Data Productivity Cloud adds Amazon Bedrock to no-code generative AI pipelines functionality

Data productivity provider Matillion announces the addition of generative artificial intelligence (AI) functionality to its flagship Data Productivity Cloud using Amazon Bedrock.

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes foundation models (FMs) from leading AI companies accessible via an API to build and scale generative AI applications.

A longtime AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, Matillion adds generative AI integration with a prompt component supporting Amazon Bedrock to enable users to operationalise the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) inside the data pipeline, to address intelligent data integration tasks including data enrichment, data quality and data classification among others.

Ciaran Dynes, Chief Product Officer at Matillion, said: "Integrating AI technologies into our product offering adds a huge amount of firepower for our clients to materially increase their data productivity with intelligent data integration tasks.

"There was never any question about including AWS in that process. Amazon Bedrock's ability to leverage all base models - such as Anthropic Claude and Amazon Titan - brings huge opportunities for our clients to get insights from their data at scale, faster."

Adding a graphical LLM prompt component to the palette, Matillion brings no-code generative AI functionality to data pipelines, bridging the ever-growing data engineering skills gap.

"AI has the potential to revolutionise the way that we all work. Integrating LLMs into data pipelines creates exciting capabilities which, put simply, will unbox new levels of gains in productivity and results for the business," said Sam Hobbs, Principal Financial Group.

Matillion announced its vision for integrating generative AI technologies into pipelines and Data Productivity Cloud at its user conference, Data Unlocked, last month. The data productivity provider continues to strengthen its work with AWS, also announcing Data Productivity Cloud on Amazon Redshift at AWS re:Invent 2023.

New Delta Lake Support Simplifies Data Management, Allows Enterprises to Quickly Access and Integrate Data to Build LLMs

Fivetran, the global leader in data integration, today announced support for Delta Lake on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), further broadening its support for Amazon S3 as a data lake destination. Hundreds of thousands of data lakes run on top of Amazon S3, an object storage service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security and performance. Today’s news means Fivetran customers can land data in Amazon S3 and easily access their Delta Lake tables.

Data lakes are uniquely suited for handling the massive amounts of unstructured and semi-structured data due to their flexibility and scalability. Fivetran's automation transforms data lakes from traditionally ungoverned repositories of data into organized, governed, user-friendly data stores, enabling organizations to quickly access and leverage data to build a variety of use cases, including predictive analytics, generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications, machine learning (ML) models and large language models (LLMs).

In April Fivetran announced support for Amazon S3 with Apache Iceberg, another leading high-performance format, with availability also announced today at AWS re:Invent 2023.

"We are thrilled to enable our customers to seamlessly leverage Delta Lake on Amazon S3,” said Fraser Harris, VP of Product at Fivetran. “Data lakes have proven to be the ideal foundation for machine learning, AI and generative AI projects. This enhancement represents a significant step forward in simplifying data management for such initiatives."

Fivetran brings data governance capabilities, industry-leading security and compliance, cost efficiency, and ease of use to data destinations. Fivetran’s no-code platform offers enterprises a simple, flexible way to move data from nearly any data source to any destination. Whether customer data is found in on-premises databases or data warehouses, data lakes, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps, files, or events, Fivetran can move and replicate it from one source to another with 99.9% uptime. Common use cases range from migrating strategic data workloads from a cloud data warehouse to data lake for use in AI/ML modeling or generative AI application building, to replicating entire production on-premises databases in the cloud – using change data capture to keep cloud data in sync at all times.

By choosing Fivetran, customers can leverage these capabilities and avoid the complexity and lack of governability that may hinder data lake adoption at scale. Fivetran’s data platform automatically converts customer data to Delta Lake format and ensures data quality by anonymizing personally identifiable information (PII), cleansing and normalizing the data.

Fivetran’s 400+ pre-built connectors and fully managed data pipeline platform supports on-premises and cloud databases, data warehouses, SaaS applications, events and files. Fivetran can also create custom connectors which means that no matter the data source, Fivetran can support it – so customers don’t have to spend precious engineering resources on connector development. This broad portfolio of source compatibility enables customers to unify their data in the data lake, regardless of where it currently resides.

Respected executive and entrepreneur with years of experience in commerce and identity will lead Commerce growth for publisher, merchant and affiliate network clients

Sovrn, a publisher technology platform that helps content creators earn and keep more of their revenue, today announced that it has hired Carla Holtze Cell as its first-ever Managing Director of Commerce. In this new role, Cell will be responsible for setting the strategy and executing the go-to-market plan for Sovrn's suite of commerce products. She will report directly to Chris George, President of Sovrn. 

"Commerce is an important growth area for publishers who are focused on diversifying their advertising businesses. At Sovrn, we uniquely bring together commerce, advertising, and data solutions, creating powerful opportunities to help our customers grow," said George. "Bringing Carla on board positions Sovrn to accelerate its innovation in the commerce space in ways that will benefit our partners. With her strong background in data and commerce, Carla brings the ability to develop holistic solutions for publishers that truly leverage each aspect of their business and we couldn't be more excited to have her on our team." 

Much of the commerce space has proven to be overly complex and inefficient for publishers, making it difficult to form strong relationships with merchants and deliver dynamic, relevant, and engaging shoppable content that drives revenue for both publishers and retailers. Sovrn Commerce is a reimagined solution that provides the freedom and control content creators need to efficiently manage their affiliate business through a simple, scalable all-in-one solution that allows them to understand, influence, and monetize the purchase behavior of their audiences. 

Cell will lead the commercial team to not only drive revenue, but to also work closely with the product team to launch new software products and reporting tools into the market, which will ultimately help each publisher's bottom line. She will work with customers across the publisher, merchant and affiliate networks, including publishers such as DotDash Meredith, Bauer Media, and Zola, and merchants and affiliate networks such as Walmart, Nike, Wayfair, Macy's, Rakuten, and more. 

"Sovrn has long been a company I have known and respected. I am aligned with its mission to be an ecosystem that supports the breadth of digital publishers — from premium publishers and platforms to independent influencers and content creators," said Cell. "Specifically in affiliate commerce, I strongly believe that if you inspire content as a publisher, you deserve to be rewarded, and that's exactly what I am setting out to do at Sovrn. There is much room for innovation, creativity, and data for publishers to further capitalize on their content, and I am beyond excited to be a part of solving that problem for our customers."

Cell comes to Sovrn after co-founding Parrable in 2014, a digital identification SaaS company, where she served as CEO for nearly a decade. In this position, she led all aspects of the business, including the creation and launch of a patented identification technology to replace third-party cookies, enabling transparency, accuracy, targeting and attribution. An entrepreneur at heart, Cell also co-founded and served as CEO for Have to Have, a social commerce platform designed to drive monetization for publishers, ROAS for merchants and to gather rich customer intent data for enhanced retargeting. She also worked at the BBC and The Economist Intelligence Unit and began her career at Lehman Brothers in both New York and Hong Kong.

69% of TV viewers in Indonesia watch ad-supported streaming

Magnite, the world’s largest independent sell-side advertising company, today unveiled its latest research study, “Streaming TV’s New Era: Embracing Ad-supported Streaming Across Screens in Indonesia.” The research finds that ad-supported streaming in Indonesia continues to gain momentum and 69% of TV viewers in Indonesia watch ad-supported streaming.

According to the study, streamers in Indonesia spend an average of two hours a day watching streaming content and demonstrate high levels of cross-device viewing habits. While smartphones are the primary device used to consume TV content, 61% of ad-supported viewers watch on smart TVs always or most of the time in a typical week. Their cross-screen engagement creates meaningful connections as nearly all (97%) ad-supported streamers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand they engaged with across multiple devices.

“Ad-supported streaming in Indonesia is experiencing continued growth as viewers gravitate toward accessible, premium television content,” said Gavin Buxton, Managing Director of Asia at Magnite. “Our research highlights streaming’s ability to drive brand visibility and trust and that viewer engagement extends beyond the streaming content to the accompanying advertising as well. As streaming continues to scale, brands should look to this channel to drive impact among a highly engaged audience.”

“Magnite’s research findings validate the effectiveness of ad-supported streaming and its ability to engage viewers for long periods by providing an immersive, cross-screen experience,” said Yogi Triharso, Head of Emtek Digital Data and Programmatic. “The shift towards ad-supported streaming content presents a prime opportunity for brands to capitalize on OTT platforms like Vidio. Leveraging this avenue enables diversification of marketing strategies, facilitating adept navigation of the dynamic streaming market while broadening audience reach.”

“The combination of high quality content and a seamless user experience is fueling the increase of ad-supported streaming in Indonesia,” said Anurag Sure, Lead Biddable, Mindshare Unilever Indonesia. “Magnite’s research underscores streaming as an influential channel that brands should consider when evaluating their media strategies given the high engagement of ad-supported streamers across various devices. This offers brands a valuable opportunity to bolster their connections with consumers and amplify the scope of their advertising initiatives across different screens.”

Additional key findings from Magnite’s study include:

• Streaming services are essential in Indonesian households and 86% of ad-supported streamers consider streaming to be a must-have, while nearly 7 in 10 said they are watching more services with ads versus a year ago.
• Ad-supported streamers are comfortable providing information about themselves if it results in a more relevant ad experience and this more personalized environment leads to better outcomes. 94% of ad-supported streamers are more likely to pay attention to ads that are relevant to their interests.
• Streaming is capturing the attention of viewers more than social media. 94% of ad-supported viewers watch streaming content for long periods each time they watch, while 89% of social media users report scrolling quickly through their feed until they reach a post of interest.

Vyopta, a global leader in digital collaboration and experience optimization, today announces the launch of its new agent for Microsoft Teams and Zoom Rooms. This marks a significant evolution for the company, which has historically provided agentless solutions. The new agent aims to deliver more accurate and deeper monitoring and analytics by pulling data directly from devices.

The introduction of this new agent is a strategic move designed to provide best-in-class insights. By directly collecting data from devices, the agent improves troubleshooting capabilities. It allows for a more accurate and granular understanding of collaborative environments, leading to fewer false positives and a better representation of the digital ecosystem.

"This new agent is a foundational element in our broader strategy," says Jonathan Sass, Vyopta VP of Product and Marketing. "The reason for this departure from our traditional agentless approach is twofold. Firstly, it enhances the value we provide today by offering deeper insights. Secondly, it aligns with our long-term vision to optimize the entire digital employee experience, whether you're collaborating with others or working individually."

Historically, Vyopta has been focused on enabling effective collaboration experiences through its technology, space, and user insights. The introduction of the agent-based approach not only augments this but also creates opportunities for the future to enhance employees' individual and focused work as well. It enables Vyopta to collect new data types that give deeper insight into both collaboration and individual work.

RudderStack Profiles enables companies to unify first-party data from every customer touchpoint into complete profiles, build ML user features, and deliver powerful customer experiences

RudderStack, the leading warehouse native customer data platform, today announced the release of RudderStack Profiles for AWS Redshift customers. RudderStack Profiles enables data teams to quickly build complete customer profiles in their warehouse, generate user features, and activate them to deliver powerful customer experiences.

Data teams are often overwhelmed by the complexity of collecting and unifying clean, first-party customer data to create a customer 360 and drive valuable use cases for every business team. The process can take months or even years and cost millions of dollars. RudderStack Profiles solves this problem by providing tools for data teams that automate the SQL grunt work and automatically build a full customer 360 table natively in AWS Redshift.

With RudderStack Profiles, data teams can reduce engineering costs and reallocate their most valuable resources to focus on delivering customer data use cases, not plumbing or cleaning data. They can also improve time to value for critical projects by building on a complete view of their customer in their warehouse. Plus, they can say goodbye to inflexible black box SaaS and configure RudderStack models that generate a customer profile table in their warehouse.

StatPearls, a leading professional healthcare education and technology company, eliminated data silos and disparate schemas by using RudderStack Profiles to build a warehouse native CDP on Amazon Redshift. Now they're able to use granular user-level data to understand attribution, accurately calculate LTV, and increase return on ad spend (ROAS). Since implementing RudderStack Profiles, StatPearls increased customer retention by 1.7x and nearly quadrupled ad spend while maintaining positive ROAS.

"Data from RudderStack helped our team turn marketing into a math problem," said Mike Sperduti, Head of Engineering at StatPearls. "We know that when we spend X on a particular campaign, we are going to get Y yield over time."

Unlike traditional Customer Data Platforms (CDP), RudderStack's Warehouse Native CDP does not persist data and is built on top of your warehouse or data lake. With the introduction of Profiles, RudderStack now has a complete platform across each step of the Data Activation Lifecycle:

• Collection: RudderStack's Event Stream and Cloud Extract ETL pipelines make it easy to collect data from every website, app, or SaaS tool.
• Unification: RudderStack's Profiles feature leverages our standardized schemas to significantly reduce the time it takes to build a complete view of the customer, including an identity graph and rich customer features.
• Activation: RudderStack's Reverse ETL pipeline, real-time Profiles API, and 200+ integrations deliver complete customer profiles and user features to downstream destinations to trigger marketing automation, drive real-time analytics, or deliver personalized experiences.

"We're excited to bring RudderStack Profiles to AWS Redshift. When Redshift users combine Profiles with our data collection and activation features, they can start driving better business outcomes with their customer data faster," said Soumyadeb Mitra, Founder and CEO of RudderStack. "Profiles enables data teams to take full advantage of Amazon Redshift's secure, reliable, easily scalable data warehouse while harnessing the power and flexibility of RudderStack's Warehouse Native Customer Data Platform to deliver revenue growth and reduce cost."

RudderStack and AWS are excited to see the success that customers have already achieved with RudderStack Profiles and look forward to helping more customers drive better business outcomes with their customer data.

Chad Gold joins G2 from Salesloft as Chief Financial Officer, bringing 20+ years of experience from pre- and post- IPO companies

G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace, today announced it has appointed Chad Gold as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer (CFO). With over 20 years of experience in corporate finance, including CFO roles at pre- and post-IPO technology companies, Gold joins G2 from Salesloft.

For the past five and a half years, Gold contributed to Salesloft’s extraordinary growth and expansion, overseeing Series D and E funding rounds, as well as a majority stake investment by Vista Equity Partners – which took the company’s valuation from $200 million to $2.3 billion.

“In the current age of AI, G2 is uniquely positioned to power the buying and selling of software. As we tap into our potential in this landscape and accelerate growth, it’s crucial that we have the right finance leadership at the helm,” said Godard Abel, co-founder and CEO of G2. “With Chad joining G2 as CFO, his experience leading and scaling global finance and operations functions will be instrumental in helping us reach our next peak as a company.”

Before Salesloft, Gold was CFO at Rubicon where he was responsible for the company’s financial operations and reporting — playing a key role in strategic business planning and development, global expansion, and revenue growth. He was also previously Global Vice President and CFO at SAP Ariba, leading the business’ global finance organization and overseeing a period of significant growth — with cloud subscription revenue more than doubling following SAP’s acquisition of Ariba in 2012.

“I enjoy being part of great growth stories and love the role finance can play in software businesses to impact outcomes," said Chad Gold, CFO at G2. “At Salesloft, I was fortunate enough to see the company experience 10x growth. G2 has a clear opportunity to lead the market even further and I look forward to being part of G2’s growth story.”

Prior to SAP Ariba, Gold held multiple finance leadership roles at The Home Depot and began his career working as a Senior Consultant in Business Valuation at Ernst & Young. In 2022, he was recognized as a CFO of the Year by Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Rad, the innovative video streaming platform for Web 3, has secured significant funding in a follow-on round led by Ayre Ventures. Rad is also pleased to announce it has incorporated the use of BSV Blockchain into its publishing and purchasing flow for transactional video on demand (TVOD) and open or limited edition NFT video. In addition, Rad has integrated with HandCash, a leading mobile and web wallet that users can connect to apps, games, and websites to stream money directly, to help facilitate payments. This means you can create and purchase content on Rad without needing a browser plugin, and the Company can easily expand other forms of payment.

This product release and new investment creates an unrivaled opportunity for creators and studios to release content to major streaming devices. Content creators and studios can now upload video to Rad, set all metadata associated with the video, fix pricing, and enable an arbitrary number of revenue shares and royalties to multiple payees. This means that anyone receiving payment from the sales of content can be paid directly, such as actors, musicians, agents, and more.

This platform launch will help actors and writers receive payments immediately and transparently for their work and redefines how contracting, legal, and accounting will work for selling premium content online. The publishing and payments use the native blockchain’s currency initially but will support accepting any payment type in the future, as well as payouts to traditional fiat currencies.

“Rad is excited to expand its integration of blockchain technologies with real use cases, and do so in a way that creators and viewers don’t have to think about,” said Tony Mugavero, CEO of Rad. “Who published the content, who purchased it, and who gets paid, should all be transparent and instant as well as verifiable by all parties involved. It reduces legal and accounting overhead and provides an extra layer of trust that hasn’t existed in the black boxes of streaming companies.”

Ayre Ventures founder Calvin Ayre hailed the development, saying: “The recent Hollywood actor and writer strikes showed the importance of updating rights agreements in tandem with technological change to ensure creators are properly compensated for their efforts. Ayre Ventures is pleased to support Rad’s ongoing work to demonstrate the pivotal role that enterprise blockchain technology can play in these endeavors. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and BSV Blockchain-powered transparency is the best method of ensuring a fair shake for all."

For the gas price of a single transaction on Ethereum, Rad can create 500,000 videos on BSV Blockchain. Leveraging the power of blockchain for transparency and immediacy of payments can’t be prohibitively expensive. “This is a solution to the lack of transparent and fair payouts in the streaming business, which has led to writers and actors striking, and creators leaving social platforms while struggling to pay bills,” Mugavero added. “Major studios have hundreds of lawyers and accountants shuffling money between departments, countless middlemen and agencies taking a piece of the pie, and there is no easy way to guarantee everyone is paid the right amounts. Blockchain solves this problem and enables instant payouts to the right recipients while giving ownership back to the people.”