Uncategorized – Digital IT News

Qlik Launches Data Literacy 2.0 to Drive Data Fluency in the Enterprise

Taylor Graham — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 22:01:00 +0000

Qlik announces the next generation of its award-winning Data Literacy program to help drive the data fluency needed for a world witnessing continued digital acceleration. Data Literacy 2.0 is a comprehensive offering that enables companies to kickstart a data literacy program and scale it to thousands of employees.

Being able to read, work with, analyze and communicate with data is rapidly increasing in importance in both our everyday lives and in the workplace, with Qlik’s Data Literacy Index revealing that 93% of global business leaders believe it is vital for their employees to be data literate. Yet, just 21% of the global workforce feel confident in their data literacy skills and only 25% of employees felt fully prepared to use data effectively when entering their current role.

The Data Literacy 2.0 program enables organizations to start with a small initial investment, then affordably scale data literacy across the entire workforce. It is designed to take individuals from data novice to data fluent; where they can confidently interpret and work with data and help drive best practices in data-driven decision-making across their organization.

“Being data literate can’t be a specialist skillset or limited to those with technical ability. Everyone needs to be fluent in data in both their personal and professional lives,” said Dr. Paul Barth, Global Head of Data Literacy at Qlik. “As we emerge from global lockdowns and accelerate recovery plans, business leaders need to arm their employees with the skills to succeed in an increasingly digital and data-driven workplace. If they don’t, they not only risk losing talent to organizations making greater investments in employee upskilling, but they stand to undermine the future productivity, performance and competitiveness of their business.”

The Data Literacy 2.0 program includes:

Launch services: Providing best practice and hands-on support for companies, including a proven methodology for starting and scaling data literacy across the business.
Expert training: Instructor-led classes for in-depth discussions on working with data.
Skills tracking: Data literacy assessments, certifications, and dashboards to measure progress. Employees can take a 2.5-hour exam to achieve gold standard accreditation in data literacy.
Community portal: An online forum to fuel peer-to-peer data literacy collaboration across the organization.
Self-service courses: Over 20 online self-service data literacy courses and supporting resources for employees to upskill in their own time, split across two components:
Free ‘Data Fundamentals’ courses for those who are at the start of their data literacy journey including modules on Introduction to Data Literacy and Data Informed Decision Making.
Paid for ‘Data Fluency’ courses for individuals looking to dig deeper into data best practices for their organization with modules such as Foundational Analytics and Advanced Analytics.

The complete ‘data fluency’ curriculum starts at $250 per student with volume discounts for large organizations. More information on the program and pricing structure are available here: Data Literacy Program: Training, Consulting & Resources | Qlik.

As a founding member of the Data Literacy Project and as part of its commitment to creating a data-literate world, Qlik is also making the Data Fundamentals and Data Fluency courses accessible, as well as a host of free resources to help people get to grips and build confidence with data, here: https://thedataliteracyproject.org/learn

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Netskope Launches Online Community Connecting Network, Data, and Cloud Security Professionals Through Peer Collaboration

Taylor Graham — Wed, 26 May 2021 08:24:13 +0000

Netskope, the SASE leader, launched the Netskope Online Community, a forum built for customers to come together with like-minded professionals to learn from one another, share tips, ideate, and gain valuable perspective on the industry in a peer-driven online environment.

Digital transformation continues to revolutionize the way people work and what they expect. With the rapid adoption of new tools to secure remote workers, the need for better integration and collaboration has created new solutions and opportunities to optimize security and networking for the cloud. The Netskope Online Community brings together a diverse group of people across industries and areas of expertise that share passions for security, data protection, and networking, all with the desire to learn, share, and discuss ideas with knowledgeable peers.

“Netskope has seen tremendous momentum in the last year as companies seek a cloud security and networking solution that prioritizes data protection,” said Jason Clark, Chief Strategy Officer at Netskope. “Remote work is here to stay and now more than ever is the time for networking and security experts to collaborate. Our new online community enables Netskope customers to connect, learn, and collaborate with other professionals around the world. With this community, Netskope is continuing to invest in our customers and their success and we look forward to regular feedback and learnings that will help us help them even more.”

The new Netskope Online Community features:

Topic Subscription: Receive all the latest updates on specific topics of interest
Discussion Boards: Learn from and discuss with network and security industry experts
Dynamic Content: Platform automatically recommends related discussions, threat research, industry trends, and much more
Incentives: Earn badges and level-up ranks as you participate

To visit and explore the community, click here.

To watch the video intro, click here.

More than 1,000 customers—including more than 25 of the Fortune 100—already benefit from the breadth and depth of Netskope offerings. To learn more about the Netskope Security Cloud please visit https://www.netskope.com/products.

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Zscaler Advances Zero Trust Security for the Digital Business Disrupting Decades of Legacy IT Security and Networking Models

Taylor Graham — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 10:58:16 +0000

Zscaler, Inc., the leader in cloud security, announced innovations for the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform and new programs designed to secure digital businesses. New security solutions, resources for IT execs and practitioners, and deployment guides to expedite zero trust adoption are redefining the rules of IT security for today’s internet-driven, cloud-first businesses. The combination of these offerings provides digital businesses a holistic approach to securing modern organizations and the pragmatic skills and blueprints needed to be competitive.

Digital transformation has fundamentally changed the way modern businesses innovate and operate. This seismic shift has been accelerated by enterprises’ move to cloud-based SaaS models and the internet becoming the new corporate network — shattering 30 years of IT networking and security principles. While direct-to-internet connectivity for access to cloud applications and workloads has democratized information flow and improved business agility, it has also destroyed the castle-and-moat security architecture exposing businesses to new threat vectors resulting in more large-scale security breaches.

Zero trust starts with validating user identity combined with business policy enforcement based on contextual data from user, device, app and content to deliver authorized direct access to applications and resources. This means that no entity (user or application) is inherently trusted. Built on three fundamental tenets, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange makes the cloud safe by securely connecting the right users to the right applications.

Connect users and applications to resources, not the corporate network, preventing lateral movement of threats, thus reducing security and business risk.
Make applications invisible to the internet. Applications protected behind the Zero Trust Exchange are not visible and cannot be discovered, thus eliminating the attack surface.
Use a proxy architecture, not a passthrough firewall, for content inspection and security. The only way to ensure effective cyber threat defense and data protection is by requiring content inspection, including encrypted traffic, and policy enforcement, before it reaches its intended destination.

Platform: New Security Solutions to Take Advantage of the Most Advanced Zero Trust Platform

Studies show that 77% of IT security teams believe they will move to a hybrid working model resulting in the need for new and advanced security requirements. The introduction of three innovations for the Zero Trust Exchange platform helps IT security teams bring zero trust security to every digital business, strengthens safe web access, and dramatically simplifies the adoption of zero trust policies.

Extending Cloud-Native Zero Trust On-Premises – The new Zscaler ZPA Private Service Edge software makes ZPA the only cloud-native solution that spans both cloud and on-premises environments. Hosted by the customer but managed by Zscaler, it securely brokers users to private applications and removes the need for on-premises network segmentation. This makes ZPA Private Service Edge ideal for on-premises environments and locations subject to internet access challenges by providing local brokering between on-premises users and latency-sensitive applications, resulting in greater performance for users, less complexity for network admins, and less risk for business data. ZPA Private Service Edge is generally available today.
Mitigating Web-based Attacks and Data Leakage – A majority of external attacks target users through their web browsers, making browsers a large surface area for threats. Zscaler’s new, natively integrated Cloud Browser Isolation solution creates an isolated browsing session that enables users to access any webpage on the internet without allowing sensitive data to flow down to the local device or the corporate network. Users do not directly access active web content, preventing the delivery of malicious code. Cloud Browser Isolation allows customers to offer a safer web experience while helping ensure sophisticated attacks, ransomware, or data exfiltration will not impact endpoints or targeted users.
Simplifying Security Policies Through Automation – New APIs automatically create policies for newly discovered services and revokes user access based on time settings. Machine learning (ML) enhancements allow for auto-segmentation of application workloads. These innovations speed up the time it takes to set policies and simplifies microsegmentation – freeing up time to focus on other vital projects.

People: Elevating the Role of IT Executives and Delivering Advanced Skills for Security Practitioners

Elevating the Role of IT Executives – The newly formed REvolutionaries forum is an online CXO community for IT leaders to learn techniques for advancing their zero trust strategy, engage in executive-only events, and evaluate the maturity of their digital transformation journey.
Offering Advanced Skills Training for Security Practitioners – To train IT practitioners on best practices for using zero trust services, Zscaler has formed the Zero Trust Academy, a certification training program focused on securing access to private apps, SaaS apps, and the internet with Zscaler solutions.

Process: Validated Designs and Blueprints to Facilitate Zero Trust Deployments

Building a Programmatic Path to Zero Trust – Zscaler’s Zero Trust Ecosystem of technology partners have made it easier for IT practitioners to modernize their legacy security models. New joint validated designs provide the blueprints with prescriptive guidance for security architects to simplify rapid deployments of zero trust security architectures. Visit the Zscaler Zero Trust Ecosystem to access resources from global partners and market leaders, such as CrowdStrike, IBM Security, Microsoft, Okta, Ping Identity, SailPoint, SentinelOne, Splunk, and VMware CarbonBlack across identity management, endpoint security, and security operations.

“The accelerated adoption of digital transformation compounded with more employees working from anywhere has opened the floodgates to targeted cyber attacks. Security teams face challenges everyday posed by managed and unmanaged endpoints and identities, streams of unfiltered data, and the complexity of managing user access to critical business applications,” said Amol Kulkarni, chief product officer at CrowdStrike. “CrowdStrike’s Zero Trust Assessment provides continuous, real-time security device posture assessments and Zscaler’s frictionless integration with ZTA provides an identity and data-centric approach for dynamic conditional access to applications. The integration delivers customers a holistic zero trust solution that encompasses data, people, devices, workloads and networks.”

“As enterprises continue to adopt a cloud-first strategy, a cloud-native zero trust security model has become a necessity,” said Sendur Sellakumar, CPO and SVP of Cloud, Splunk. “Splunk and Zscaler have jointly developed design guides and robust product integrations to help IT security teams prevent and detect attacks, dynamically control policy and risk, and accelerate threat response in alignment with zero trust best practices.”

A complete list of quotes from our supporting partners can be found at https://www.zscaler.com/partners/technology/zero-trust-quotes.

Industry Analyst Quote

“Thanks to cloud and mobility, our infrastructure, applications and data are everywhere, and as a result of the growing work-from-home (WFH) phenomenon, users are now more scattered than ever,” said Eric Hanselman, Principal Research Analyst, 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Perimeter-based controls are thus quickly becoming obsolete, making the zero trust approach of using a cloud-native architecture to disperse security controls for performance and scale the more appealing way to protect businesses.”

Additional Information

ESG Research Report: The State of Zero-trust Security Strategies – https://www.esg-global.com/research/esg-research-report-the-state-of-zero-trust-security-strategies

To learn more about this announcement see https://www.zscaler.com/zero-trust-moment.

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Fortinet Delivers SASE and Zero Trust Network Access Capabilities

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Bandwidth Delivers 911 Capabilities to More than 20 Million Enterprise Users

Leigh Porter — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 15:27:09 +0000

Bandwidth Inc., announced surpassing a key milestone of over 20 million 911 endpoints under management across the U.S. and Canada. The industry-disrupting 911 call routing provider, long known for delivering a comprehensive suite of highly-reliable emergency services solutions, has seen dramatic growth in recent years stemming from its full service support for new and complex E911 regulations like Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act.

“The 911 endpoints registered on our network represent the lives and livelihood of millions of individuals within both businesses and communities that need fast, reliable access to emergency assistance,” said Nick Sgroi, Senior Vice President of Product and Network Strategy at Bandwidth. “In particular, our ability to help enterprises meet RAY BAUM’s Act requirements for popular softphone applications like Zoom Phone and Microsoft Teams has been a key driver for our emergency services growth in the past year. Bandwidth is helping CIOs answer an urgent and complicated question: how do we protect the safety of our employees while meeting regulatory compliance needs?”

Unified communications platforms now allow users to work and communicate from anywhere, but this added flexibility creates serious challenges when locating them during a 911 call. Prior to the dramatic COVID-19-related shift to remote work, the FCC mandated that enterprises must provide a dispatchable location with their 911 calls, which includes a civic address plus specific in-building location information such as room, floor, or suite to help locate callers. Solving this challenge for users who are frequently moving around a corporate network or are transitioning between work and home requires advanced emergency services capabilities such as those available in Bandwidth’s well-established E911 Dynamic Location Routing solution.

Bandwidth provides accurate E911 connectivity and a radically simplified approach to location management. As both a network operator and leading CPaaS provider, Bandwidth has been able to combine modern E911 tooling and automation with nationwide emergency services reach. Bandwidth’s advanced technology also supports emergency notifications for compliance with Kari’s Law, near-real time address validation and error correction to ensure location information is compatible with public safety standards, misdial protection, and the industry’s first “933” validation feature that reduces the distraction of test calls placed to public safety answering points (PSAPs).

With the recent acquisition of Voxbone, Bandwidth’s reach now extends emergency services to over 30 additional countries outside the U.S. and Canada. This expanded global presence opens up new opportunities to invest and develop the dynamic emergency location technologies still emerging within the highly-regulated UK and EU markets.

Continuously innovating, Bandwidth is one of only two providers able to support the native dynamic E911 feature within Microsoft Teams. Teams-enabled enterprises can accelerate their transition to the platform while also meeting the RAY BAUM’s Act dispatchable location requirements for fixed and non-fixed VoIP.

“Our customers trust that they can expand their business, meet complex regulations, and launch new communication solutions knowing that, with Bandwidth, 911 is fully supported,” said Adam Covati, Bandwidth’s Vice President of Research and Development, “but our commitment to innovating within the 911 community doesn’t end there. The devices and solutions we use to call for help are expanding and Bandwidth is actively involved in developing technologies that anticipate these trends so that users can also connect to emergency services within the applications and IoT devices that have become part of our daily lives.”

As evidence of this, the growth in recent years of home security, personal safety apps, and other connected devices led Bandwidth to develop its Emergency Calling API, a solution geared towards SaaS and application developers who want access to public safety but don’t otherwise need the cost and complexity of managing a complete telephony infrastructure. Technology innovators including the connected safety platform, Noonlight, are able to seamlessly connect their subscribers with emergency services.

To learn more about Bandwidth’s full suite of 911 solutions for enterprises, unified communications and business VoIP providers, and SaaS and application developers, visit bandwidth.com/911.

Image licensed by: Pixabay.com

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Enhance Energy Captures and Sequesters 1 Million Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide

Olivia Rowan — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 20:24:00 +0000

The Alberta-based carbon mitigation company, Enhance Energy, has announced that it has captured and sequestered 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The milestone is a key accomplishment for the privately owned company which is focused on reducing carbon emissions through carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS).

The 1 million tonnes of CO₂ would otherwise have gone into the atmosphere, but instead was captured, compressed, and transported to a mature oilfield in Clive, Alberta where it was sequestered. This rate of carbon mitigation has the equivalent emissions impact of taking approximately 350,000 cars off the road.

“There’s no question that the world is moving toward a more sustainable path” says Kevin Jabusch, Enhance President and CEO. “At Enhance we are part of the solution. We can continue to produce the energy we need to power our homes, our vehicles, and the economy, and we can do it in a less carbon intensive way. We are sequestering CO₂ and we are using it to help produce some of the lowest cost lowest carbon energy on the planet. All Albertans can be proud of this work.”

Now ten years into their efforts, Enhance received funding from the Provincial and Federal governments to move this project forward and support the critical infrastructure to allow for future growth.

The CO₂ is captured from both the NWR Sturgeon Refinery and the Nutrien Fertilizer facility located in the Alberta Industrial Heartland, and then is transported via the Alberta Carbon Trunkline (ACTL) to the mature oilfield near the town of Clive in Central Alberta. Enhance Energy founded the ACTL Project over a decade ago and the ACTL pipeline is now owned and operated by Wolf Midstream.

Jeff Pearson of Wolf Midstream on operating the world’s largest capacity man made CO2 transportation network:

“This is an amazing accomplishment in a short period of time — an accomplishment that demonstrates the ACTL system is a reliable solution for large-scale CO₂ emissions reduction,” said Jeff Pearson of Wolf Midstream. “The pipeline has excess capacity and will serve as the backbone for a larger CO₂ pipeline network. Emitters can utilize this network to safely send CO₂down the line to sequestration, keeping their emissions out of the atmosphere.”

The Clive CCUS project reached full commercial operation in mid-2020, and since then more than one million tonnes of carbon has been returned deep underground into our geology.

Enhance Energy is an innovator that utilizes CO₂ that otherwise would have been emitted to the atmosphere to produce energy.

This project has also helped put thousands of Albertans to work and helps to generate royalties for the province. Enhance Energy sees opportunity for more CCUS to be an enabler for additional reduction of CO₂ emissions from industrial sources in the province. Enhance is extremely proud of this accomplishment and this made-in-Alberta approach to addressing greenhouse gas emissions.

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IGEL Launches the UD Pocket2, a Portable Dual Mode USB Device for Secure End User Computing from Anywhere

Leigh Porter — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 20:08:41 +0000

IGEL, provider of the next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces, today released the UD Pocket2, a portable USB device with a USB-A and a USB-C connector that enables secure and rapid access from any x86-64 endpoint, to managed cloud or VDI workspaces. Compatible with both legacy and modern devices, the UD Pocket2 is an ideal solution for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) users, work-from-home users, or organizations that wish to repurpose aging or existing hardware to allow simplified and managed access to the company network or cloud workloads, from anywhere.

“With an innovative, new reversible 2-in-1 design, the UD Pocket2 offers the versatility to transform both legacy systems as well as the latest devices with USB Type-C interfaces into a fully functional IGEL OS-powered endpoint for secure, manageable access to VDI, cloud workspaces and virtualized apps,” said Matthias Haas, CTO, IGEL. “In a time where enterprises need the ability to rapidly and securely help their people remain productive from anywhere, the UD Pocket2 packs an elegant solution into a conveniently compact and cost-effective USB device.”

The UD Pocket2 is pre-installed with IGEL OS Workspace Edition software and features built-in support for over 100 integrated partner technologies. Using the UD Pocket2, organizations can easily repurpose existing hardware, giving new life to any x86-64 device and making it a secure, managed cloud or VDI workspace. The UD Pocket2 helps defend against the growing threat of ransomware on the endpoint, as it can be used to provide swift disaster recovery should an endpoint become infected. With its USB-A and USB-C connectors, one on each end of the small USB device, the UD Pocket2 is also perfect for modern BYOD endpoints and other compatible small form factor devices. For users working remotely or from home, the UD Pocket2 with IGEL OS is highly secure with its read-only, Linux-based operating system with the added support of two-factor authentication and trusted execution.

Any device enabled with the UD Pocket2, or the UD Pocket USB-A device, becomes a manageable endpoint using the IGEL Universal Management Suite (UMS) which can securely manage up to 300,000 IGEL OS-powered endpoints, whether on the corporate network or off. This makes endpoint management and control simple and secure, even across enterprises with a dispersed and diverse infrastructure of hardware brands and form factors, all from a single console.

“The UD Pocket made things go a lot faster than manually updating the endpoints, patching and installing the necessary applications,” said Chris McMasters, CIO, City of Corona. “All we had to do was plug in the UD Pocket, turn on the computer, boot it up and Windows 10 was accessible from IGEL OS within minutes, with everything the end-user needed to be productive.”

The UD Pocket2 with IGEL Workspace Edition will be available during February 2021. For more information watch this video and register for a free trial.

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CFOs Need Greater Real Time Data to Pivot from Measuring to Creating Value Amid COVID-19

Taylor Graham — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:30:23 +0000

As chief financial officers (CFO) continue to grapple with ongoing business disruptions from COVID-19, a new report from Accenture found finance leaders need more real-time data to pivot from measuring to creating value.

The new report from Accenture surveyed 450 CFOs and other finance leaders at companies with at least $1B in annual revenue. A key finding: While nearly all (99%) respondents believe operating with real-time data is critical to navigating disruptions, such as COVID-19 or the threat of a recession, just 16% of respondents are being informed by such data at the scale that’s needed.

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“CFOs have more data at their fingertips than anyone else in the company,” said Manish Sharma, group chief executive of Accenture Operations. “Operating with real-time data puts the CFO in a unique position to drive positive change for the business, pivoting the finance function from measuring value to creating value and driving growth.”

When asked about the greatest areas of concern to their business for 2021, CFOs most often cited the potential impact of rising interest rates (cited by 49%), disruption from the pandemic (47%), economic recession (47%), and hiring and retaining the right talent (42%). Given the complexity of these challenges, the majority (68%) believe that a real-time financial model — which makes use of AI, machine learning algorithms and real-time, diverse data sets — will be critical to enabling better business decisions, more-accurate forecasting models and improved data accuracy.

Even during the pandemic, respondents said they’re investing, on average, 33% of their finance department’s budget this year to building real-time operations and processes. Large U.S. companies — i.e., those with at least US$10 billion in annual revenue — appear even more committed to such a capability, saying they intend to invest at least 50% of their (2020-2021) finance-department budgets in this area. Roughly two-fifths (44%) of respondents said they plan to have nearly all finance processes and operations in real-time over the next three years.

“If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that businesses that thrive in an unpredictable environment do so by being agile and swiftly adapting to change,” said Dr. Christian Campagna, Ph.D., who leads Accenture’s CFO and Enterprise Value network. “Not only do finance leaders need to outmaneuver uncertainty, but also leverage an intelligent finance operating model that draws upon data, applied intelligence, digital technologies and human talent to give them the speed they need to make the enterprise succeed.”

While these advantages are well-known, finance leaders also face a variety of challenges in implementing these processes. For example, real-time scenario planning topped the list of CFO priorities for 2021 (cited by 34% of respondents), but 58% of respondents expressed concern about identifying or hiring the right talent to implement this capability. While roughly a fourth (24%) of respondents cited real-time insights as highest priority for their company’s finance function, roughly two-fifths (43%) believe that technology is the most significant barrier to implementation, with slightly fewer (39%) citing the same for strategy know-how. Technology was also seen as a barrier to implementing continuous close (43%) and continuous accounting (40%).

“Implementing real-time processes isn’t easy, but CFOs today must move at the pace of their business to minimize risk and uncertainty and open up new opportunities for business growth,” said Manoj Shroff, who leads Accenture’s intelligent finance operations offering. “By embracing change and pivoting to intelligent operations, the role of the finance function is increasingly elevated while positioning the company for growth.”

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Forrester Recognizes Thycotic as a Leader in Privileged Identity Management

S.J. Fisher — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 18:16:44 +0000

Thycotic has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Q4 2020 Report*. The report evaluated 10 vendors based on 24 criteria across three high level categories: Current Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence.

“PIM solutions should support DevOps teams, IT admins configuring cloud infrastructure, bots, IoT, and API-driven workloads. CISOs are burning a lot of calories trying to secure privileged access for these use cases right now. Our clients tell us that machine identities are growing at twice the rate of human identities. Furthermore, the definition of a privileged user is expanding to include non-IT users,” according to the report.

Thycotic received the highest possible score in 11 criteria including SaaS/Cloud, Innovation Roadmap, and Integrations. Thycotic also received the highest possible score for the following criteria: Deployment, Supporting Products and Services, Commercial Model, and PIM Installed Base.

“We believe Thycotic’s recognition as a leader in the Forrester Wave for privileged identity management signifies and validates the strong product strategy that we have developed and implemented in recent years which focuses heavily on cloud innovations and end-user experience,” said James Legg, president and CEO at Thycotic. “We are continually expanding our range of PIM solutions to secure access to all different types of platforms, from SaaS to cloud to IaaS and have unveiled four new products this year alone.”

To download a complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave: Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Q4 2020 report, visit https://thycotic.com/forrester-wave-pim-report-2020.

*The Forrester Wave, Privileged Identity Management, Q4 2020 by Sean Ryan and Elsa Pikulik, November 19, 2020

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Apptio Expands Cloud Financial Management Product Suite with Cloudability SaaS and Shift

Leigh Porter — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 20:00:02 +0000

Apptio, Inc. announced two new products: Cloudability SaaS and Cloudability Shift. These new offerings join Apptio’s leading cloud financial management product, Cloudability, to expand the company’s toolset in the rapidly growing public cloud market.

Cloudability SaaS allows technology and finance leaders to discover, manage, and optimize spending on software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications throughout their organization. Cloudability Shift allows users to analyze, plan, and track their migration from on-premises data centers to the cloud through analysis of current infrastructure, committed costs, and application needs.

“The addition of Cloudability SaaS and Cloudability Shift to our suite of technology financial management offerings ensures that our customers are able to analyze, optimize, and plan investments across the entirety of their technology portfolio, regardless of service type (e.g., infrastructure, platform, or software), provider, delivery model, or deployment destination (e.g., public cloud, private cloud, or on-premises),”said Scott Chancellor, chief product and technology officer at Apptio.

Cloudability SaaS
SaaS adoption is rapidly growing, with many global service decision-makers reporting that they invest or plan to invest in SaaS as part of their organization’s digital transformation strategy, according to Forrester. As a result, SaaS consumption continues to rise significantly for enterprises of various sizes, totaling a global market of $500 billion.

As SaaS deployment continues to grow, one of the challenges many organizations are facing is the lack of central accountability over SaaS licenses, which means that these enterprises may have multiple contracts for the same product or several products that are underutilized, negating the cost benefits of SaaS. With the number of SaaS solutions in the enterprise in the hundreds, this is a concern for those that want to centrally manage, report, and optimize current SaaS applications while also discovering new SaaS applications that their organization may be using.

Cloudability SaaS is designed to discover and report on all SaaS applications, analyze license utilization and spend by application, and rightsize SaaS portfolios to meet changing business needs and avoid potential compliance issues. With this product, organizations can reallocate licenses based on usage, eliminate duplicative applications, and forecast future costs through what-if analysis.

Employing direct API integrations and machine learning, Cloudability SaaS automatically extracts application contract, license and usage details by connecting to single sign-on (SSO) systems to visualize all SaaS investments. Key benefits of the solution include:

Portfolio visibility: A purpose-built, consolidated view of spend, adoption, and usage data for all deployed SaaS applications enables faster optimization opportunity identification and waste elimination.
Reduce costs: Automated and timely rightsizing recommendations about application licenses based on actual usage data allow for powerful cost optimization.
Minimize risks: Extensive what-if planning tools allow IT departments to rapidly adapt to evolving business strategies. Flexible tagging of applications, for example those that have sensitive data stored, helps users mitigate potential compliance and operational risks.

Cloudability Shift
Migrating to the cloud is more complex than just benchmarking on-premise costs against similar-sized cloud servers. Enterprises need to be able to account for committed costs and ongoing projects to make migrations timely and avoid double payment on services. In fact, according to a Gartner report, companies without proper cost optimization governance will overspend on cloud migrations by 70 percent.

The ability to account for associated costs involved in cloud migrations allows Cloudability Shift to give users custom-made migration plans that provide recommendations on what to move (i.e. applications) and when to make the move to ensure the migration is delivering the most value possible. Key benefits of the solution include:

True picture of costs: By examining committed costs, users can determine the best time to move different workloads to avoid duplicated costs.
Customizability: Users can draw on a range of information sources and integrations with other software to evaluate potential savings and plan their migration on an application-by-application basis.
Accountability: Automatic tracking of migration costs against the plan provides a true, ongoing picture of value against planned costs.

Cloudability SaaS is generally available today and Cloudability Shift will be available in early 2021.

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Blendid Opens Fourth Autonomous, Contactless, Food Kiosk at Bay Area Walmart

S.J. Fisher — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 23:03:07 +0000

Blendid is opening the company’s fourth food robotics kiosk at Walmart in Fremont, California. The Bay Area–based company offers an autonomous, and contactless food automation platform that leverages machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence to create smoothies, made on-demand, and customized to meet the preferences of individual consumers.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the focus on food safety globally. At Blendid, we’re working with many essential businesses to help integrate a solution for safe, contactless food preparation and delivery,” said Vipin Jain, CEO and co-founder of Blendid. “Our newest location within Walmart is completely contactless from order to pickup and will be a healthy, quick, tasty, and affordable option for customers on-the-go. We are continuing to grow, learn, and adapt to the evolving needs of the future of foodservice.”

Blendid’s stand-alone, contactless kiosk includes a robotic arm, blenders, a refrigeration system, and numerous dispensers that store and dispense a variety of ingredients including solids (such as fruits and vegetables), liquids (such as coconut water), and superfoods (such as chia, flax, and ginger).

Blendid’s proprietary food operating system (foodOS) processes the orders and payment, measures and dispenses precise amounts of ingredients for customized drinks, and blends, pours, and stores each smoothie until a consumer is ready for pickup. The Blendid system can process up to 45 drinks an hour and nine drinks

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