Accenture Launches SynOps, a Human-Machine Operating Engine Designed to Help Enterprises Achieve Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Accenture has launched SynOps, an innovative human-machine operating “engine” that optimizes the synergy of data, applied intelligence, digital technologies and talent to help organizations transform business operations, create exceptional user experiences and deliver results previously unimaginable.

“SynOps’ greatest value is in how it creates compound intelligence from emerging technologies powered by human expertise to deliver better insights, which lead to better-informed decisions, stronger outcomes — and results previously unimaginable.”

SynOps is an assembly of talent, capabilities and technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics, that gives organizations a fit-for-purpose and flexible roadmap for achieving higher levels of efficiencies across the enterprise. SynOps enables companies to make their organizations more flexible, agile and responsive, helping them generate additional value by driving growth and scaling operations quickly.

SynOps harnesses data and insights from more than 1,000 Accenture client engagements and hundreds of years of cumulative expertise across business functions, industries and domains. By synthesizing this with data from clients’ existing systems and drawing on external data to provide benchmarks, SynOps identifies high-impact opportunities for business process reinvention. The result, in addition to a higher return investment from existing IT systems, is greater insights — enabling better decisions and business outcomes.

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Combining the optimal assembly of talent and human-machine work orchestration with advanced analytics, SynOps enables organizations to reinvent business processes and achieve intelligent operations across key functions such as finance & accounting, marketing and procurement. SynOps comprises four essential components:

  • Human + machine talent: SynOps draws on Accenture’s more than 100,000 Operations professionals — including data scientists and AI experts — to complement and augment the company’s machine workforce of more than 3,600 automation solutions, 65 analytics apps and 40 AI advisors.
  • Work orchestration: SynOps optimally orchestrates the allocation of work, assigning transactional tasks to software bots and leveraging AI and analytics to identify new opportunities for automation. Through data-based insights, SynOps also ensures that the right resource is tapped for the right task.
  • Insights and intelligence: SynOps integrates the analytics and AI capabilities of the Accenture Insights Platform and best-of-breed partner technologies with more than 100 preconfigured analytics and AI solutions to quickly deliver insights that enable exceptional business outcomes and sustainable competitive advantage.
  • Diverse data: SynOps enables the collection, monitoring, storage, analysis and reporting of structured and unstructured data from diverse sources and creates the environment for advanced data exploration and AI model development to enhance real-time decision-making.

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Examples of recent SynOps investments by Accenture clients and results include:

  • A global IT company deployed SynOps for Finance to drive operational excellence. With high administrative costs and falling customer satisfaction, the company needed to better see and manage its financial performance while freeing up cash to take advantage of market opportunities and to grow. Process transformation, automation and analytics boosted productivity by more than 50 percent. With the productivity gains, automated processes and a new customer portal, more than $140 million in savings were delivered.
  • A high-tech company encountered fragmented sales pipeline data without a single source of truth. Through SynOps for Marketing, applied advanced analytics helped augment, treat and rank leads — helping the client process 740,000 leads (compared with the 25,000 leads previously processed in one year) and leading to an 11 times increase in revenue in the first four months.
  • A multi-national food and beverage company leveraged SynOps for Procurement when profitability was harder to achieve despite higher revenues. SynOps provided innovative talent with digital tools, information and process rigor and gave users end-to-end transaction transparency. The engine also gave leaders global spend visibility to make better decisions. From an improved user experience to greater efficiency and productivity, SynOps helped the company save millions of dollars in indirect procurement costs. SynOps’ intelligent model ultimately delivered US $30 million in savings, equivalent to an average of 15 percent savings per year.

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“SynOps represents the re-imagining of the enterprise as operations leaders grapple with integrating their automation, analytics and AI strategies,” said Phil Fersht, CEO and chief analyst at HFS Research. “Moreover, Accenture focuses SynOps on augmenting the human experts, which is so critical as companies design the processes they need to drive an effective operations strategy and business outcomes.”

Nirav Sampat, group technology officer of Accenture Operations, said, “SynOps’ greatest value is in how it creates compound intelligence from emerging technologies powered by human expertise to deliver better insights, which lead to better-informed decisions, stronger outcomes — and results previously unimaginable.”

Debbie Polishook, group chief executive of Accenture Operations, said, “For our clients, the key to delivering exceptional business impact — for speed to realized value, flexibility and sustainable competitive advantage — is intelligent operations. SynOps will play an integral role in helping our clients in their journey to intelligent operations. SynOps ultimately showcases the art of the possible with how clients can now embrace innovation to drive new value — it is ‘the new’ applied now.”

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HITRUS Expands to Deliver ‘One Framework, One Assessment Approach’ Globally

Streamlining How Organizations Address GDPR and Other International Standards & Regulations

HITRUST, a leading data protection standards development and certification organization, announced it is expanding its engagement in Europe and Asia to aid organizations in addressing their global information risk management and compliance priorities, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) requirements by providing a ‘one framework, one assessment’ approach globally.

#HITRUST is expanding its ‘one framework, one assessment’ approach to help businesses meet #GDPR; other international standards & regulations.

Standards and regulations around the world are constantly being created and updated to protect data, particularly personal data with multiple domestic and cross-border requirements and reporting options.

Since 2007, HITRUST has been at the forefront of helping organizations protect data and manage information risk by providing the HITRUST CSF, a certifiable framework that provides organizations with a flexible and efficient approach to regulatory compliance and information risk management. Coupled with the HITRUST CSF Assurance Program, which provides a comprehensive risk management oversight and assessment methodology designed for the unique regulatory and information risk needs of organizations in various industries and countries, HITRUST enables organizations around the globe to meet their risk management and due care requirements for information protection.

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The company has added the GDPR and PDPA to the HITRUST CSF (Version 9.2) as it expands internationally and extends its ability to provide large corporations and small organizations with a ‘one framework, one assessment’ approach.

In addition, HITRUST through its Irish subsidiaries, has filed a formal application with the European Union’s Data Protection Board and the Irish Data Protection Commission to have the HITRUST CSF officially recognized as a standard for GDPR certification as well as working with Irish authorities regarding an application to be an accredited certification body for GDPR. Once HITRUST and the HITRUST CSF are recognized, organizations leveraging the HITRUST CSF and HITRUST CSF Assurance Program will have even stronger independent evidence of compliance with GDPR; this is a key means of differentiating a business to potential customers, business partners, and data protection authorities. HITRUST is also evaluating the process to be an Accountability Agent under the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Cross Border Privacy Rules and Procedures for Processing programs.

“As countries around the world continue to adopt and advance data protection laws, the challenge of doing business on a global scale grows increasingly complex,” says Anne Kimbol, Chief Privacy Officer, HITRUST. “Many countries have their own unique regulatory requirements, creating costs and challenges for organizations to determine if they are compliant to conduct business globally. The HITRUST CSF and CSF Assurance Programs address this problem through a single integrated approach for these requirements and provides documentation of compliance that can be shared with multiple stakeholders, including customers and data protection authorities.”

HITRUST’s integrated programs and services offers global companies an efficient path to meet the requirements of multiple standards from the European Union’s GDPR and the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) to the NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity in the US as well as industry-specific requirements like HIPAA and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council.

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These latest developments will allow organizations operating in Europe and Asia to use HITRUST’s programs and services to address their data protection requirements and manage their third-party risk with one comprehensive assessment. To support its growth in Europe, HITRUST will be conducting educational sessions through its Community Extension Program to provide organizations with key information and resources necessary to facilitate better risk management practices.

“HITRUST will continue to enhance its programs to better help companies globally manage their information risk management and meet their compliance requirements,” says Dr. Bryan Cline, Vice President, Standards and Analysis, HITRUST. “Businesses leveraging the HITRUST Approach will be able to leverage a single HITRUST CSF Assessment to report their security, privacy and compliance posture to various audiences globally.”

The HITRUST Approach:

Comprehensive Risk Management and Compliance Programs and Services

HITRUST understands the challenges of assembling and maintaining the many and varied programs needed to manage information risk and compliance, which is why its integrated approach ensures the components are aligned, maintained and comprehensive to support an organization’s information risk management and compliance program.

The HITRUST Approach is designed to provide organizations a comprehensive information risk management and compliance program that integrates the following best-in-class components:

  • HITRUST CSF – a robust privacy and security controls framework.
  • HITRUST CSF Assurance Program – a scalable and transparent means to provide reliable assurances to internal and external stakeholders.
  • HITRUST Threat Catalogue– a list of reasonably anticipated threats mapped to specific HITRUST CSF controls.
  • HITRUST Shared Responsibility Program – a matrix of HITRUST CSF requirements identifying service providers and customer responsibilities.
  • HITRUST MyCSF – an assessment and corrective action plan management platform.
  • HITRUST Assessment XChange – An automated means of sharing assurances between organizations.
  • HITRUST Third Party Assurance Program – a third party risk management process.

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Amazon Web Services Announces AWS Backup

Centralized Backup Service Makes It Easier and More Cost-Effective for Customers to Automate Backups of Their Data and Meet Business and Regulatory Requirements

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced AWS Backup, a fully-managed, centralized backup service that makes it faster and simpler for customers to back up their data across AWS services and on-premises, helping customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup makes protecting storage volumes, databases, and file systems easier by giving customers a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources they backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in one place.

New AWS Backup service makes it faster and simpler for customers to back up their data across AWS services and on-premises, helping customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements.

As enterprises move more and more applications to the cloud, their data can become distributed across multiple services, including databases, block storage, object storage, and file systems. While these services in AWS provide backup capabilities, customers often create custom scripts to automate scheduling, enforce retention policies, and consolidate backup activity across several services in order to better meet their business and regulatory compliance requirements. AWS Backup removes the need for custom solutions or manual processes by providing a centralized place to manage backups across AWS. With just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, customers can create a policy that defines how frequently backups are created and how long they are stored. Customers can then assign these policies to their AWS resources, and AWS Backup automatically handles the rest by automatically scheduling backup actions for the assigned AWS resources, orchestrating across AWS services, and managing their retention period.

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“As the cloud has become the default choice for customers of all sizes, it has attracted two distinct types of builders. Some are tinkerers who want to tweak and fine tune the full range of AWS services into a desired architecture, and other builders are drawn to the same breadth and depth of functionality in AWS, but are willing to trade some of the service granularity to start at a higher abstraction layer, so they can build even faster,” said Bill Vass, VP of Storage, Automation, and Management Services, AWS. “We designed AWS Backup for this second type of builder who has told us that they want one place to go for backups versus having to do it across multiple, individual services. Today, we are proud to make AWS Backup available with support for block storage volumes, databases, and file systems, and over time, we plan to support additional AWS services.”

Initially, AWS Backup is integrated with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and AWS Storage Gateway, with support for additional services planned for the future. Customers can also back up on-premises application data through the AWS Backup integration with AWS Storage Gateway, providing a common way to protect their on-premises data in the AWS cloud.

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State Street Corporation is the world’s leading provider of financial services to institutional investors including investment servicing, investment management and investment research, and trading. “We operate in the financial services industry and must provide data storage solutions that ensure the integrity and availability of backup data as stipulated by the FFIEC IT examination handbook,” says Nauman Noor, Managing Director, State Street Corporation. “Meeting these regulations requires us to develop and maintain an internal serverless application to enable timely and auditable backups across the AWS services we use. With AWS Backup’s centralized backup console, we will have a single pane of glass to audit our backup processes across our AWS environment, mitigating the need for custom applications and thus, easing our effort to aid data integrity and availability. The ability to set backup policies for automated backup scheduling and backup retention provides us flexibility to address the needs for varying levels of criticality in a cost effective and consistent manner.”

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Smile Brands is a leading dental support organization that provides business support services to over 400 locations across 17 states. “We manage thousands of AWS resources, such as storage volumes and databases, and all of them must meet compliance according to HIPAA backup requirements,” says George Suda, Senior VP and Chief Information Officer, Smile Brands. “Ensuring that all our AWS workloads are properly backed up can require manual processes and custom scripts. With AWS Backup’s centralized backup console, we will be able to define a backup policy that meets our compliance requirements and apply the same policy to all our AWS resources across the various AWS services that we use. AWS Backup will automatically handle the backup processes on our behalf, providing a full-managed and cost-effective solution that removes the need for manual processes or custom scripts.”

Rackspace delivers modern IT as a service, helping customers in more than 150 countries drive business results with technology. “Rackspace is focused on delivering next generation cloud services to help our customers meet their data protection and regulatory compliance needs,” said Prashanth Chandrasekar, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Managed Public Clouds at Rackspace. “With AWS Backup, we now have access to a cloud-scale, centralized backup solution to help automate, manage, and monitor data protection for customers. We believe AWS Backup will also provide customers greater operational efficiency, allowing us to simplify the process for supporting our customers’ auditing and compliance requirements.”

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Software AG Appoints New Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer

Software AG announced that Dr. Wolfram Jost, who engineered Software AG’s digital transformation technology as the company’s Chief Technology Officer, will leave Software AG to pursue new opportunities.

Dr. Andreas Bereczky, Chairman of Software AG’s Supervisory Board said: “Wolfram joined Software AG’s Management Board in 2009, with the IDS Scheer acquisition and has made a valuable contribution to Software AG in the decade since. He was instrumental in driving the company’s positioning in the digital transformation market and his platform vision helped us to differentiate and to gain market visibility, particularly with industry analysts and customers. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors and thank him on behalf of the entire Supervisory Board.”

Dr. Stefan Sigg, Member of the Software AG Management Board, will take on an expanded role of Chief Product Officer, encompassing all aspects of Software AG’s products, including product management, product development and support.

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Software AG also announced that Bernd Gross will assume the position of Chief Technology Officer reporting to the CEO as of January 8th, 2019. Bernd has deep expertise in business innovation based on integration, analytics and IoT technologies across major industries. He joined Software AG as CEO and co-founder of the IoT platform Cumulocity through an acquisition in 2017. Since then, Bernd has been responsible for spearheading Software AG’s successful entry into the IoT market and development of the company’s transition to cloud.

CEO Sanjay Brahmawar said: “Bernd has successfully established Cumulocity and hence Software AG as a recognized leader in the IoT & Device Integration platform market globally. His business orientation, deep technology understanding, as well as anticipation of future market requirements puts Bernd in the perfect position to lead as our new CTO.”

Of his appointment, Bernd said: “To me, IoT is more than just big data or device management. We create an entire virtual world based on connected cyber physical systems. This ‘holistic connectedness’ needs integration, analytics and database technologies and new methodologies to operationalize the outcome. I feel very honored to lead Software AG’s activities in these areas to a thought-leadership position among our customers and in the market.”

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Software AG also announced that Paz Macdonald will join the company as Chief Marketing Officer as of January 14, 2019. With over 20 years’ experience in technology marketing, she was most recently VP of Marketing for EMEA and APAC at hyper-growth hybrid cloud database vendor MongoDB.

CEO Sanjay Brahmawar said: “Paz joins us at an exciting time as we expand our strong position as a pioneer of digital transformation. I am confident that her experience and passion will further strengthen all aspects of Software AG’s global marketing strategy and activities – making us a top destination for customers, partners and employees.”

Paz joined MongoDB as one of the first European hires and spearheaded innovative marketing strategies to grow market awareness, developer adoption and commercial success. Instrumental in the expansion of MongoDB internationally, she contributed to the growth of the company from start-up to successful IPO. Prior to MongoDB, Paz held marketing management positions at IBM, Cisco, Samsung, HP Software and Cognos.

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Of her appointment Paz said: “I am delighted to be joining the Software AG team to help expand and strengthen its leadership in the digital transformation space. A key part of my role will be listening to our customers, prospects and partners so we can deliver superior customer experiences at every interaction. It’s never been a more exciting time to be involved in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and integration.”

Paz will be based in Software AG’s UK headquarters in Bracknell, reporting directly to CEO Sanjay Brahmawar. Paz holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree in Economics from Loughborough University and a Professional Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

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Encompass Announces Partnership With Zixi

Global Technology Company Deploys Flexible Solutions for 24/7 Linear, Live Events and OTT

Encompass Digital Media, a global technology services company delivering end-to-end video playout and distribution solutions to broadcast and digital media companies, announces its partnership with Zixi, the industry leader for enabling dependable, live broadcast-quality video over the internet. Zixi’s proven, best-of-breed solutions coupled with Encompass’ broadcast expertise gives its clients additional economical methods to acquire and deliver content.

Bill Tillson
Bill Tillson

“We have enjoyed great success working with Zixi’s platform to provide our clients with even more choices and business flexibility for media acquisition and distribution options,” states Bill Tillson, CEO of Encompass. “Our clients can now capitalize on the universal reach of the internet while maintaining professional broadcast quality regardless of the technology platform.”

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As the industry embraces video across IP, the ability to transition from traditional methods of delivery alongside the exploding OTT offerings, this partnership between Zixi and Encompass brings the power of the internet to the market, along with the expected performance of professional broadcast.

By offering Zixi, Encompass has extended its range of transport solutions to satisfy clients with a multitude of acquisition and delivery requirements. Zixi’s widely deployed solutions are available across the media and broadcast ecosystem which offers a flexible, economical and easy-to-use option.

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“We are delighted to go to market with Encompass, pairing our powerful video over IP technology with their renowned operational management excellence,” said Gordon Brooks, Executive Chairman, Zixi.  “With this partnership, we can offer our mutual clients the ability to live stream their content to any destination worldwide, within a seamless workflow and modern economic requirements.”

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LexRay Announces Private Pre-Sale for Initial Coin Offering (ICO) of Its LexRay Utility Tokens

Mobilprise Inc., DBA “LexRay”, an industry leading operational management mobile platform, announced that LexRay Blockchain LLC, a wholly-owned European subsidiary of LexRay, or “LexRay Swiss”, plans to offer to a limited number of qualified purchasers, or “Private Sale Purchasers”, a right or “Token Right”, to receive LexRay Utility Tokens or “LexRay Tokens”, upon the completion of an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) of LexRay Swiss. LexRay intends to issue a total of 125m LexRay Tokens which will be offered in three subsequent rounds (private pre-sale, public pre-sale and ICO) of which roughly 20m LexRay Tokens will be released as free bonus tokens, particularly enabling early investors to lower the official token price of 1/300th ETH or 0.00333 ETH (approximately US$0.50 per token), e.g. offering a bonus of 85% per token to a small group of early investors during the private pre-sale round.

“The introduction of LexRay Token will enable us to offer a marketplace of decentralized services for our operators and partners, including AI analytics services. This allows scalable and cost-efficient enterprise solutions.”

In preparation of the offering and sale of the Token Right and the proposed ICO, LexRay has engaged the US law firm Gutnicki LLP as its special United States counsel. Gutnicki is a boutique law firm with exceptionally credentialed attorneys dedicated to delivering business-oriented results to clients around the world. The Gutnicki team has extensive know-how of the blockchain technology and global ICOs, as well as US and foreign regulatory requirements.

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LexRay Tokens are designed to be used on LexRay’s blockchain platform, which provides a decentralized and secure mobile operations solution that improves operational efficiencies, and helps manage mission critical facilities, ground crews and security systems from anywhere.

LexRay’s private pre-sale round begins at midnight (GMT) on January 8, 2019 and ends at midnight (GMT) on January 20, 2019, while LexRay’s public pre-sale round begins at midnight (GMT) on January 31, 2019 and ends at midnight (GMT) on February 28, 2019. LexRay’s main ICO round is expected to begin at midnight (GMT) on March 3, 2019 and end at midnight (GMT) on March 31, 2019.

Simon Zhang, Chairman of LexRay, said: “The introduction of LexRay Token will enable us to offer a marketplace of decentralized services for our operators and partners, including AI analytics services. This allows scalable and cost-efficient enterprise solutions.”

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The Token Right will be offered and sold, and the LexRay Tokens will be delivered and distributed to the Private Sale Purchasers in one or more transactions outside the United States in accordance with Regulation S of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and in the United States only to Private Sale Purchasers who are “accredited investors” within the meaning of subparagraph (a) of Rule 501 in reliance on Regulation D of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. In addition, the offering and sale of Token Right and the delivery and distribution of LexRay Tokens may be restricted by laws in certain other jurisdictions. LexRay Swiss may, from time to time, revise the foregoing mechanics to comply with regulatory requirements or other governmental or business obligations as LexRay Swiss deems appropriate or desirable under the circumstances.

Neither the Token Right nor LexRay Token has been or will be registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction and may not be offered, sold, pledged or transferred within the United States or such other jurisdiction without registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirement.

LexRay Tokens are “utility tokens”. LexRay Tokens have no known potential use and LexRay does not expect LexRay Tokens to have any potential use other than to provide access digitally to the LexRay blockchain platform and its functionalities.

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LaterPay Powers Salon and Pueblo Pulp with Inaugural US Partnerships

Salon and Pueblo Pulp Monetize Content via an Ad-Free Model, Subscriptions and Contributions Powered by LaterPay

LaterPay, a technology company offering an industry-first, patented payment infrastructure designed to offer users immediate, frictionless access to content or services without requiring upfront registration or payment, announced US partnerships with both Salon and Pueblo Pulp .

Salon.com, the flagship property of Salon Media Group, Inc., partnered with LaterPay to release a revamped ad-free version of its website. After testing various monetization strategies, Salon and LaterPay landed on a user-centric model that allows Salon to generate reader revenue without offering premium content. The recently implemented model enables readers to select an editorial environment that suits their preferences. Users are able to opt for a free, ad-supported model or an ad-free, reader-supported model. LaterPay’s payments infrastructure allows Salon’s US readers to make one-click time pass purchases for the new ad-free version of the website, in increments of one hour, one week, one month or one year. Designed as a low-friction approach that enables users to enjoy an ad-free experience with access to unlimited Salon content, LaterPay’s infrastructure also allows readers to delay registration and payment until they reach a $5 threshold.

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“In the first month, we have generated hundreds of subscribers to the ad-free offer without any promotion,” said Jordan Hoffner, CEO at Salon. “LaterPay’s ad-free subscriptions solution has been simple to install and operate, allowing us to be up and running within days. From crypto-mining to LaterPay’s reader revenue solutions, Salon continues to push for greater innovation within digital content monetization.”

Pueblo Pulp, an independent newspaper serving the Southern Rockies and Western Plains, partnered with LaterPay for their yearly and monthly subscriptions, as well as weekly passes and single article purchases. They have also implemented LaterPay’s Contributions Button, which allows Pueblo users to make frictionless, one-click donations, in increments of $3, $5, $10 and $25, to support quality journalism on The PULP’s website. The results from the LaterPay offers have been eye-opening for the local Colorado publication.

“Partnering with LaterPay has allowed us to transition to a digital daily with a frictionless system for our audience – something we have wanted to do for a long time. And we are already generating more revenue now then we would have with ads,” stated John Rodriguez, Publisher at Pueblo Pulp. “LaterPay has worked with us to offer our readers the freedom to choose their PULP experience, and the response has been eye-opening. From yearly and monthly subscriptions, to weekly passes, single article purchases and contributions, LaterPay allows us to offer our readers a variety of content consumption options that they are widely receptive to.”

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LaterPay works with publishers as a collaborating partner, with the ability to test multiple monetization strategies, as well as consult on optimization of a website for conversions. By using LaterPay’s solution, digital publishers and service providers can simultaneously expand existing subscription models, increase paying customer bases and improve user experience.

“We are very excited, and pleasantly surprised, by the early numbers being generated from both Salon’s new ad-free website and Pueblo Pulp’s implementation of our Button and subscription solutions,” said Cosmin Ene, founder and CEO of LaterPay. “We’ve been excited to see that publishers can generate this level of reader revenue by offering a great user experience, and without having to offer premium content. We want to help publishers understand that there are multiple revenue streams available to them, and that they don’t have to cannibalize their ad revenue to implement another monetization strategy.”

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Former L’Oréal Data Executive Joins Captify to Accelerate Global Search Data Strategy and Acquisition

Search Intelligence Leader Adds Aruna Paramasivam as Its Global Vice President of Data & Publisher Partnerships to Enable Publishers to Take Back Control of Data & Monetization Strategies and Audience Relationships

Captify, the global leader in Search Intelligence, announced the appointment of Aruna Paramasivam as Global Vice President of Data & Publisher Partnerships. Paramasivam brings over two decades of data and partner management experience to this role. She will own Captify’s global data acquisition and monetization strategy. This strategy will also give publishers access to deep insights from on-site search, which highlight exactly what their audiences are looking for in real-time. This critical foresight will empower publishers to pre-empt trends before they even happen informing content creation, audience engagement strategies or new monetization streams on their own platforms.

In addition, Captify’s Publisher facing technology solutions such as voice, audio, and visual search tools will allow consumers to engage with publisher content however they dictate.

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With the company averaging 100% year-over-year growth, and over 200% growth in US territory expansion, Paramasivam’s appointment highlights the momentum the company is experiencing as it continues to challenge Google and amass the highest quality of search data in the industry.

Prior to joining Captify, Paramasivam was Head of Data Acquisition & Partnerships at L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company. In this role, Paramasivan was responsible for efficient and ongoing data acquisition and partnerships strategy for ROI-driven consumer marketing across mass and luxury brands. Over the course of her career, she has also held positions as the Head of Audience Partnerships at MediaMath and has led up Audience Platform Implementation efforts at Yahoo! and Interclick prior to that.

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“The role of data has changed. We’ve witnessed publishers, marketers and brands seeking data and insights that truly drive business outcomes, not just a story. Search and specifically, onsite search has the power to do that, ultimately creating a more relevant and valuable sitewide experience for the end consumer,” said Aruna Paramasivam, Global VP of Data & Publisher Partnerships at Captify. “As the largest global independent holder of consumer search data, Captify is in an incredibly unique position to leverage search to inform strategies that will attract eyeballs and engage audiences in today’s competitive climate. Over the coming months, I plan to build upon Captify’s already existing roster of premium publishers, and discover new ways to bring their data capabilities to the next level.”

“Over the past seven years, we have built robust relationships with top publishers across the world, gaining insight into their challenges and business objectives. Aruna has been at the forefront of the data industry, helping brands and publishers extract the true value from their data and will continue to do that for publishers with the most powerful dataset in advertising, onsite search. Captify’s solutions coupled with Aruna’s vision will set publishers up for a future they can control,” said Dominic Joseph, CEO & Co-founder at Captify. “This strategic hire will continue to propel Captify on its current growth trajectory, empowering brands and publishers globally to develop and execute strategies through Search Intelligence.”

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New NVIDIA Research Creates Interactive Worlds with AI

Invention Has Potential to Create Virtual Worlds for Gaming, Automotive, Robotics, VR

Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, NVIDIA introduced groundbreaking AI research that enables developers for the first time to render entirely synthetic, interactive 3D environments using a model trained on real-world videos.

Company researchers used a neural network to render synthetic 3D environments in real time. Currently, every object in a virtual world needs to be modeled individually, which is expensive and time consuming. In contrast, the NVIDIA research uses models automatically learned from real video to render objects such as buildings, trees and vehicles.

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The technology offers the potential to quickly create virtual worlds for gaming, automotive, architecture, robotics or virtual reality. The network can, for example, generate interactive scenes based on real-world locations or show consumers dancing like their favorite pop stars.

“NVIDIA has been inventing new ways to generate interactive graphics for 25 years, and this is the first time we can do so with a neural network,” said Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of Applied Deep Learning Research at NVIDIA, who led the team developing this work. “Neural networks — specifically generative models — will change how graphics are created. This will enable developers to create new scenes at a fraction of the traditional cost.”

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The result of the research is a simple driving game that allows participants to navigate an urban scene. All content is rendered interactively using a neural network that transforms sketches of a 3D world produced by a traditional graphics engine into video. This interactive demo will be shown at the NeurIPS 2018 conference in Montreal.

The generative neural network learned to model the appearance of the world, including lighting, materials and their dynamics. Since the scene is fully synthetically generated, it can be easily edited to remove, modify or add objects.

“The capability to model and recreate the dynamics of our visual world is essential to building intelligent agents,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “Apart from purely scientific interests, learning to synthesize continuous visual experiences has a wide range of applications in computer vision, robotics, and computer graphics,” the researchers explained.

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