Molly Burns | Qlik & Samir Shah | AARP
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Q&A: With 38 million members, AARP narrates its own digital transformation

The American Association of Retired Persons has 38 million members, 66,000 volunteers, and 2,300 employees across every state in the U.S. Not to mention, the magazine and bulletin AARP sends to members remain the two largest-circulation publications in the country. These numbers suggest a monumental challenge to managing data in ways that few organizations encounter, but AARP committed to a digital transformation with both security and cloud access in mind

French open-source AI model startup Mistral AI raises $640M at $6B valuation

Mistral AI, a Paris-based artificial intelligence startup, today announced that it has raised €600 million ($640 million) in new funding at a valuation of $6 billion in a round led by General Catalyst.The funds come from a Series B round after reports last month that the company was seeking $600 million at around a $5 billion valuation. The announcement follows the company’s Series A funding round led by a16z and Lightspeed Ventures six months ago at a $2 billion valuation.Existing investors joining the round included Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, Bpifrance and BNP Paribas. Other corporate backers included big names such as Nvidia Corp., Samsung Venture Investment Corp

Automation Anywhere levels up business process automation with generative AI

Business process automation software firm Automation Anywhere Inc. used its annual user conference today to unveil a new AI + Automation Enterprise System that infuses the latest advances in generative artificial intelligence with its products.The new offering was announced at Imagine 2024, and is built around a series of new AI agents built using the company’s own AI Agent Studio platform. The company says these agents accelerate process discovery and speed up the development and deployment of more powerful automations that can increase business efficiency and drive significant productivity gains and cost savings

On the AI Insights and Innovation podcast: Where are the use cases to justify generative AI investment?

Generative AI investment is a focus of attention for processor manufacturers and cloud providers, as recently seen in Microsoft Corp.’s adoption of AMD Inc.’s MI300X AI chips in the Azure platform.Yet this interest among major industry players to compete with Nvidia’s H100 GPU processor for generative artificial intelligence business is a subplot in what may be the bigger story. Some businesses may not be realizing the return on investment or results to justify adoption of GPU-based technologies

RelationalAI weighs in on how it’s using Snowflake Marketplace for native app monetization

Cloud players have made it abundantly clear: Ecosystems are important, but so are marketplaces. At Data Cloud Summit, one of the prominent companies using the Snowflake Marketplace is RelationalAI Inc.At the event, details were unveiled about how RelationalAI is building on its relationship with Snowflake Inc., with the public launch of its Snowflake Native App on the Snowflake Marketplace. Using Snowflake Marketplace has made all the difference, according to Molham Aref (pictured, left), chief executive officer of RelationalAI.Molham Aref of RelationalAI talks to theCUBE about the Snowflake Native App Framework

AI-powered voice clarity startup Tomato.ai launches with $2.1M in seed funding

Tomato.ai Inc., an artificial intelligence startup that’s using generative AI to improve voice communications, said today it has closed a $2.1 million seed funding round.The investment was led by existing investors Cardumen Capital and Recursive Ventures, and saw participation from new investor Gaingels. The announcement of the funding coincides with the launch of Tomato.ai’s first two products – a first-of-its-kind, AI-powered “accent softening” tool, and a more traditional noise cancellation feature.Aimed at call center agents, Tomato.ai Accent Softening is described as the company’s flagship product

Timescale unveils high-performance AI vector database extensions for PostgreSQL

Timescale Inc., a PostgreSQL cloud database company, today announced the release of two new open-source extensions that significantly enhance its scalability and ease of use for artificial intelligence applications when retrieving data from vector databases.The new extensions, pgvectorscale and pgai, bring to bear the ability to use PostgreSQL, an open-source relational database for vector data retrieval, which is fundamental for building AI applications and specialized contextual search. Vector databases allow AI developers to insert data into high-dimensional arrays so that they are connected by how they are related to one another contextually

AuthenticID debuts new algorithms to identify when deepfakes are being used to trick ID verification tools

Identity verification and fraud detection technology startup AuthenticID Inc. today launched a new tool that uses proprietary algorithms to detect so-called “deepfakes” and prevent generative AI injection attacks.Deepfakes are fake videos, photos and audio recordings created using generative AI, and they have become a real problem on social media, as they can show real people saying or doing something that never happened. They’re a big problem because they can be used to manipulate people into believing that a politician, for example, said something hugely controversial

Incode acquires MetaMap to enhance identity verification services

Identity verification and authentication startup Incode Technologies Inc. today announced that it has acquired identify verification startup MetaMap Inc. for an undisclosed price.Founded in 2017, MetaMap offers a customer identity platform designed around the concept of continuous improvement. The platform allows businesses to predict whom they should serve and to what extent. It also hosts a comprehensive catalog of data, spanning a wide range of user data types, which enables businesses to make better risk decisions.Pitched as offering one platform with “countless resources,” MetaMap provides the key tools needed to verify customers

Salesforce enhances Consumer Goods Cloud with productivity-boosting AI

Salesforce Inc. said today it’s boosting its Consumer Goods Cloud with new artificial intelligence and data capabilities that aim to boost productivity in retailer’s and supplier’s route-to-market processes.The Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud platform provides tools that help companies to unlock and unify customer data and industry market research. It’s most often used by account representatives to gain deeper insights into buyer’s preferences, so they can better optimize their retail planning and execution operations

New products from Checkmarx aim to improve code-to-cloud security visibility

Application security testing firm Checkmarx Ltd. today launched two new products, Checkmarx Application Security Posture Management and Cloud Insights, that are designed to help enterprises with code-to-cloud visibility and analysis of cloud-native application security risks.Available as part of the Checkmarx One AppSec platform, APSM and Cloud Insights allow enterprises that are developing cloud-native applications to reduce application and business risk. The new services do so by delivering end-to-end insights into application security posture, allowing enterprises to better correlate, prioritize and triage remediation efforts

Unlocking the power of data: Analyst keynote insights live from QlikWorld

Harnessing the power of data-driven outcomes continues to be top of mind for today’s organizations.How can companies put data first to deliver outcomes? And how will data integration, visualization and data-driven insights further transform business landscape?“The world is very application-centric right now … but we’re shifting to a data-centric world,” said industry analyst Dave Vellante (pictured, right). “You’re now going to see the business logic more embedded into the application or into the data. In other words, data apps

Citizen Lab finds three new iOS exploits used by NSO Group

Citizen Lab has identified three new zero-day or yet-unpatched iOS exploits that were used by NSO Group Ltd.’s Pegasus spyware to infect iPhones.Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research center affiliated with the University of Toronto, published its findings today. Its researchers have determined that the three newly discovered iOS exploits were used to launch cyberattacks against members of Mexico’s civil society. Citizen Lab gained detailed technical information about the hacking campaign last October.“We found matches with four Pegasus indicators that we had seen in previous infections between August and December 2021,” Citizen Lab detailed in a blog post

Semgrep raises $53M to help developers detect vulnerable code

Semgrep Inc., a startup with a popular code security platform of the same name, today disclosed that it has raised $53 million in funding.Lightspeed Venture Partners led the Series C investment. Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia Capital contributed as well.Before developers release new code to production, they scan it for vulnerabilities using so-called tools for SAST, or static application security testing. Semgrep offers one of the most popular SAST platforms on the market. Its platform is used by development teams at Snowflake Inc., Dropbox Inc., Shopify Inc. and other major tech firms

Cyber-physical assets join IT as a combined attack surface

The discovering and providing of security data about IT assets, performed by cloud-delivered, machine-learning security firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. is about to be expanded. It will be augmented now through a collaboration with cyber-physical security provider Claroty Ltd.Operational technology), extended internet of things), building management systems and other cyber-physical assets are increasingly becoming a part of an organization’s attack surface and thus must be included in overall strategy, according to Stephan Goldberg (pictured), vice president of strategic alliances at Claroty.“With emerging technologies, everything is being converged,” he said

Microsoft reportedly developing its own AI chip named ‘Athena’

Microsoft Corp. is reportedly forging ahead with efforts to develop its own chips optimized for artificial intelligence in a bid to reduce costs for training generative AI models such as those powering OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT chatbot.Citing two people familiar with the matter, The Information reported today that Microsoft has been working on the new chipset, codenamed “Athena,” since at least 2019. Employees at Microsoft and OpenAI already have access to the new chips and are using them to test their performance on large language models such as GPT-4

VMware evolves integrated ecosystem approach and partner network

As VMware Inc.’s business strategy shifts to a subscription-based, software-as-a-service model with annual recurring revenue as its income stream, the organization has to adapt in its relationship with channel partners and global systems integrators, according to the executive tasked with revamping the sales channels.“We do a pretty good job on the channel side

Tailscale launches zero-trust virtual private network solution for enterprise customers

Tailscale Inc., a corporate virtual private network provider that uses mesh networking technology, today rolled out its zero-trust networking solution for enterprise customers that allows them to ensure that each connection is authenticated and all traffic is encrypted end-to-end.Founded in 2019, Tailscale launched to ease issues with secure connectivity caused by traditional VPN services, which use centralized servers to provide monitoring and access management. The company uses mesh networking that allows devices to connect through nodes that decentralize access, increase speed, scalability and reliability of the entire network

How supercloud is helping orgs fast-track and modernize applications

The cloud has been a priority on business agendas for years — not just tech leaders anymore, as the world modernizes applications and data by moving it to an increasingly user-friendly cloud.With VMware Inc.’s modern application and management strategies, the company helps organizations fast track their application modernization journeys, allowing development directly on the public cloud, among other innovative methods, all designed to extricate and simplify a company’s migration to the cloud. With the combination of the Tanzu and Aria portfolios, VMware introduced the ability to expand the capabilities of multicloud and multi-cluster Kubernetes solutions

Sumo Logic adds predictive analytics to its observability platform

Sumo Logic Inc., developer of an analytics-based platform for application performance management and observability, today added capabilities that predict application, cloud and infrastructure usage and resource demands based on historical data.It’s also stepping up its commitment to the OpenTelemetry collection of tools, application program interfaces and software development kits that can be used to instrument, generate, collect and export telemetry data.Sumo Logic’s cloud-based data analytics software is used by hundreds of enterprises to obtain insights into the state of their information technology infrastructure

New Salesforce capabilities help government agencies modernize their services

Salesforce Inc. today announced new capabilities and compliance certifications across Customer 360 for Public Sector that help government agencies modernize their services.The new capabilities leverage Salesforce’s customer relationship management tools, artificial intelligence, automation and data tools to help government agencies boost staff productivity, reducing costs and improving outcomes. The new release includes prebuilt, government-specific capabilities designed to meet stringent compliance requirements on a single automated and intelligent platform, the company said.Salesforce is seeking to address ongoing issues with security and compliance

CIOs are in a holding pattern – but ready to strike at data monetization

Recent conversations with information technology decision-makers show a stark contrast between the period exiting 2021 and the mindset leaving 2022.Chief information officers are generally funding new initiatives by pushing off or cutting lower-priority items. While security efforts are still being funded, those that enable business initiatives that generate revenue take priority over cleaning up legacy technical debt.The bottom line is, for the moment at least, the mindset is not to cut everything, rather it’s to put a pause on cleaning up legacy hairballs and continue to fund initiatives to drive monetization

Enterprise support for the metaverse flourishes at this year’s CES

Much of what has been written about the metaverse in 2022 centered around two words: failure and bust. Yet it appears that many of the 100,000 attendees and presenters at the CES 2023 consumer electronics show in Last Vegas this week hold a different view.From the industry research released this week by the Consumer Technology Association to standing room-only metaverse sessions at the conference, the message was hard to miss: The metaverse, a shared, immersive 3D visual digital space to experience life as an alternative to the physical world, is coming and the enterprise will be a key driver

Apple reportedly delays mixed reality headset launch and cancels iPhone SE 4

Apple Inc. is reportedly delaying the launch of its mixed reality headset and won’t introduce a new iPhone SE handset next year as originally expected.MacRumors reported the changes to the company’s product roadmap today and late Thursday, citing respected industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.Last June, it was reported that Apple planned to debut its mixed reality headset this month. Kuo stated on Thursday that the iPhone maker is postponing the announcement because of product development delays. The delays are reportedly the result of technical issues related to the device’s software and mechanical components

Samsung expects 69% drop in fourth-quarter profit as revenue drops

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today reported preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter, disclosing that both its profit and revenue declined in the last three months of 2022. Samsung estimates that its profit dropped 69% year-over-year, to 4.3 trillion won or about $3.37 billion. The company’s estimate fell significantly short of market expectations. Analysts polled for the Refinitiv consensus expected Samsung to post a fourth-quarter profit of 5.9 trillion won, or about $4.7 billion. Samsung also experienced a sales decline during the quarter

Confluent acquires stream processing startup Immerok

Confluent Inc. today announced plans to buy Immerok GmbH, a startup with a platform that makes it easier to develop stream processing applications.The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Germany-based Immerok previously raised $17 million from investors. A stream processing application is a program that processes data in near real-time. A cybersecurity tool, for example, might process breach alerts in near real-time to speed up the detection of malware. In contrast, many traditional applications only analyze new information hours or days after it’s generated

Crypto exchange Huobi to lay off 20% of staff amid ‘crypto winter’

Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global today confirmed its intent to lay off 20% of its employees amid the current “bear market,” according to a statement given to Reuters, following an ongoing trend across the crypto industry of layoffs amid market volatility.“The planned layoff ratio is about 20%,” a Huobi spokesperson said in a statement. “With the current state of the bear market, a very lean team will be maintained going forward.”Huobi currently employs 1,100 staff and has not yet implemented its layoff plans.This news follows reports that the exchange had become insolvent

How streamlining cybersecurity solutions leads to more secure and cost-effective ops

A business having 40 or 50 cybersecurity products is not uncommon. One company has even been reported to have over 400 operational on their network at one time, according to Lee Klarich (pictured), chief product officer of Palo Alto Networks Inc.This is obviously far from ideal, but Palo Alto Networks has been attempting to consolidate and solve more issues with fewer products.“Integration is actually a technology statement,” Klarich said. “It’s delivering better outcomes because we’ve designed multiple capabilities to work together, natively ourselves as the developers, so that the customer doesn’t have to figure out how to do it

Accenture Security and Palo Alto Networks partner to secure cloud cybersecurity gaps

As digital threats continue to multiply in both number and severity, cybersecurity has been a growing concern for IT leaders globally.Cybersecurity consultant group Accenture Security has been named Palo Alto Network Inc.’s Government Systems Integrator of the Year for four years, embracing zero-trust network infrastructures as the pandemic shakes up the remote workforce and cybersecurity

Dave Vellante’s Breaking Analysis: The complete collection

Breaking Analysis is a weekly editorial program combining knowledge from SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE with spending data from Enterprise Technology Research.Branded as theCUBE Insights, Powered by ETR, the program is our opportunity to share independent, unfiltered editorial with SiliconANGLE, theCUBE and Wikibon communities. The program and conclusions we produce are data-driven, tapping ETR’s proprietary spending data set.Episode 221 – NVIDIA, Broadcom and the expanding breadth of AI  – We attended both Nvidia Corp.’s GTC conference and Broadcom Inc.’s investor day this week where the artificial intelligence platform shift was on full display

PitchBook: VC exits slow to a halt as market continues to struggle

Venture capital exits slowed to a halt as the rest of the market continued to struggle, according to a first look at the fourth-quarter PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor released ahead of a full report next week.For the full year, angel and seed stage deal activity continued to buck the overall downward market trend, with $21 billion invested across 7,261 deals, but it wasn’t all good news. In the fourth quarter, declining angel and seed deal counts are noted in the report as possibly foreshadowing a continued slide in 2023

Report says Google is panicking over threat posed by OpenAI’s chatbot

Google LLC is reportedly in panic mode over the potential threat posed by OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT model to its dominance of internet search.The company is responding by massively expanding efforts to close the technological gap between its own artificial intelligence capabilities and those of ChatGPT, which is an advanced chatbot that can churn out some impressive conversational responses to questions.The concern for Google is that ChatGPT could eventually emerge as an alternative to Google Search

Google purchases NFL Sunday Ticket streaming rights for reported $2B a year

Google LLC today announced that it will make the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket game streaming package available on YouTube.The deal will see Google pay about $2 billion per year for the streaming rights, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google is said to have licensed the Sunday Ticket package for seven years. The search giant reportedly secured the deal after winning a bidding contest that also included Amazon.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co.According to the Journal, the annual value of the streaming deal could surpass $2 billion if “certain benchmarks are reached.” The Sunday Ticket package was until now licensed by DirecTV Inc., which reportedly paid $1

Vianova raises $6.4M for its vehicle analytics platform

Vianova SAS, the developer of a specialized data analytics platform for shared mobility providers and municipalities, has raised $6.4 million in funding.The Series A investment was led by the venture capital arm of insurer Baloise Holding AG, TechCrunch reported today. XAnge, RATP Capital Innovation and Ponooc participated as well. Vianova has raised a total of $9.3 million from investors since launching in 2019. Paris-based Vianova provides a software platform that enables shared mobility providers such as ride-hailing startups to monitor their vehicle fleets. The startup’s platform visualizes the location of each car in a company’s fleet on a map

Google expands open-source software portfolio with new privacy capabilities

Google LLC today introduced two open-source technologies designed to help companies more easily process user data in a manner that meets privacy requirements.The first technology is a tool called Magritte for blurring objects such as license plates in videos. The other is a new version of FHE C++ Transpiler, a privacy tool that Google originally introduced last year. It allows applications to process encrypted datasets without decrypting them first. Magritte is based on one of the search giant’s internal software projects. It uses artificial intelligence to automatically detect when an object containing sensitive data, such as a license plate, appears in a video

TheCUBE’s Supercloud 2 event in January will offer insight into a new era in cloud computing

Technology providers and customers have embraced a model for building applications using resources from private and public cloud platforms. The result has been a multicloud world that made sense from a business standpoint, yet has brought new headaches to IT shops as well.“Going cloud-first was deliberate and strategic in most cases, and this caused companies to end up in a multicloud world where 85% use multiple clouds,” said Vittorio Viarengo (pictured, right), vice president, Cross-Cloud Services, at VMware Inc. “With that comes cloud chaos, where each cloud brings its own development tools, management tools, and security. That increases the complexity and cost

Zip brushes up user interface of its procurement platform

Procurement management software startup Zip today announced several new user interface features in its product.Zip, which is the business name of ZipHQ Inc., simplifies the procurement process by routing and tracking requests, asking conditional questions, and documenting the status of requests as they move through the approval process. The need for such functionality has increased as the use of software-as-a-service’s surged, creating additional complexity for procurement, information technology and finance teams. Zip says it can reduce procurement cycle times by 35%

Alameda’s Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang plead guilty to fraud

Former Alameda Research Chief Executive Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, according to an announcement late Wednesday evening by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York.Ellison pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Wang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud

The Guardian newspaper hacked in suspected ransomware attack

Guardian News & Media Ltd., the publisher of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, has been struck by a suspected ransomware attack.Details of the suspected ransomware attack were fittingly published today by The Guardian, which said that the “incident” began late Tuesday night U.K. time and had affected parts of the company’s technology infrastructure.The online publishing of The Guardian has not been affected by the attack. However, there is said to have been some disruption to behind-the-scenes services, and staff were told to work from home. Guardian News & Media said it was confident it could still produce the print copy of its newspaper on Thursday

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies in court as FTC tries to block VR acquisition

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told a federal court Tuesday that he’s not overly concerned about using fitness apps to build his metaverse.He was there after the Federal Trade Commission hit Meta with an antitrust suit after the company tried to acquire Within Unlimited Inc., the creator of a virtual reality workout game called “Supernatural.” Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth was in court a day earlier talking about the same $400 million purchase.Zuckerberg (pictured) was asked about virtual reality and augmented reality and what kind of ambitions his company has in the markets, and whether was Meta trying to shape the future of technology

Despite earnings beat, light revenue guidance sends Snowflake’s stock down

Cloud data warehouse darling Snowflake Inc.’s stock fell more than 13% in extended trading at one point today after the company offered light product revenue guidance for the coming quarter.The light guidance came after the company reported its third-quarter financial results, beating Wall Street’s expectations. Snowflake revealed that its earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation came to 11 cents per share, ahead of the four-cent-per-share estimate. Revenue for the period rose 67%, to $557 million, ahead of the $539 million analyst target

Box hits $1B revenue run rate amid record operating profitability

File-sharing company Box Inc. reported its first $1 billion revenue run rate in its fiscal third-quarter earnings today amid record operating profitability.For its third quarter that ended Oct. 31, Box reported a profit before costs such as stock compensation of 31 cents per share, up from 22 cents per share in the same quarter of fiscal 2022. Revenue rose 12% year-over-year, to $250 million. The figures were roughly in line with analysts’ expectations of 30 cents and $251.67 million.As of the end of October, remaining performance obligations sat at $1.056 billion, up 11% year-over-year, while billings in the quarter totaled $258.2 million, up 12%. Gross profit was $185.5 million or 74

IBM makes more software products available via AWS Marketplace

IBM Corp. today announced that it’s making more products from its software portfolio available through Amazon Web Services Inc.’s AWS Marketplace.AWS Marketplace provides access to a catalog of software products from the cloud giant’s partners. Companies can install the products in their AWS environments with less effort than the task would otherwise require. Additionally, companies have access to other offerings besides software, including consulting services and datasets.IBM in May partnered with AWS to bring more of its applications to the AWS Marketplace. As part of the partnership, IBM has made more than 50 software products available to AWS Marketplace users

CloudSMART for AWS acts as a one-stop shop in the cloud adoption journey

For fundamental business operations to be transformed, deeper cloud integration is a must.Through an end-to-end cloud-native service meant for business-specific goals, HCLTech CloudSMART for AWS o

AWS introduces raft of new AI tools for Amazon SageMaker

Amazon Web Services Inc. today expanded its lineup of artificial intelligence capabilities by introducing an enhanced version of SageMaker, its neural network development platform.Originally introduced in 2017, SageMaker includes more than a dozen AI development tools. Software teams use the platform to create neural networks, train them, monitor their performance after they’re deployed and perform related tasks. AWS disclosed today on occasion of the updates that the platform is used by tens of thousands of customers.“Many customers are using ML at a scale that was unheard of just a few years ago,” said Bratin Saha, the vice president of artificial intelligence and machine learning at AWS

VMware works to improve DevOps experience and make cloud-native Kubernetes consumable

In the app-modernization journey, the role of developers continues to be at the center stage. As a result, solutions companies are working to improve the developer experience by freeing them from admi

AWS aims to future-proof enterprise data strategy with a slew of new database and analytics tools

After introducing a number of new services for machine learning and data analytics on Tuesday, Amazon Web Services Inc. doubled down today with a host of new tools aimed at providing what one top executive described as a “future-proof” data strategy.In a keynote address led by Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of database, analytics and machine learning at AWS, the cloud giant introduced enhancements for file ingestion, workload scaling and managing overall data quality. Sivasubramanian noted at the start of his presentation that the latest innovations were a continuation of Amazon’s lengthy history of data management

US Army’s ECMA emphasizes a ‘quality-first’ approach as it standardizes hybrid cloud adoption

Just as cloud and digital transformation serve private sector interests, they also enable public sector capabilities.One example is the United States Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency, or ECMA, which has entered into a joint project with Accenture Federal Services to create a blueprint for agency-wide hybrid cloud adoption.“When you think of the partnership between the Army and Accenture Federal, we thought a lot when it came to establishing the Enterprise Cloud Management Agency,” said Paul Puckett (pictured, right), director, enterprise cloud management agency for the U.S. Army

Bridgestone taps AWS and Accenture to build powerful, centralized analytics capabilities

Given current economic uncertainties, companies are embracing a data-driven culture and building out infrastructures to harness trusted data in an expedient and scalable manner.The latest in that growing list is Bridgestone Americas Inc., which has leaned on the expertise of Accenture PLC and the Amazon Web Services Inc. platform to create its Central Data Platform. In doing so, the company hopes to add solutions to its well-known product reputation

Teampay raises $47M for its cloud-based purchasing platform

Teampay Labs Inc., a startup helping companies manage their business expenses more efficiently, has closed a $47 million funding round.Announced today, the Series B round was led by returning Teampay investor Fin Venture Capital. Mastercard Inc., Proof Ventures, Trestle and Espresso Capital participated as well.“Teampay is entering the second half of 2022 well-positioned for future growth, as companies of all sizes strive to manage spending more strategically in the current uncertain economic environment,” said founder and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Hoag

Cloud-native application security firm Apiiro raises $100M round

Israeli application security startup Apiiro LLC today announced an impressive Series B round of $100 million, led by General Catalyst with participation by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins.The company, which was founded by former employees of Microsoft Corp. and has offices in New York and Tel Aviv, raised $35 million in funding in 2020 from Kleiner Perkins and Greylock. Today’s round shows significant trust at a time when investors are increasingly keeping a tight hold on their purse strings.Apiiro offers software to address security issues before developers release code to the cloud. That should ensure that vulnerable code is discovered before hackers have a chance to exploit it

Investors hammer Atlassian on earnings miss and weak outlook

Investors hammered Atlassian Corp. stock in after-hours trading after the Australian software company missed earnings forecasts and gave a lower outlook than had been expected by analysts.For its fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, Atlassian reported net income of $92.5 million, or 36 cents per diluted share, down from $94.4 million, or 37 cents in the same quarter of last year. Revenue rose 31%, to $807.4 million. Analysts had been expecting earnings per share of 38 cents on revenue of $806.4 million.Atlassian added 6,550 new customers in the quarter, its 10th quarter of customer growth, bringing its total number of customers to 249,173

Datadog beats Wall Street’s expectations as its revenue grows by more than 60%

Application monitoring software firm Datadog Inc. delivered strong third-quarter financial results today, beating expectations on earnings and revenue, and offered solid guidance for the coming quarter too, but its stock barely moved.The company reported a net loss of $26 million for the quarter, with earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation coming to 23 cents per share. Revenue for the period rose by an impressive 61% from a year earlier to $436.5 million. The numbers came in comfortably ahead of Wall Street’s forecasts. Analysts were modeling earnings of just 15 cents per share on revenue of $412.2 million

Despite smashing earnings forecasts, Cloudflare sees shares plunge on growth concerns

Shares in content delivery network company Cloudflare Inc. plunged in late trading even though it beat all expected metrics in its latest earnings report as investors were reportedly spooked by figures suggesting moderating growth.For its third quarter that ended Sept. 30, Cloudflare reported a profit before costs such as stock compensation of $19.1 million, or six cents per share, up from $1.4 million or breakeven in the same quarter of 2021. Revenue in the quarter jumped 47%, to $253.9 million. Analysts had expected breakeven earnings per share on revenue of $250.63 million.Adjusted gross profit was $198.4 million or 78.1% gross margin, up from $136.6 million or 79

Twilio’s stock crumbles on poor revenue guidance

Shares of the cloud communications firm Twilio Inc. nosedived in extended trading today after it issued a soft earnings and revenue outlook for the coming quarter.The company did OK in the quarter just gone, reporting a third-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 27 cents per share, ahead of Wall Street’s forecast of a 36-cent loss. Revenue for the period came to $983 million, beating the consensus estimate of $972.2 million. Overall, Twilio reported a net loss of $482.2 million, much bigger than the $224.1 million loss it delivered in the same period last year

Block shares surge on strong earnings beat

Shares in Block Inc. surged in late trading after the payments company delivered a strong earnings beat in its latest quarterly report.For its fiscal third quarter, Block reported net income before costs such as stock compensation of 42 cents a share, up from 25 cents a share in the same quarter of last year. Revenue rose 18% from a year ago, to $4.52 billion. Analysts had been expecting earnings per share of 23 cents on revenue of $4.49 billion.Gross profit in the quarter rose 38%, to $157 billion, marking the fifth straight quarter of increasing profit

Dropbox delivers on earnings and revenue targets with slow and steady growth

Dropbox Inc. delivered strong third-quarter financial results today, beating Wall Street’s forecasts on earnings and revenue and offering guidance above expectations.The file-sharing company reported earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 43 cents per share, with revenue coming to $591 million in the period, up 7.4% from a year earlier. Altogether, the company netted a profit of $83.2 million.The results were good, since Wall Street analysts were modeling lower earnings of just 37 cents per share on sales of $585.5 million. Dropbox’s share price stayed flat in after-hours trading

Higher-than-expected user numbers elevate Coinbase shares

Shares in Coinbase Global Inc. rose slightly in late trading after the cryptocurrency exchange reported better-than-expected user numbers amid misses on its latest quarterly earnings and revenue.For its fiscal third quarter that ended Sept. 30, Coinbase reported a loss before costs such as stock compensation of $2.43 a share on revenue of $590 million. Analysts had expected an adjusted loss of $2.40 a share on revenue of $654 million.Monthly transacting users in the quarter came in at 8.5 million, down from 9 million in the previous quarter but up from 7.3 million in the third quarter of last year. Analysts had been expecting 7.84 million

Growing tech landscape shines spotlight on need for enhanced data culture

The data revolution is not just about technology innovation, but also cultural and community transformation.Since a data citizen is anyone who uses data to do their job, enterprises have to cultivate a conducive data culture so that employees can hone their skills and competencies in this space, according to Stijn “Stan” Christiaens (pictured), co-founder and chief data citizen at Collibra NV, who believes that in today’s organizations, most employees will be data citizens

Cisco Partner Summit 2022 kicks off the Age of the Partner

Cisco Systems Inc. held its annual Partner Summit this week in Las Vegas, bringing together thousands of global partners to exchange ideas and learn about the networking giant’s most recent innovations. Cisco has one of the largest and most diverse partner ecosystems in the information technology industry, with about 90% of the company’s revenue flowing through its partners from more than 150 countries.The event returned to an in-person format for the first time since 2019, which is crucial for this event. Some events are fine done virtually but partner relationships for all vendors, including Cisco, requires a high level of engagement and that can’t be simulated virtually