Five Year Strategic Collaboration Agreement to Transform Media Production Through Distribution Workflows in the B2B Supply Chain

Ateliere Creative Technologies, a leading developer of cloud-native media supply chain solutions, today announced a landmark five-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS). This collaboration can redefine media production and distribution, offering innovative cloud-based solutions for the media and entertainment industry from the initial stages of capture via the business-to-business (B2B) supply chain right through to content delivery to consumers. This SCA will drive new product and feature development, boost customer adoption of the Ateliere platform, and enhance marketing and general awareness efforts with significant support and funding from AWS.

"Ateliere's platform, natively built on AWS, already employs a vast array of AWS services, powering our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings," said Ryan Kido, CTO of Ateliere Creative Technologies. "This move marks a significant step in Ateliere's journey as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member, demonstrating AWS's commitment to Ateliere's vision and belief in our potential for significant impact in the media and entertainment industry."

As a long-standing member of the APN, Ateliere remains one of only a handful of companies within the Media Management category in AWS Marketplace, offering Ateliere Connect™. The cloud-native Connect^TM platform is designed to orchestrate the supply chain of media content, enabling efficient management, automation, and delivery from a central location, while minimizing storage costs and increasing global collaboration. Users can decrease long-term storage costs by more than 75%, reduce QC time and costs, and increase profit margins with quicker time to market.

Ateliere Connect is a prime example of the innovative offerings that the collaboration with AWS will continue to nurture and evolve. Additionally, Ateliere has consistently participated in Beta programs for new AWS services, as well as established AWS services such as Amazon Aurora Serverless v2, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (Amazon EKS), and Mountpoint for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), all of which are beneficial to its technology. 

"The new SCA is a natural progression in our commitment to AWS and their commitment to us," said Dan Goman, CEO of Ateliere Creative Technologies. "It is a prime example of the innovative offerings that this SCA will continue to nurture and evolve and a shared vision to deliver exceptional solutions in the media and entertainment space."

Customers of Ateliere stand to gain substantially from this SCA. They will have access to an expanded set of features and services, accelerated product delivery, and comprehensive solutions spanning from 'camera to consumer'. Joint marketing efforts and increased financial support for Proof of Concepts (POCs) and pilots further cement the customer-centric approach of this collaboration.

Combined solution delivers email security and automated Open XDR to speed detection and response of email-driven cyber attacks

Stellar Cyber, the innovator of Open XDR, announced a new partnership with Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company. Through this alliance, Proofpoint and Stellar Cyber customers benefit from an out-of-the-box integration enabling swift email investigations and real-time response actions to email-driven attacks.

Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection monitors emails to identify suspicious emails and potentially malicious attachments and URLs. Once identified, the findings are shared with Stellar Cyber automatically. Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform ingests, normalizes, and analyzes Proofpoint findings and other collected data to deliver a comprehensive threat picture. As security analysts conduct investigations, they can instruct integrated third-party products – including Proofpoint – on corrective actions.

“Protecting organizations against email-borne attacks is a top priority, and security teams need a way to automatically correlate threat telemetry across the entire attack surface in order to quickly remediate threats,” said Andrew Homer, VP of Strategic Alliances, Stellar Cyber. “This new partnership with Proofpoint is the latest example of Stellar Cyber delivering on its Open XDR strategy to provide customers turn-key integrations that improve productivity and threat detection.”

“Email attacks remain the number one entry point into an organization, and the level of sophistication of these attacks continues to grow exponentially,” said D.J. Long, Vice President, Strategic Alliances & Business Development, Proofpoint. “We’re thrilled to work with Stellar Cyber on this strategic alliance to help customers protect against advanced email-based threats and unify their cybersecurity defense.”

Through this alliance, Stellar Cyber and Proofpoint give security teams an advantage over attackers, resulting in the following:

• Real-time threat signals exchanged for proactive detection
• Correlation of Proofpoint alerts across the entire attack surface
• Automated response actions for immediate threat containment

Veteran technology executive joins UiPath to drive customer experience and support and enable AI-powered digital transformation in the enterprise

UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, today announced Pradeep Kumar is joining the company as Senior Vice President of Services and Customer Success. Reporting to Chief Customer Officer Kelly Ducourty, Kumar will lead the company’s strategic initiatives to enable customer success through unparalleled support and execution of digital transformation goals with the UiPath Business Automation Platform.

Most recently, Kumar worked as Senior Vice President and General Manager, HPE Services at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, where he led the HPE services business to assist companies with accelerating digital transformation. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President of Global Shared Delivery at HPE, a worldwide organization responsible for delivering solutions and services to HPE customers.

At UiPath, Kumar is a critical partner to customers worldwide, aiming to help them achieve breakthrough business outcomes, increase their competitive advantage, and build operational excellence in automation at scale.

“As our more than 10,000 customers worldwide transform through AI and automation, our ability to support every step of their journey toward remarkable business outcomes is paramount,” said Ducourty. “Pradeep serves an essential role in our commitment to deliver exceptional customer experiences, and our unified Services and Customer Success team under his leadership will enable our customers to achieve their goals faster. Pradeep’s impressive background in customer success will drive meaningful and impactful journeys for our customers as they build greater capacity for AI- and automation-first business processes.”

“I am thrilled to join UiPath, which I believe is at the nexus of revolutionary change as businesses strive to become leaders in their own right through AI and automation,” said Pradeep Kumar. “I am passionate about building high performing teams in customer-centric environments and working side by side with customers to collaborate on shared goals and exceed their expectations. We have an incredible opportunity to add value to our customers as they scale and grow, and I look forward to ensuring every customer achieves success with the UiPath platform.”

Kumar earned a Master of Business in finance from Monash University in Australia and is a member of the Chartered Management Accountants of the United Kingdom.

Innovations demonstrate the company's commitment to advancing its opentext.ai vision through Cloud Editions 24.1 release

Today, OpenText™ , the information company, announced the release of its Cloud Editions 24.1, and with it, its latest OpenText Aviator innovations. OpenText Aviator™ powers multiple AI use cases by enabling secure information management and governance across knowledge bases without customers having to move their data. The new enhancements and integrations available in Cloud Editions 24.1 demonstrate the evolution of the strategic approach to how work can be reimagined with the application of AI to business workflows, opentext.ai.

The imperative to adopt AI now spans every industry and business sector, and it only continues to gain traction. By next year, Gartner predicts that 30% of major organizations will lean on AI-generated personalized content - an exponential leap from just 2% in 2022. Similarly, Gartner also forecasts that by 2026, specialized generative AI systems will automate 20% of routine tasks across diverse industries. This acceleration highlights AI's prominent role in revolutionizing operations across all business sectors, and OpenText stands ready to support this transformative journey.

"The latest Cloud Editions launch isn't just about enhancing our offerings or providing a solution. It's about enabling a paradigm shift in how businesses operate, how industries evolve, and how we collectively engage with technology in this era of rapid transformation," said Mark J. Barrenechea, CEO & CTO, OpenText. "Leveraging AI for impactful results depends on reliable data without it, even the most skilled data scientists will struggle. By expanding the Aviator portfolio in conjunction with our world class information management platform, Cloud Editions 24.1 empowers customers with the tools and insights needed to get ahead."

Now, being made available in Cloud Editions 24.1, OpenText has added the following enhancements to its Aviator portfolio:

• OpenText Content Aviator™ now is available on OpenText Extended ECM™, integrating conversational search, summarization, and translation within content management. Recognizing that information retrieval can be both time-consuming and tedious for employees, this update enables customers to leverage generative AI technology to help accelerate content discovery, improving employee efficiency and productivity. 
• OpenText IT Operations Aviator™ on SMAX efficiently resolves common IT service requests, thus minimizing the need for support staff and reducing tier-one business costs.
• OpenText Thrust Studio™ is now open through an early access program. These new tools enable developers to design, build, and deploy applications utilizing OpenText Thrust APIs more seamlessly with enhanced workflows, permissions, and decision models. With CE 24.1, OpenText also introduces enhancements to its Thrust for Partner Program. The latest enhancements provide partners with new features in OpenText Thrust Studio including a more robust set of free APIs and additional support to help create industry-specific solutions.

"In recent years, we have witnessed how AI can profoundly change the world. Today, it is more evident than ever before that AI is the guiding compass that is steering businesses toward better efficiency, profitability, and intelligence," said David Milette, Cofounder and Chief Technology Evangelist at SQALogic Technologies Inc. "However, we are seeing in our industry that amidst AI's incredible power lies a conundrum: testing an evolving AI technology requires fundamental changes in the way we approach Quality Assurance as practitioners. Harnessing AI's tremendous potential demands a shift in responsibility and perspective; OpenText makes this simple. With its Aviator capabilities, our customers can seamlessly transform challenges into opportunities by gaining essential insights needed to identify and address potential issues, refine strategies, and ensure timely and successful deliveries."

From the first introduction of opentext.ai and OpenText Aviator in August 2023, the company quickly demonstrated its commitment to advancing its AI vision with the launch of its first set of Aviator capabilities to address multiple use cases across the enterprise:

OpenText Aviator for Business

• OpenText IT Operations Aviator™ is a cutting-edge generative AI virtual agent for OpenText Service Management Automation X (SMAX).
• OpenText DevOps Aviator™ enables organizations to deliver software at unparalleled velocity with the help of generative AI capabilities.
• OpenText Content Aviator™ optimizes information retrieval in the workplace, making it more efficient and productive. The interactive chat interface and natural language queries enhances user productivity and streamlines content discovery.
• OpenText Experience Aviator™ integrates Customer Communications Management (CCM) software with generative AI capabilities enabling marketing, communications and customer service support teams to produce well-formed and relevant material faster than ever, boosting development productivity.
• OpenText Cybersecurity Aviator™ provides an innovative threat detection approach that combines machine learning models that automatically and continuously learn with rapid deployment, allowing new threat detection models to be in place within hours.
• OpenText Business Network Aviator™ brings generative AI and large language models (LLMs) into the OpenText Business Network, placing the entire supply chain information flow into a single platform.

OpenText Aviator for Technologists

• OpenText Aviator Platform offers a suite of tools and connectors to administer enterprise-grade data warehouses, data lakes, analytics of structure and unstructured data, and visualization for intelligent decision-making.
• OpenText Aviator Search introduces a new advanced capability to go from clicks to conversations with search that spans all data types across multiple repositories to build any custom solution, portal, or experience for an enterprise. 
• OpenText Aviator IOT brings forward a collection of tools to better connect and protect millions of IoT endpoints to get real-time insights and visibility into assets location, condition, utilization, performance and health.
• OpenText Thrust is a set of robust cloud API services and developer tools built over the last three years that can power secure information flows, fuel custom AI solutions, and fast-track new AI-embedded applications.
• OpenText Aviator Lab is a partnership for experimentation with professional AI experts to help customers accelerate AI development through rapid prototyping, AI reference architectures in a secure sandbox environment.

Additional Resources:

• For further insights into the latest release, please visit our Chief Product Officer's blog post.
• Discover the other innovations available in prior Cloud Editions releases by reading our blog posts.
• Learn more about OpenText's AI strategy at opentext.ai.

Autonomous offers peace of mind to businesses growing on WordPress with dynamically managed cloud hosting that automatically scales to meet demand

DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. , the developer cloud optimized for startups and growing digital businesses, today announced the availability of Autonomous, Cloudways’ new managed WordPress hosting offering. Autonomous is designed to simplify and streamline the user experience and help businesses grappling with fluctuating website traffic save valuable time and resources. 

Autonomous addresses a common challenge faced by many growing businesses balancing website availability during traffic surges without overestimating hosting needs and expenses. Traditionally, companies forecast how much traffic they anticipate and purchase hosting resources based on guesswork. However, this approach poses a dual risk: either falling short during traffic surges, leading to outages, or over-purchasing cloud resources, adversely impacting profitability. Businesses must ensure their websites can handle surges in website traffic, as these surges, often linked to evolving customer priorities, directly impact customer loyalty and trust. Any website crash during peak periods contributes to increased customer stress, reduces consumer trust, and damages the brand.

With Autonomous, resources are managed by Cloudways and automatically scale up as the traffic increases and then scale down once the traffic spike is over. As a result, customers benefit from a website that is operational during high traffic and also has a very predictable pricing model. The hands-off high availability and enterprise-level performance of Autonomous means that organizations’ websites can scale in line with the ongoing demand. This actively avoids having to force the business to migrate to a custom dedicated website solution, by removing the need to manage servers, possess IT skills, or risk spending thousands of dollars.

"We are incredibly excited to unveil Cloudways Autonomous, a revolutionary new platform designed to deliver unprecedented performance and availability for your WordPress websites,” said Suhaib Zaheer, SVP of Managed Hosting at DigitalOcean. “Cloudways Autonomous is engineered to effortlessly handle traffic spikes, guaranteeing that your website remains fast, reliable and responsive, no matter the demand. It is more than a service; it is peace of mind for businesses that rely on their online presence. We are proud to deliver the capability that our extensive customer base has asked us for, evidence that we listen to them, helping us set a new standard in web hosting performance and reliability."

“Autonomous has been a game-changer for our web development agency. It's not just a hosting solution; it's a strategic advantage,” said Weston Crewe, Founder of Local & Co and current user of Autonomous. “With Autonomous, we've confidently taken on high-traffic websites, delivering exceptional performance, scalability, and reliability to our clients. It's transformed the way we do business, enabling us to exceed our goals and earn client trust. Cloudways Autonomous isn't just an investment; it's an asset that propels us forward in the digital landscape."

Combining Radarr Technologies capabilities with Genesys Cloud will give organizations new AI-powered experience orchestration capabilities that drive customer loyalty, business optimization and competitive differentiation

Genesys®, a global cloud leader in AI-powered experience orchestration, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Radarr Technologies, a leading AI-based social and digital listening, analytics, and consumer engagement company. By combining the comprehensive public social media capabilities within the Radarr Technologies solution with the all-in-one Genesys Cloud™ platform, Genesys will empower organizations to unify the customer experience (CX) like never before, helping them create proactive, prescriptive engagement built to drive loyalty in the AI economy.

People around the world, especially digital natives, are using public social media channels to connect with businesses as an alternative to traditional service channels. Using public social feeds or direct messaging, they expect brands to turn these inquiries for service, support and information into meaningful experiences. With Radarr Technologies capabilities, Genesys will help organizations meet customers on the social channels of their choice so they can engage with them as naturally as they do with family and friends through rich social media-based experiences that are easy, contextual and personalized.

Following the acquisition, which is expected to close in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025,ⁱ Genesys will use Radarr Technologies social media insights as a critical source for its 360-degree customer view fueling Genesys AI. Genesys will be able to further connect attitudinal, sentiment and interaction data from across the CX continuum and provide the industry’s most comprehensive depth of consumer engagement touchpoints. Organizations using Radarr Technologies capabilities on Genesys Cloud will be freed from the silos and limitations that prevent them from delivering personalized experiences wherever their customers are by harnessing new insights and capabilities to create loyalty and gain a competitive edge.

“As consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms to connect with brands for support, these channels become a crucial and largely untapped opportunity for organizations to engage with customers and glean valuable business insights,” said Tony Bates, Genesys CEO and chairman. “Once the capabilities of Radarr Technologies are integrated into Genesys Cloud, Genesys can accelerate its transformation of the CX industry by helping organizations further connect every touchpoint into the end-to-end customer experience.”

To manage their social media presence, most organizations today rely on point solutions that are often disconnected from other customer engagement systems and departments. This can leave them struggling to identify issues, analyze insights and act on what matters most, resulting in fractured customer experiences and missed opportunities to drive business results. Through the integration of Radarr Technologies, Genesys Cloud customers will gain direct access to new conversation streams from public social media posts across multiple platforms, including Apple App Store, Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, Google Play, Google My Business and more. When combined with the Genesys Cloud platform's voice and digital offerings, including its leading private social media messaging solutions, organizations will have unmatched capabilities to listen to their customers on these channels and turn these inquiries into loyalty-building conversations.

​Using the response engine capabilities of Radarr Technologies with Genesys Cloud, the combined solutions will empower agents by giving them holistic customer journey context and tools that enable them to connect with customers on their preferred social channels, whether responding to inquiries on public feeds or direct messaging. Additionally, the differentiated AI-powered Multilingual Sentiment Models within the Radarr Technologies solution will further strengthen the natural language processing (NLP) of the Genesys Cloud platform. This will expand organizations’ ability to detect regional slang and colloquialisms across more than 100 languages, including the top 10 spoken worldwide and more than 40 Asian languages and dialects. This allows organizations to better understand customer sentiment for enhanced ability to deliver personalized experiences at scale.

“Organizations have struggled to tap into the potential that social media can play in delivering differentiated customer experiences — Genesys is now in a better position to change that,” said Sheila McGee-Smith, president, McGee-Smith Analytics. “Connecting these public feeds with the orchestration of the customer journey will provide companies not only a more holistic understanding of consumer behavior and sentiment, but the tools to take action through more enhanced personalization and engagement. In adding Radarr Technologies capabilities to Genesys Cloud, the company recognizes the rising importance global enterprises are placing on social interaction management and analytics to achieve a complete unification of the customer experience.”

New All-In-One Generative AI Platform Puts the Audience and Campaign Goals First with Seamlessly Integrated Cross-Channel Content Creation

Does creating relevant, strategic marketing content feel like pushing a boulder uphill? We get it. That's why we created SparkyAI!, the all-in-one AI solution created specifically for marketing teams. SparkyAI! is a content ideation machine; the system was trained on marketing prompts, audience psychographics, and campaign objectives, so all content is created through the marketing lens – just input your brand's voice, campaign goals, and target personas to instantly create strategic, cross-channel content.   

Always On-Brand AI Content Creation Tied to Campaign Objectives

Forget generic AI tools. SparkyAI! was built around the way marketers work, including UNLIMITED brand assets because we know you work with multiple products, brands, and customer segments. Just feed in your personas, products, and campaign objectives into the Brain Bank and SparkyAI!'s advanced algorithm delivers on-brand, human-sounding copy in seconds.

Each output can be customized across all digital channels with the single click of a button! Collaborate as a team within the platform to create completely integrated campaigns with customized content.

AI Trained to View Content Through the Marketing Lens, Including Psychographics

The best part? The content resonates because SparkyAI! has the innate ability to understand context through a marketing lens and what makes your audience tick. Trained on marketing prompts with embedded campaign objectives and built around the marketing workflow, SparkyAI! delivers always on-brand, human-like copy that puts the audience first, using advanced generative AI technology. Now your messages can be hyper-personalized for customers without the grunt work.

"We know most AI tools can be overwhelming for users, so we've built-in the marketing prompts so you don't have to think through how to engineer the ask. Instead, you get on-brand content in just a few clicks," says Ted Tagalakis, Founder and CEO of SparkyAI! "As an agency owner myself, I know marketers work with multiple products targeting a variety of audiences. We built SparkyAI! to help them do more with less through unlimited brand voices, personas, products, and creative briefs that can be applied to nearly any type of marketing content. All SparkyAI! content can be unified across digital campaigns, ensuring consistent, compelling, and customized messaging."

What SparkyAI! Is

SparkyAI! is an all-in-one platform that features a suite of AI-powered tools designed to boost marketing productivity across the entire customer journey – from ideation to activation. The platform includes an unlimited bank of products, customer personas, creative briefs, and brand voices for personalized omnichannel content. Key capabilities include:

• Automated ideation and messaging. Quickly generate on-brand ideas and campaigns powered by SparkyAI!'s pre-trained marketing knowledge.
• AI content creation. Produce high-quality, always on-brand blogs/articles, social media posts, email campaigns, video/podcast scripts, Google and eCommerce Ads, and more in seconds.
• Team collaboration. Share ideas, content, and workflows to align dispersed marketing teams and provide feedback easily within the platform.
• Omnichannel distribution. Create once, distribute everywhere. Send personalized content to the right audiences across the right channels.

What SparkyAI! Does:

SparkyAI! goes beyond generic content creation to generate strategic ideas connected to a brand's overall positioning and objectives. The platform was designed to deliver human-sounding AI copy tailored to multiple products, brand voices and audience personas for maximum relevance. Once created, the content can then be seamlessly integrated across all channels to ensure consistent and customized campaigns.

How SparkyAI! Works

SparkyAI! utilizes algorithms trained specifically on marketing-related data fields so users can provide simple prompts to kickoff relevant ideas. Ingrained with elements like audience insight and campaign goals, the AI models power on-brand, cross-channel content generation. This innovative approach puts additional strategy, relevance, and customization into the mix compared to traditional generative systems. SparkyAI! also offers turnkey cross-campaign templates spanning ideation to execution to provide complete AI-powered solutions that enable marketers to do more in less time. 

Acquisition of Boast Would Mark Next Milestone in Targeted Expansion of Banzai’s MarTech Suite and Aims to Bolster the Company’s Customer Engagement Capabilities

Banzai International, Inc., a leading marketing technology company that provides essential marketing and sales solutions, today announced that it has signed a non-binding letter of intent (the “LOI”) to acquire Boast, an all-in-one platform for video-based customer testimonials and surveys. This announcement marks the third in a series of recently signed LOIs, following the LOIs entered into with IGLeads and Cliently earlier this month.

Boast is a profitable marketing technology business with over 500 customers including HubSpot, Whole Foods, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blink, and The North Face.

Organizations use Boast to capture video content from their customers, users, and members. That content can then be shared across a variety of channels to increase leads, conversions, and trust. Without Boast, the process of obtaining reviews, stories, and testimonials from customers can be time-consuming, frustrating, and heavily manual.

Boast is a comprehensive all-in-one video testimonial platform that allows businesses to seamlessly collect and leverage customer feedback to boost sales, and improve brand affinity. By automating the collection of authentic customer feedback, organizations can rapidly build trust with prospective clients resulting in increased lead generation and revenue. Boast features fully customizable multi-touch sequences that make it easy for marketers to request, edit, and display customer surveys and video testimonials directly to their websites. The addition of Boast’s technology to the Banzai ecosystem would further bolster the capabilities of the Company’s engagement and video solutions like Demio. It would also open up cross-sale opportunities by leveraging Boast’s existing client base.

“Boast is optimizing the way businesses of all sizes generate and cultivate their online presence. Video is one of the most powerful tools for trust and conversion, and it’s a category we know well,” said Joe Davy, CEO and Founder of Banzai. “Ryan and his team have built a very impressive business which we’re excited to have the opportunity to own. Integrating Boast into the Banzai ecosystem would represent a key step forward in our strategy to consolidate mission-critical MarTech solutions through acquisition.”

Financial and Strategic Benefits

• Profitable self-funded business: Since its inception, Boast has been self-funded, relying solely on internal resources for financial support and to drive its impressive organic growth.
• Proven and Trusted Technology: Boast is leveraged by industry-leading organizations such as HubSpot, Wholefoods, Blue Cross Blue Shield, The North Face, and Blink, an Amazon company. Banzai could leverage these existing relationships to drive interest for the portfolio of MarTech solutions.
• Subscription-Based Business Model: Boast’s subscription-based business model could meaningfully increase Banzai’s recurring revenue.

Ryan Doom, President and Co-Founder of Boast, commented: “We started Boast with the mission to build the best customer experience survey and feedback collection tools possible; this acquisition would be a testament to our success in achieving our goal. We are excited at the possibility of Boast joining Banzai as they transform the MarTech landscape through their innovative and data-driven approach.”