Updated design and capabilities will enable developers and non-developers alike to build integrations even faster 

Prismatic, a leading embedded integration platform, debuted significant enhancements to its low-code integration designer, making it even more intuitive and user-friendly. This update empowers B2B SaaS companies to build, test, and deploy integrations for their customers more easily than ever before.

Integration capabilities are essential for B2B SaaS, but traditional integration methods are time- and resource-intensive. Prismatic's embedded integration platform makes building integrations fast, easy and accessible, empowering both developers and non-developers to connect their products to the other apps their customers use.

The platform has received significant traction among B2B SaaS teams of all sizes across a wide variety of industries, and Prismatic users report delivering integrations up to eight times faster than previously. Some teams use code and others use low-code to build integrations in Prismatic, and the company continually invests in both experiences.

"We've seen huge user engagement and success with our low-code designer, so we're thrilled to announce we've doubled down and made that experience even better. This update creates a smoother and more efficient journey for building integrations in our low-code environment while remaining as powerful and flexible as ever," said Marcus Edgington, VP Product at Prismatic. "Teams can bring new integrations to market even faster, and new users can hit the ground running because we've simplified the integration journey from building to testing to deployment." 

With this update, users can: 

• More quickly add and configure components as they build integrations.
• Test and troubleshoot integrations more efficiently and ultimately reduce errors.
• Easily navigate large and complex integrations with new features like panning and zooming.

This release comes on the heels of Prismatic's $22 million Series B funding announcement and reinforces the company's commitment to providing the most comprehensive and versatile integration solution for B2B SaaS teams.

"SaaS companies have widely varying needs and preferences regarding the teams and tools they use to build integrations. Whether you choose to have development teams or less technical teams build integrations, whether you use Prismatic's built-in connectors or code your own custom components, this update makes building integrations more efficient for all Prismatic users," said Edgington.

Animoto, a video editing platform that makes it easy for anyone to create professional videos for marketing, sales, internal communications and more, reported new survey results that showed the impact of video on today's businesses. The online video-maker shared its "2024's Top Business Video Trends" report that details how businesses use video, where they are seeing success, and how video will evolve in 2024.

Businesses are Making More Videos Than Ever
A massive 90% of businesses surveyed said they make videos at least once a week. Additionally, one third of those said they make a video every day. And there are no signs of slowing – 86% said they plan to make even more videos in 2024.

Beyond Marketing: Video's Rise in the Workplace
Historically, businesses primarily created marketing and promotional videos. Now, with the transition to remote and hybrid work, there's a growing trend of using video in the workplace to improve communication and employee engagement.

Last year, the top video made by businesses was a tie between training and advertising videos, followed closely by:

• Customer support videos
• Sales videos
• About us videos

The #1 Goal: Engagement Over Everything
Across the organization, business professionals said that their top priorities are engaging with customers and employees, and they have the tools to do it. A unanimous 100% of those surveyed expressed confidence that video boosts employee engagement.

"Businesses are placing their confidence in video to connect and engage not just with their customers, but with their entire teams," said Brad Jefferson, CEO and co-Founder of Animoto. "They've shown us that in 2024, video is the gold standard for business communications."

To illustrate the research and results, Animoto published a comprehensive infographic on their site.

Mindbreeze, a leading provider of appliances and cloud services in the field of information insight, and Ariza Content Solutions have created a partnership to employ and enhance insights & search experiences and provide companies with best-in-class content management.

"Intelligent and strategic partnerships have been a core part of Mindbreeze's success over the past 20 years. Allowing our customers to work with experts like Ariza Content Solutions provides them opportunities to use insight engines effectively and receive high-level insights from their knowledge base," explains Daniel Fallmann, founder and CEO of Mindbreeze. "Ariza's proven success and specialization in all aspects of content management makes a perfect and exciting partnership for Mindbreeze."

While traditional content workflows encompassed content creation, through management of editorial and production processes, to final publication and delivery to various distribution channels, today content creators are learning the value of connected, searchable data to allow for deeper connections in their content. To accomplish this goal, Ariza employs solutions incorporating AI-driven insight engines like Mindbreeze InSpire. Insight engines enhance the search experience giving customers, both external and internal, the very best access to knowledge and insight into their content.

“At Ariza, our clients count on us to provide end-to-end content solutions leveraging Ariza's deep knowledge of the publishing process and the technology that supports it. Through careful vetting of technology tools and platforms, Ariza is able to bring the right partners together with their respective tooling to create a complete vision," says Brian Trombley, Ariza Managing Partner - Commercial.

Mindbreeze InSpire, an insight engine, uses traditional search methods and sophisticated data analysis approaches to interpret business information and answer critical business questions. Equipped with machine learning and AI capabilities, the Mindbreeze InSpire solution is the foundation for successful enterprise knowledge management.

Currently, over 2,000 of the world's largest companies across a variety of industries are using Mindbreeze's AI-based insight engine to manage their information more efficiently and intelligently.

Siteimprove was selected as the partner of choice based on Siteimprove Inclusivity's unique product strengths and being listed as a "Strong Performer" in "The Forrester Wave™: Digital Accessibility Platforms, Q4 2023." 

Siteimprove, the leading platform empowering brands to stand out with accessible, high-performing digital content experiences, today announced that Merkle, Dentsu's leading customer experience management (CXM) company, will partner with Siteimprove to build their first-ever accessibility practice. Through this partnership, Merkle will leverage Siteimprove Inclusivity as the foundational technology for building their accessibility practice. This initiative is part of Merkle's efforts to ensure they can properly support their European customer base when the European Accessibility Act goes into effect in June 2025.

The goal of the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is to harmonize and standardize accessibility rules, so that products and services use a "design for all" approach.  Previously, each member state in the EU had different accessibility standards for products and services, which resulted in poor selection and expensive products for consumers, as well as small markets with little incentive for companies.

Under the EAA, EU member states must adhere to a unified set of accessibility rules. This standardization simplifies the process for private companies to sell compliant products and services throughout the EU and broadens the range of options available to consumers.

As the foundational technology, Siteimprove Inclusivity will be Merkle's trusted platform to manage the accessibility review and mediations process for Merkle's European customer base. By leveraging Frontier, Siteimprove's learning management system, certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professional's, Merkle will upskill its new team members to ensure a solid baseline understanding of the positive impact they will be driving for their users. The goal is for Siteimprove to help Merkle deliver an accessibility program at scale and ensure their customers have inclusive and compliant websites that support any current and future accessibility aims.  

"We're thrilled to be partnering with Merkle as they take the first step in building a truly accessible practice," said Izabela Misiorny, Chief Marketing Officer at Siteimprove. "With two decades of expertise in the field, we know that accessibility is not only about compliance - it's about enhancing user experience and opening markets to a broader and more diverse customer base.  Working with Merkle ensures that customers from both Siteimprove and Merkle can use the data and insights we provide to build inclusive and optimized content experiences that empower every person to experience, engage, and thrive in a digital world."

"At Merkle, we believe that web accessibility is not just a technical requirement: it's a social imperative," said Luis Nunes, Chief Strategy Officer at Merkle. "Our partnership with Siteimprove is a key element of continued efforts to bring services to our customers that enable them to have websites, applications and other touchpoints accessible to all. By working with industry leaders like Siteimprove, we are ensuring that the solutions we provide are designed and built with accessibility in mind from the start."

Access Fabric Powers New Security Dashboard and Access Explorer Features to Help Customers Decrease Identity Attack Surface and Reduce Risk 

ConductorOne, the leader in identity security and access governance, today announced the ConductorOne Access Fabric, a unified data layer underpinning the ConductorOne platform that enables advanced access orchestration and automation. The Access Fabric provides comprehensive visibility into even the most complex environments, unifying historically disjointed access controls across all of a company's technology, including SaaS, cloud infrastructure, on-premises infrastructure, directories, and HR systems. The ConductorOne Access Fabric enables new platform features, including a security dashboard and access explorer, allowing security teams to quickly identify and remediate access-based risks.

"Managing access across modern cloud and SaaS environments has become impossibly onerous. As a result, identity and access have grown beyond the capacity of human oversight and represent a significant attack vector — and huge headache — for security teams," said Alex Bovee, co-founder and CEO of ConductorOne. "Our Access Fabric sets the foundation for modern access control within cloud-forward companies. It creates a platform to orchestrate access across all of a company's apps and infrastructure, helping teams decrease their identity attack surface and reduce risk."

The Access Fabric is made possible through ConductorOne's out-of-the-box, agentless connectors. The solution normalizes access and permissions data across SaaS, IaaS, on-prem, and homegrown applications into a single pane of glass. The Access Fabric gives teams the ability to quickly uncover high-risk entitlements, inappropriate access, orphaned accounts, and other security threats, and to remediate those risks.

Security Dashboard: Easily Identify and Remediate Access Risks

The new security dashboard provides teams with a view of the most important risk factors and security concerns related to identity and access, including: orphaned accounts, inactive users, standing privilege, high-risk users, standing and temporary high-risk grants, and more. Made possible by the Access Fabric, the security dashboard gives teams an easy-to-use console to view the vast access and permissions data from across their complex systems. The dashboard surfaces opportunities for risk reduction with built-in remediation options, such as revoking access, offboarding users, and changing service accounts.

Access Explorer: Search and Visualize User Access and Permissions

The all-new access explorer allows businesses to easily search and visualize user access and permissions across any application, providing granular visibility through a user-friendly interface. Security teams can now easily search for and identify:

• Accounts without an account owner
• All accounts for a given application, as well as accounts for a given user across all applications
• Orphaned accounts for a given application
• Users without an assigned access approver
• Accounts that have not logged in within a certain time period
• High-risk permanent and temporary access

In addition, the access explorer provides security teams with an easy-to-use visualization feature, allowing them to review access paths for any user, application, or resource.

"Discovering access risks with ConductorOne's Access Fabric functionality is a game-changer," said Matthew Dintrone, cloud security and compliance analyst at Grin. "Managing orphaned accounts and inactive users used to be a bit of a time sink and a heavy lift, but now it's a swift task that significantly boosts our security posture."

New Platform Capabilities Address the Needs of An Organization’s Employees Outside the Contact Center that Require Customer Engagement Capabilities; Beta Program for Qualified Customers In Progress

8x8, Inc., a leading integrated cloud contact center and unified communications platform provider, today announced beta availability of a new product line that will enable organizations to deliver effective customer engagement across the entire organization. This beta is in progress for qualified 8x8 customers. 

These new capabilities further bridge the gap between UCaaS and CCaaS, transforming the availability, utilization, and contextualization of customer interaction data throughout the entire organization to enable smarter decision making across the many different touch points through powerful and predictive insights. By incorporating both native and third-party data, cutting-edge AI solutions, and platform-level contact center components into built-for-purpose interfaces for customer experience professionals outside the contact center, 8x8 is in a unique position to help organizations precisely tune and refine all interactions to create positive customer outcomes.

“Organizations are hampered from delivering an even better customer journey and experience because they have a significant portion of employees, outside of the contact center, that regularly engage with customers but lack the right technology to support their specific needs,” said Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. “8x8 is a leader in bringing cloud contact center and unified communications together on a single platform, and in today’s CX-driven world, 8x8 is bringing even greater value to organizations by providing these workers with persona-based, customer-facing capabilities that can drive more successful business outcomes and competitive advantages.”

The new product line effectively addresses the needs of employees, who serve as both functional experts as well as frequently engage with customers. This underserved user base plays a pivotal role in customer engagement and are increasingly responsible for successful customer outcomes, yet have not been equipped with the right-fit tools and capabilities to enable consistent, positive customer experiences.

“Organizations that excel at customer service and experiences understand that orchestrating exceptional customer journeys is an organization-wide responsibility,” said Samuel Wilson, Chief Executive Officer at 8x8, Inc. “By introducing an innovative new product line that expands cross-organization customer engagement, 8x8 is providing organizations with intentionally engineered capabilities that empower every customer-facing employee to make the most of every interaction, leading to superior customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately, business success.”

Available to select customers, 8x8 customers who would like to register their interest for the beta program for this new product line can sign up by emailing customer.labs@8x8.com.

Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements in connection with a new product line supporting cross-organization customer engagement. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in any such forward-looking statements. Readers are directed to 8x8’s periodic and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a description of such risks and uncertainties. 8x8 undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

Reveal becomes LoopMe’s exclusive Brand Lift Survey provider for the Out of Home channel

Reveal Mobile, the leading provider of Out-of-Home (OOH) measurement, today announced a partnership with LoopMe for brand lift measurement. 

The partnership between Reveal Mobile and LoopMe solidifies a true full-funnel campaign performance solution for OOH, providing the market with measurement solutions for outcomes, from brand lift to sales.

LoopMe’s proprietary AI-led survey technology optimizes media campaigns in-flight, creating a real-time feedback loop to improve advertising performance and outcomes. With the new Reveal partnership, LoopMe expands its industry leading technology to offer best-in-class measurement across OOH, as well as digital and CTV.

Brand lift has long been a staple for traditional brand marketers to evaluate the efficacy of their advertising campaigns. The explosive growth in Out of Home opportunities has brought more brand marketers into the channel and with them their demand for measurement rigor. LoopMe’s solution provides those brand marketers confidence to continue investing more in Out of Home. Reveal is proud to help broaden adoption of LoopMe’s solution.

“As Out of Home grows based on the value it brings brand advertisers, reliable and affordable campaign measurement is critical,” said Anna Bager, President & CEO of the industry’s trade organization OAAA. “New technologies from the application of programmatic to the deployment of experiential creative are enhancing the efficacy of OOH and brands marketers are noticing.”

“This partnership with Reveal is a critical step in measuring the impact of OOH campaigns on foot traffic, in-app, and online activities, and delivering brand lift outcomes across all consumer advertising channels,” said Lisa Coffey, Global CRO of LoopMe. “We are excited to expand our U.S. offering with purpose built solutions for measuring campaign effectiveness in the OOH space.”

Randy Kilgore, Reveal’s CRO said, “We’re immensely honored to be chosen as LoopMe’s exclusive partner for Brand Lift surveys in the OOH channel. LoopMe is a global organization with leadership in media optimization and analytics. They have the highest standards for themselves and we’re humbled to be chosen.”

The power of Out of Home advertising is borne out in research:

• 68% of U.S. adults notice OOH ads on their way to the store.
• 76% of U.S. adults took action on their mobile phone after recently seeing a mobile ad and 43% made a purchase.
• 61% of adults view OOH ads favorably which is higher than any competitive media.

Innovative new contextual intelligence technology is Proximic by Comscore’s latest tool to provide accurate, real-time data to publishers and advertisers for targeting

Proximic by Comscore, a division of Comscore Inc. and a leading provider of audience and content targeting solutions for advertising activation, has announced a new US patent for its livestream contextual intelligence technology. This patented technology will support publishers to more effectively monetize their livestream video inventory and increase advertiser confidence in buying livestream media. 

This patent covers Proximic by Comscore’s process of contextualizing livestream video content in real-time, including categorization against its full ID-free Predictive Audience taxonomy, to inform dynamic ad insertion.

“With this livestream technology, advertisers will be able to better ensure their ads will appear alongside content they deem contextually relevant and brand safe for real-time live video,” said Rachel Gantz, Managing Director, Proximic by Comscore. “This technological advancement is a significant development for live video advertising and couldn’t come at a better time with contextual targeting taking a larger presence amid signal loss.”