True Influence CMO Kay Kienast Accepted into Forbes Communications Council

True Influence CMO Kay Kienast Accepted into Forbes Communications Council

Forbes Communications Council is an Invitation-Only Community for Executives in Communications, Marketing, and PR

Kay Kienast, CMO at True Influence, the technology leader of intent-based marketing and lead generation solutions, has been accepted into Forbes Communications Council, an invitation-only community for executives in communications, marketing, and public relations.

Kienast was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of her experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.

“We are honored to welcome Kay Kienast into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Communications Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

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As an accepted member of the Council, Kienast has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities designed to help her reach peak professional influence. She will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Kienast will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share her expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

Finally, Kienast will benefit from exclusive access to vetted business service partners, membership-branded marketing collateral, and the high-touch support of the Forbes Councils member concierge team.

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“I’m excited and honored to be chosen as part of the respected network of communication leaders in the Forbes Communications Council,” said Kay Kienast, CMO of True Influence. “I look forward to utilizing the resources within this group to further solidify our commitment to making B2B marketers successful with our demand generation and intent-based solutions.”

Kienast has more than 15 years of experience in building end-to-end, data-driven campaigns. Her expertise includes customer-facing digital content programs; designing data warehouses and analytics in all leading marketing platforms; developing waterfall methodologies and customer personas; and brand exposure via web and social channels. Before joining True Influence, Kienast served as Head of Marketing Operations for GE Digital and Head of Marketing for Seagate/EVault. She has also held leadership positions at Lexmark, Avocent and CDW.

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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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Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Reach $3.8 Trillion in 2019

Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Reach $3.8 Trillion in 2019

All Segments Forecast to Exhibit Growth in 2019 Despite Recession, Brexit Threat

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.76 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.2 percent from 2018, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

Gartner: Global IT Spending to Reach $3.8 Trillion in 2019, up 3.2% from 2018

“Despite uncertainty fueled by recession rumors, Brexit, and trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is growth,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. “However, there are a lot of dynamic changes happening in regards to which segments will be driving growth in the future. Spending is moving from saturated segments such as mobile phones, PCs and on-premises data center infrastructure to cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IoT devices, in particular, are starting to pick up the slack from devices. Where the devices segment is saturated, IoT is not.

“IT is no longer just a platform that enables organizations to run their business on. It is becoming the engine that moves the business,” added Mr. Lovelock. “As digital business and digital business ecosystems move forward, IT will be the thing that binds the business together.”

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With the shift to cloud, a key driver of IT spending, enterprise software will continue to exhibit strong growth, with worldwide software spending projected to grow 8.5 percent in 2019. It will grow another 8.2 percent in 2020 to total $466 billion (see Table 1). Organizations are expected to increase spending on enterprise application software in 2019, with more of the budget shifting to software as a service (SaaS).

Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

2018

Spending

2018

Growth (%)

2019

Spending

2019

Growth (%)

2020 
Spending

2020 
Growth (%)

Data Center Systems 202 11.3 210 4.2 202 -3.9
Enterprise Software 397 9.3 431 8.5 466 8.2
Devices 669 0.5 679 1.6 689 1.4
IT Services 983 5.6 1,030 4.7 1,079 4.8
Communications Services 1,399 1.9 1,417 1.3 1,439 1.5
Overall IT 3,650 3.9 3,767 3.2 3,875 2.8

Source: Gartner (January 2019)

Despite a slowdown in the mobile phone market, the devices segment is expected to grow 1.6 percent in 2019. The largest and most highly saturated smartphone markets, such as China, Unites States and Western Europe, are driven by replacement cycles. With Samsung facing challenges bringing well-differentiated premium smartphones to market and Apple’s high price-to-value benefits for its flagship smartphones, consumers kept their current phones and drove the mobile phone market down 1.2 percent in 2018.

“In addition to buying behavior changes, we are also seeing skills of internal staff beginning to lag as organizations adopt new technologies, such as IoT devices, to drive digital business,” said Mr. Lovelock. “Nearly half of the IT workforce is in urgent need of developing skills or competencies to support their digital business initiatives. Skill requirements to keep up, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, API and services platform design and data science, are changing faster than we’ve ever seen before.”

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Gartner’s IT spending forecast methodology relies heavily on rigorous analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. Gartner uses primary research techniques, complemented by secondary research sources, to build a comprehensive database of market size data on which to base its forecast.

The Gartner quarterly IT spending forecast delivers a unique perspective on IT spending across the hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications segments. These reports help Gartner clients understand market opportunities and challenges. The most recent IT spending forecast research is available to Gartner clients in “Gartner Market Databook, Q418 Update.” This quarterly IT Spending Forecast page includes links to the latest IT spending reports, webinars, blog posts and press releases.

Mr. Lovelock will provide further analysis on the key drivers of the IT market at the Gartner Tech Growth & Innovation Conference taking place June 3-5 in San Diego, CA and June 12-13 in London. The Conference is the premier event for technology providers to learn about the latest trends and tools, innovation predictions, positioning and thought leadership.

Looker Earns Two Spots on G2 Crowd “Best Software Awards 2019”

Looker Earns Two Spots on G2 Crowd “Best Software Awards 2019”

Ranked by Users in Both the Top 50 Products for Mid-Market and Top 50 Fastest Growing Products

Looker, a leading data platform company, announced it has been recognized in two categories in the 2019 Best Software Awards from the G2 Crowd, the largest business commerce platform. Looker was identified in both the Top 50 Products for Mid-Market, and the Top 50 Fastest Growing Products.

@lookerdata recognized in 2019 Best Software Awards from the @g2crowd

The equivalent of The People’s Choice Awards for tech companies, G2 Crowd’s Best Software Awards provides the definitive ranking of the best software companies and products worldwide. Tech companies on the list are selected with data provided by its software users, and as a result, have proven their commitment to customers and providing technology that delivers.

With over 45,000 software companies on G2, Looker’s recognition on both the prestigious Top 50 Products for Mid-Market (#21) list and Top 50 Fastest Growing Products (#27) list is an exceptional achievement and one that can only be earned through the endorsement of its users.

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“Our goal is to build a data platform that truly impacts the day-to-day life of our customers by allowing them to easily visualize and understand their data,” said Nick Caldwell, Chief Product Officer at Looker. “This award is particularly meaningful as it’s based on direct feedback from our customers and we are extremely thankful for that recognition. In 2019, you can expect to see continued growth as our platform becomes even more flexible with new applications, features, and integrations that further our mission of delivering data workflows to virtually any business and function.”

Looker is the new Platform for Data that streamlines the data supply chain to put real, actionable information into the hands of all employees across all industries when they need it. It allows any organization to extract value from data at web scale, utilizes powerful department specific plug-and-play applications and empowers a global ecosystem of partners and developers to easily build third-party applications on its platform. This is Looker’s second time earning their title as one of G2’s Best Software winners as the company was listed on both the Top 100 and Top 50 Products for Mid-Market lists in 2018.

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G2 Crowd compiled the list using data collected from over 270,000 authentic customer reviews spanning nearly 60,000 software products, with every single review vetted by an individual person, not a machine, to ensure legitimacy.

“This is no subjective list by a few people giving their opinions,” explains Godard Abel, CEO, and co-founder of the G2 Crowd. “With the highest traffic and engagement, largest selection of products and services, and highest quality data, G2 Crowd is able to harness more than 4 million data points to determine which products and companies are doing the best job of helping businesses reach their potential.”

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ABSYZ, a Salesforce Platinum Partner Acquired by Youngsoft Inc.

The Acquisition Is a Strategic Move to Achieve Growth and Combines the Expertise of Both Organizations in Their Respective Domain

Youngsoft Inc., the premiere technology and consulting firm, announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the majority stake in ABSYZ Software Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a Platinum Salesforce Partner with specialization in Salesforce.com and related technologies.

The acquisition will enable Youngsoft to leverage the strengths of ABSYZ as a Salesforce Platinum partner to service its customers across multiple verticals to achieve their goals.

Speaking about the acquisition, Anshul Jain, Director and Chief Executive Officer, ABSYZ, said, “When you combine Youngsoft’s global scale and reach with ABSYZ’s core Salesforce.com expertise, and best-in-class team, brand, and partners, the result is a formidable force in the industry. Besides the Salesforce.com platform, ABSYZ had already started working on Digital, Mobility, AI and Blockchain in 2018 and with this acquisition, we get to leverage deep expertise from Youngsoft in these areas. We are also super excited that now team-ABSYZ can boast of industry leaders as mentors.”

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Established in 2011, ABSYZ is headquartered in Hyderabad, India with offices in San Francisco, US and Bangalore, India and has nearly 120 employees worldwide. ABSYZ is a trusted service provider to some of the world’s leading companies, including Fortune 500 companies.

Adding their views, James Haveman, Director (former Director for Michigan Department of Community Health), Youngsoft; Paul Boyer, Board Advisor, Youngsoft and Vice Chairman Emeritus of Meijer Inc.; and Stephen Pickett, Director, Youngsoft, said, “The Board is pleased to welcome ABSYZ to the Youngsoft family. This acquisition adds to the latter’s talent, product, and professional strengths both domestically and internationally. Many of the greatest technological successes have emanated from the joining of two strong partners. We are sure to achieve milestones through this partnership as well.”

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Commenting on the progress of the company, Balesh Lakshminarayanan, Director and CTO, ABSYZ, said, “As we inch closer to a new decade, the challenges and opportunities ahead of us are phenomenal. We are glad to have kept pace with the technological trends and will continue to deliver value consulting to our customers. ABSYZ has grown exponentially in the past few years. Going from a very humble beginning from an apartment in Hyderabad to an 8,000-square-feet office in the central IT hub of Hyderabad was a roller coaster ride. This journey wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our customers, partners, and our teams dedication and passion towards salesforce. I extend heartfelt gratitude and thanks to everyone involved.”

“Youngsoft is happy to welcome the incredible and talented team from ABSYZ to the Salesforce family. A majority of our North American clients are looking to expand on the flexibility and efficiency of the Saleforce.com platform and a trusted solution and implementation partner. This is a very strategic move to achieve growth and serve our clients,” said Rupesh Srivastava, President and CEO, Youngsoft.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to be closed in the first quarter of 2019. NNV Satish & Co acted as financial advisors to ABSYZ during the process.

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Mvix Adds Over 150 Business Data Sources to Their Digital Signage Software

Mvix Adds Over 150 Business Data Sources to Their Digital Signage Software

The Software Now Includes over 150 Data Sources like Salesforce, Google Analytics, HubSpot, MySQL, Quickbooks, Shopify, Netsuite and More

Mvix, a leading provider of content-rich digital signage software and solutions, announced the launch of a data integrations portal with over 150 business data sources and integrations.

The portal, which lives within the Mvix digital signage software, includes data sources like Salesforce, Google Analytics, HubSpot, MySQL, Quickbooks, Shopify, Netsuite and more. Using data from these business tools, users can create charts and dashboards to display KPIs and performance on digital signage screens.

How It Works

Connect business data

Within the data integrations portal, Mvix users first add their data sources such as Salesforce, Google Analytics, HubSpot, MySQL, Google Sheets and Excel, Amazon Redshift and more. Having all of this data in one place centralizes business data, creating a single source of truth for the business.

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Create charts and dashboards

Using a smart builder, the data is used to create custom reports and charts showing performance metrics and KPIs. The charts can be grouped together to create dashboards.

For example, a sales dashboard can have charts showing total sales quotes, weekly sales, quotes vs. booked orders, and pipeline tracking.

A marketing dashboard will include charts for total inbound leads and lead sources, impressions and clicks from ads, number of new trials, cart abandonment rate and weekly site visitors.

A company health dashboard will have charts displaying the fiscal progress, customer lifetime value, overall return rate, average days until second order, customer pain points and more.

Dashboards help teams to better understand and visualize key metrics that will help their business grow faster.

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Deploy to teams

The dashboards are then deployed to digital signage screens to keep large teams in sync and inspire focus.

Since the dashboard display is auto-updated anytime the data changes at the source, the on-screen content is always fresh and relevant. This real-time dissemination of business intelligence data within or across teams can help companies make quicker decisions.

For example, a marketing dashboard can be used to monitor buying behavior and inform marketing strategy.

A sales dashboard can be used to drive marketing spend, accountability and growth.

A company health dashboard can be used to pinpoint customer pains to drive product, marketing and sales initiatives.

By broadcasting the dashboards on digital signage screens, employees are kept in the loop so they can align their efforts to the goals that matter most.

“The Mvix data integrations portal houses core business data in one place. Blending insights and data from business apps like Google Analytics, Quickbooks, Facebook, Excel and many others will truly establish a data-driven culture and accelerate growth,” says Mike Kilian, senior director of business development. “When easily seen on digital signage screens, performance metrics and KPIs will be at your team’s fingertips and always on their mind.”

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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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Going Paperless - Digitize Paper Forms Using 123FormBuilder’s New Feature!

Going Paperless – Digitize Paper Forms Using 123FormBuilder’s New Feature!

Organizational paper form usage is being challenged even more by 123FormBuilder through Scan to Form, an innovative solution that digitizes PDF’s or images of physical forms into editable versions.

Traditional paper form usage is still a global challenge, as companies use thousands of paper sheets during a year. Scan to Form aims to optimize company work processes by bringing that offline content in the digital world.

Digital processes have multiple advantages over traditional ones, such as faster and more reliable communication between departments, sync data with other platforms and an extra security layer. Talking about money, Scan to Form will significantly reduce office supply expenses related to paper.

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Having AI technology integrated, users can take a picture of a paper-based form, upload it inside 123FormBuilder and will have it transformed directly into a fillable web form! Every field and any text will be recognized and transformed into a digital version of the content.

The new feature Scan to Form works with JPEG images, as well as PDF documents, and even with form drafts sketched with pen and paper. Once the form has been transferred online, it will be treated just like any other 123FormBuilder form. With a whole settings suite available, the form can then be transformed into work flows by adding email notifications, centralized data gathering and more! No need to worry about logistic and security of fragile paper sheets.

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Scan to Form can already be used by all 123FormBuilder users for free until further notice. When choosing to create a new form, users are asked if they want to start from scratch or a scanned document instead. If people don’t have an account, they can create one for free and use Scan to Form after just a few clicks.

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Merkle Launches 2019 Marketing Imperatives, A CMO’s Roadmap to People-Based Marketing

Book Outlines Three Pillars to Achieve Transformation Through Integration of Key Business Functions

Merkle a leading technology-enabled, data-driven performance marketing agency, has released its seventh installment of the Marketing Imperatives, a guidebook for CMOs. The 2019 Marketing Imperatives prescribe the building blocks of an integrated, successful people-based marketing strategy. The resource explores the fundamentals of integrating across strategy, technology, and execution to implement a customer-centric approach over time. It offers advice on how to accomplish this goal through the effective management and use of data from deliberate, informed interactions across channels and media. The Imperatives are available in a complimentary, downloadable book and supported by an upcoming webinar series hosted by Merkle.

“Placing the customer at the center of the business strategy is a top priority for CMOs, but figuring out how to get there isn’t always clear,” said David Williams, president and CEO, Merkle. “The goal of the Marketing Imperatives is to advise CMOs in pursuit of this goal, providing actionable strategies for how they can reach it.”

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The Marketing Imperatives offer a roadmap for implementing a people-based marketing strategy. The transformation depends heavily on the integration of key aspects of the marketing approach. Three essential pillars are outlined to guide CMOs on the path to growing their businesses and building competitive advantage.

Integrate your customer strategy – A foundation of planning will help marketers build a more complete picture of their desired audience, evolving the marketing strategy into a 360-degree customer strategy. The outcome is a roadmap for personalized engagements across media and channels, spanning the entire life cycle.

Integrate your tech stack – In addition to building this full customer profile, organizations should be focused on fully integrating their tech stack. The resulting data hub is the centralized facility for real-time receipt and distribution of customer data that also allows marketers to execute and modify marketing strategies.

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Integrate your execution – Before embarking on this transformation, ensure the team has a clear vision of the integrated customer experience and enabling technology platform. This forms the basis of the plan, upon which you layer the people and processes required for execution. Remove the walls between organizational silos, while leveraging their unique capabilities. Clearly define, communicate, and measure every role and goal along the way.

“By using data and insights to build a complete 360-degree view of their customers, marketers can create personalized, informed messaging that differentiates their businesses from competitors,” said Craig Dempster, president, Merkle Americas. “In this year’s edition of the Marketing Imperatives, we examine the importance of integration and how the future of marketing favors companies that have the ability to link customer experience to data sourcing, management, insights, and activation across their own integrated platform.”

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