business leaders also want a partner who can help them get started down the right path now and keep up with the pace of innovation in the future. To help business leaders with this challenge, Oracle is hosting a Data & AI Forum on October 19. The event will explore how customers can get started with AI to maximize business benefits tailored to their needs.

This event will also recap the key AI innovations Oracle has recently unveiled, including:

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Generative AI service to automate business processes, improve decision-making, and enhance customer experiences
• AI Vector Search in Oracle Database 23c to augment generative AI and increase developer productivity
• Generative AI services to boost efficiency for healthcare organizations; improve customer experience across industries; and make powerful business analytics accessible to non-technical users

"AI adoption and innovation is already reshaping how enterprises operate, and Oracle is committed to supporting these businesses with new AI capabilities," said Jason Maynard, executive vice president, Revenue Operations, Oracle. "Oracle's Data & AI Forum will help executives imagine and implement AI strategies that will help them overcome their organizations' biggest challenges quickly and securely."

Jae Evans, Oracle's executive vice president and global chief information officer, will host the in-person and livestreamed event in Redwood Shores, and lead conversations about the benefits and challenges of AI-driven automation, differentiated AI strategies, and best practices for implementing AI across an organization. Presentations will feature Oracle executives, including:

• Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer, Oracle
• Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president of OCI
• Juan Loaiza, executive vice president of Mission-Critical Database Technologies
• Greg Pavlik, senior vice president of OCI
• Steve Miranda, executive vice president of Applications Development
• Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of Oracle Global Industries

In addition, Oracle will spotlight perspectives from its partners to help attendees find out what to expect from the next chapter of AI-powered business innovation.

Kong is the Only Vendor Recognized as Both a Leader in the Magic Quadrant and a 2023 Gartner^® Peer Insights™ Customers' Choice for Full Life Cycle API Management

Kong Inc., a leading developer of cloud API technologies, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner^® as a Leader in the 2023 Magic Quadrant for API Management for the fourth consecutive year. The evaluation was based on specific criteria that analyzed the company's overall completeness of vision and ability to execute. Moreover, Kong remains the only vendor in the API management sector in the Leaders Quadrant of the Magic Quadrant and a 2023 Gartner^® Peer Insights™ Customers' Choice for Full Life Cycle API Management.

Kong enables any company to become an API-first company, helping more than 600 organizations around the world drive developer productivity through a single unified cloud API platform for API management, service mesh and ingress controller.

"We're honored to be named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the fourth year running," said Marco Palladino, chief technology officer at Kong Inc. "Our mission is simple but vital: help every company to become 'API-first.' Thanks to Kong's unified cloud API platform, businesses can enjoy secure and reliable digital experiences while developers unlock new levels of productivity. To us, this recognition affirms our commitment to leading companies into a future where API-first strategies are not just encouraged but absolutely essential."

Kong enables any company to become an API-first company. Kong's unified cloud API platform delivers fast, reliable and secure digital experiences. Kong technologies unleash developer productivity through a single platform for API management, service mesh and ingress controller.

Moreover, Kong recently announced several new updates and capabilities at their inaugural API Summit 2023:

• Kong Insomnia 8.0 enhances API development with notable features like Insomnia AI, which uses artificial intelligence to auto-generate tests, boosting developer productivity by up to 30%, and introducing real-time collaboration capabilities, allowing seamless team cooperation on API design projects. The update emphasizes efficient API design, debugging and collaborative testing while optimizing engineering resources.
• Dedicated Cloud Gateways provide a fully managed, dedicated cloud environment for running Kong Gateway, ensuring enhanced API management across multiple cloud vendors without requiring server setup or maintenance. Offering robust security and performance by utilizing non-shared resources, it ensures simplified global API management with automated scalability and support.
• Kong Launches Mesh for Kong Konnect — pioneering the industry's first unified API lifecycle management platform. This offers a "single pane of glass" for managing APIs, ensuring streamlined service mesh deployments across all applications. The unified interface grants full visibility and control over every API and microservice, simplifying microservice management.

Magic Quadrant reports are a culmination of rigorous, fact-based research in specific markets, providing a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the providers in markets where growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct. Providers are positioned into four quadrants: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players. The research enables you to get the most from market analysis in alignment with your unique business and technology needs.

New listing in AWS Marketplace makes it easy for IC agencies to discover and deploy the Databricks Platform in support of the government's journey to IT modernization

Databricks, the Data and AI company, today announced that the Databricks platform will be listed in AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), for the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). AWS Marketplace for the U.S. IC is designed exclusively for the 17 intelligence agencies to evaluate, purchase, and deploy software packages and applications from vendors in minutes via AWS IoT 1-Click^®. The Databricks platform offers customers an innovative, AI-driven, unified set of tools for building, deploying, sharing, and maintaining enterprise-grade data and AI solutions at scale.

"As the adoption of AI and advanced analytics grows, we are excited to work with AWS to provide the Intelligence Community with a turn-key data and AI solution that drives faster time to insights," said Aaron Kinworthy, Vice President of Databricks Federal. "The Databricks Platform combines the best elements to work with structured and unstructured data for analytics and AI to deliver on mission-critical objectives and accelerate digital transformation."

With Databricks, IC organizations can unlock the value of their existing investments and achieve AI at scale by unifying all of their data – regardless of type, source, frequency or workload – on a single platform.

Wix Studio delivers a revolutionary platform that combines AI-powered features, the latest design and development capabilities and seamless workflows for multi-site management to help agencies create projects with greater quality and velocity

Wix.com Ltd., a leading global SaaS platform to create, manage and grow an online presence, today announced that Wix Studio is now available to  all agencies and freelancers. Wix Studio  builds on Wix's proven capabilities combined with the latest AI technology to provide a state-of-the-art solution, enabling the creation of advanced websites at scale. With more flexibility, the platform includes a newly-designed development and creation editor with code capabilities, multi-site management workspaces, and access to new monetization opportunities, all helping to drive efficiency.

"After successfully launching Wix Studio exclusively to Wix Partners, our community of agencies and freelancers who build for others, we are thrilled to extend the offering to all agencies and freelancers around the world," said Tal Siach, Head of Marketing at Wix Studio. "Since our initial launch in August, we have led a global educational tour, meeting face-to-face with Partners,  in 12 cities worldwide, held online events and are continuing to work side-by-side with Partners to ensure they have the best possible user experience. With thousands of sites already built on Wix Studio, we're excited to unleash the power of Wix Studio to all agencies and freelancers around the world today."

"With the power of AI, cutting-edge design and development capabilities, and streamlined workflows, Wix Studio is a revolutionary platform that empowers professionals to create high-quality websites with unprecedented speed and precision," said Gali Erez, GM Head of Wix Studio. "We're continuing to redefine the web creation industry, providing professionals with the tools to tackle intricate web design projects and effortlessly manage client relationships, all in one place. We strongly believe that Wix Studio is the future for agencies and freelancers, and we're just getting started, with even more exciting features to come."

Wix's recently announced suite of AI-powered web creation capabilities, as well as new responsive and code AI features, are integrated into Wix Studio. These tools simplify complex web design and content tasks and significantly help boost productivity.

Highlights of Wix Studio include:

Advanced design capabilities built for efficiency 

• Complete design control: With an intuitive canvas experience, professionals can focus on the design intent while all elements resize proportionally on any screen size by default. Additionally, they can create minimal to super complex layouts that can be customized on any breakpoint, while elements adjust accordingly.
• Responsive AI: With a click of a button, users can generate fully-responsive layouts for their designs that are automatically fitted to every screen size, powered by AI technology.
• AI text and images: Quickly generate high-quality text and images with AI.
• No Code interactions, animations, and design expressions: Designers can add advanced animations to their site without writing code and create a visually engaging and dynamic experience. Capabilities include scroll, loop, and entrance animations, click and hover interactions, custom cursor, text mask and more.
• Custom CSS: Easily customize CSS in the Wix Studio editor. Simply copy and paste into the editor and apply it to elements to create new designs, animations and interactions.
• Intuitive to learn: Empowers agencies and freelancers to create high-end websites at scale with a seamless user experience that removes any friction.
• Concurrent workflows and collaboration: Teams, designers, developers, and marketers can work concurrently and stakeholders can provide feedback, approve designs or offer suggestions effortlessly.

Workspaces for efficient client management

• One dashboard to power all projects and clients: A completely new workflow to manage clients, projects and multiple teams within one powerful dashboard,  also accessible on the dedicated Wix Studio mobile app.
• Team management to work at scale: Allow teams to efficiently work on a wide range of projects simultaneously by creating and reusing apps and templates across any project. Track and manage the team's support tickets history to expedite issue resolution and stay on top of new releases and product betas.
• The client experience: Personalized client-facing dashboard and editor provides a smooth experience to collaborate. Quick-edit capabilities and a complete, customizable resource kit ensure clients can receive and maintain their websites on their own, as needed. Clients can receive updated analytics reports with important site information and performance.

Meet any client needs with advanced capabilities 

• Say "yes" to any project with a more open platform: Customize websites using Wix Blocks, UI slots and custom CSS and support any tech stack and device with Wix Headless. Extend and replace Wix business logic features and flows with hundreds of APIs & SPIs. Use Data extensions to enrich built-in entities and collect and store custom information. Create advanced workflows using automation rules based on a comprehensive and rich library of triggers and actions.
• A robust code environment: Work in a professional environment using Wix online VS Code-based IDE to add frontend and backend code to a website and seamlessly integrate with Wix-made or third-party APIs. Additionally, developers can also choose to work with their preferred IDE by connecting their site to GitHub.
• Build and sell reusable applications:  With Wix Blocks, professionals can create, save, reuse, and deploy highly customizable applications and widgets across hundreds of sites. Moreover, they can benefit from increased monetization opportunities with the ability to sell apps via the Wix App Market.
• AI code assistant: Create complex websites and web applications at a higher velocity with an AI-powered code assistant that helps developers write cleaner code and detects errors.

Fullpath, automotive's leading Customer Data & Experience Platform (CDXP), is excited to announce its participation in Subaru's Certified Search Advertising Program, enhancing the digital experience for Subaru dealership networks. Subaru dealerships can now receive SAF funds when enrolling with Fullpath. The Certified Search Program enables Fullpath to coordinate with Subaru and T1 Strategies and Keywords. Additionally, Fullpath offers a Digital Advertising solution leveraging connected, first-party dealership data to turbocharge search, social, and display advertising campaigns with hundreds of targeted ads at scale.

Subaru's Certified Search and Digital Program is designed to empower dealerships with cutting-edge digital tools and technologies that streamline operations, improve customer engagement, and drive sales growth. Fullpath's inclusion in this program highlights its commitment to revolutionizing the automotive industry by providing state-of-the-art digital solutions.

Key highlights of Fullpath's Search and Digital Advertising solutions for Subaru dealerships include:

1. Search Strategy coordination with Tier 1 Subaru: Allowing Subaru retailers to hone in on targeted messages and Optimizes Tier 3 search advertising preventing any keyword overlaps with Subaru Tier 1.
2. Multi-platform targeting: Fullpath generates and publishes ads across Google search and display, and social networks targeting in-market shoppers and conquesting new traffic with highly relevant ads.
3. Real time optimization: Fullpath optimizes ad campaigns around the clock, reallocating budgets and optimizing A/B tests in real-time for best lead generating performance.
4. Data integration: Fullpath leverages dealership's data sources including website analytics, CRM, and DMS to create hyper-relevant audiences for each ad campaign.
5. Invoca advertising integration: If your dealership uses Invoca for call tracking, Fullpath will use the call transcription data for advertising targeting and optimization, an industry first capability.

Fullpath's CEO, Aharon Horwitz, expressed his enthusiasm in securing this new partnership, saying "We're thrilled to be partnering with Subaru to continue to bring the future of data management and automotive marketing to tier 3 dealerships. At Fullpath, we are committed to constant innovation on part of our retailer clients, and this partnership brings us even closer to our goal of enabling retailers to operate on the level of retail giants with the most effective AI-powered marketing technologies on the market."

This collaboration is a significant step forward for both Fullpath and Subaru as they work together to shape the future of automotive retailing. By embracing digital transformation, Subaru dealerships will be better equipped to meet the evolving needs of today's tech-savvy consumers. 

Latest innovation leverages AI to uncover low-quality sites at scale and minimize wasted ad spend

Integral Ad Science, a leading global media measurement and optimization platform, today announced a new Made for Advertising (MFA) AI-driven site detection and avoidance product. The company's MFA site technology aims to improve transparency into advertiser campaign quality, identify where spend is being allocated, and inform optimizations to minimize waste on MFA sites.

MFA sites are web pages featuring low quality content (e.g. spam sites, or ad farms) created solely to serve ads, and are optimized to perform well against traditional verification metrics, such as viewability. However, advertising spend on these sites does not drive meaningful outcomes, such as conversions or brand lift.

IAS's new product leverages AI to uncover MFA sites at scale, allowing advertisers to take back control of their media quality and cut down on wasted spend. During Alpha testing, IAS delivered comprehensive campaign analysis demonstrating superior MFA site identification for some of the world's largest advertisers and agencies.

IAS's product supports the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) recent definition of MFA sites and incorporates characteristics such as ad-to-content ratio, ad refresh rate, and the source of the traffic coming to the site to classify a site as MFA. According to the ANA's Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study, 21% of all advertisement impressions measured were served on MFA sites.

"Our MFA product was built to deliver unprecedented transparency to advertisers and provide them with the ability to both detect and avoid MFA sites in order to redirect their ad spend to publishers that drive a return," said Yannis Dosios, Chief Commercial Officer, Integral Ad Science. "The industry faces a significant challenge in combating MFA sites. By leveraging AI, we have developed a scalable way to identify these low quality sources of inventory and improve overall campaign performance."

Advertisers and their agencies need confidence that the industry is converging on agreement about the specific websites that compose the MFA category. By training its model against Jounce Media's widely adopted list of MFA domains and incorporating signals from Sincera, IAS has developed the industry's first pressure tested solution for detecting and blocking MFA at scale.

"Advertisers should recognize that MFA websites can account for a significant portion of their overall campaign and should determine, independently, if MFA sites fit with their brand suitability standards for content and user experience. We applaud IAS for taking action after we released the findings from our programmatic transparency report and for supporting our definition of MFA," said Bill Duggan, ANA group executive vice president. "We have found that awareness of MFA sites among the ANA community of media professionals to be limited – which is surprising. We look forward to further developments from IAS around MFA site identification and ad spend optimization to help better educate and inform buyers."

89% of IT leaders expect passwords will represent less than a quarter of their organization's logins within five years or less

The FIDO Alliance and LastPass released the 2023 Workforce Authentication Report today, which gauges IT decision makers’ attitudes and plans for removing passwords in favor of easier and more secure passwordless authentication. The verdict? Businesses are actively moving to eradicate passwords from employees’ lives, with 89% of surveyed IT leaders expecting passwords to represent less than a quarter of their organization’s logins within five years or less.

Top findings from the 2023 Workforce Authentication Report:

• Businesses are ready to embrace a passwordless future, with 92% having a plan to move to passwordless technology and 95% currently using a passwordless experience at their organization.
• Businesses believe passkeys will help make them more secure: 92% believe passkeys will benefit their overall security posture, and 93% agree that passkeys will eventually help reduce the volume of unofficial (i.e., “Shadow IT”) applications.
• However, many recognize that work still needs to be done: A majority of businesses surveyed are still using phishable authentication methods, such as passwords (76%) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) (43%) when it comes to authenticating users within their organization.
• The majority recognize that this transition will take time and education: 55% of IT leaders surveyed feel they need more education on how passwordless technology works and/or how to deploy it, and 28% cited concerns that users may be resistant to change or using a new technology.
• When making this transition, businesses made it clear they want to choose where they store passkeys, with 69% of IT leaders anticipating storing them in a third-party password manager.

“The move towards passwordless authentication has gained steam over the past few years as an increasing number of organizations have moved to eliminate the risk and liability of passwords as they are the source of the vast majority of data breaches,” said Andrew Shikiar, Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. “Today’s report backs up this trend by illustrating that global IT leaders are rapidly aiming to reduce their reliance on legacy forms of authentication in favor of passkeys for user-friendly, phishing-resistant sign-ins.”

“These survey results demonstrate that businesses are excited about the prospect of a passwordless future, and all the benefits that future will bring. And the clear majority also recognize that a password manager plays an important role in that future,” said Mike Kosak, Senior Principal Intelligence Analyst at LastPass. “While the adoption of passwordless authentication will take some time and coaching, LastPass is proud to support forward-thinking leaders like these on that journey – ushering their organizations toward security that is stronger and more effortless than ever.”

This new partnership gives buyers more control over the CTV ad inventory buying process and publishers more revenue and transparency

PubMatic, an independent technology company delivering digital advertising’s supply chain of the future, today announced a new integration partnership with FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the television advertising industry.

Through this enhanced integration, PubMatic’s Activate will now have direct access – through FreeWheel – to premium publisher connected television ad inventory.

This new partnership will bring about two key benefits and new capabilities for the TV ad ecosystem:

• Ad buyers working with PubMatic will now have an enhanced and streamlined ability to transact across a larger and more diversified pool of premium CTV ad inventory.
• FreeWheel publishers will have access to unique campaign budgets only available through Activate.

In doing so, the two companies aim to provide increased interoperability, efficiency and transparency for buyers and sellers of premium CTV ad inventory at scale.

“Since launching this year, Activate has gained traction worldwide as the end-to-end supply path optimization solution of choice for agencies and advertisers. FreeWheel has been an important PubMatic partner for many years, and we look forward to deepening our relationship through this integration, giving buyers more control over their CTV investments,” said Nicole Scaglione, VP, CTV/OTT and Video, PubMatic.

“In integrating with PubMatic’s Activate, our goal is to drive incremental demand for publishers while giving advertisers more control and choice into how publisher inventory can be purchased. We hope that by doing so, we can drive more growth, momentum and innovation in today’s TV ad ecosystem,” said Jon Mansell, VP, U.S. Head of Demand, FreeWheel.

“At dentsu, we’re constantly innovating to provide new, technology-enabled media solutions to fuel growth and drive the best possible outcomes for our clients. This partnership between FreeWheel and PubMatic allows our teams to have more insights into where our clients’ advertisements are appearing, giving us the opportunity to improve performance, and is meaningful progress in simplifying the supply-chain,” said Anthony McDonagh, Chief Trading Officer, dentsu.