Dimension Data partners MindLink for Secure Messaging Solutions to Enterprises…as Cost-Cutting Efforts Continues

Even as Dimension Data is continuing to cut costs, with sources telling CRN the company has told some employees they would no longer receive their short-term incentive bonuses, the company that is a leading systems integrator, has partnered MindLink, providers of secure Chat Enabled Collaboration (CEC) tools for business, to offer enterprises in Asia and beyond secure and compliant chat and collaboration tools.

Sources said some Dimension Data company’s managers were recently notified of the changes to the short-term incentives. The incentives account for a significant portion of the financial compensation for a number of employees, sources said. One source close to the company said the cutbacks have prompted multiple managers to leave the company. "It's a huge issue," said the source. Dimension Data did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The latest cutbacks come after a round of layoffs earlier this year and the sudden resignation of Dimension Data CEO Brett Dawson, who stepped down in June after 12 years at the company. The layoffs earlier this year hit departments across the company including customer service, alliances, solutions engineers, sales and the managed services group.

But to show that its business is not in anyway waning, the partnership with MindLink is seen as a new direction for enterprise-level message collaboration. The Asian market is particularly advanced in terms of adoption of chat and messaging applications. China's WeChat, Japan's Line and Facebook's WhatsApp dominate the consumer market with billions of active daily users. Yet, businesses are left with very few options when it comes to highly secure, enterprise-ready messaging alternatives. This, in turn, creates increasing risk for Asian corporates whose employees are using their consumer tools to share sensitive business data, files and knowledge.

MindLink is the corporate messaging app of choice for a growing number of enterprises, notably financial institutions, governments and law firms, who want the ability to share ideas and collaborate on projects yet don't compromise on security needs, scalability and compliance requirements.

"We have good penetration working with corporates in the UK and US and are now setting our sight on expanding inAsia. Asia is a highly attractive market where our proposition naturally resonates, states Annekathrin Häse, CMO, MindLink. "Dimension Data is the leading IT provider in the region and a strong partner to support our ongoing global growth".

With a turnover of USD 7.5 billion and 31,000 employees Dimension Data is one of the largest ICT solution providers globally. Its particularly strong footprint in the Asian market will allow MindLink to expand into a market where local knowledge and understanding of customer needs is key. Both firms are Microsoft Gold Partners and have strategic links with the latter, supporting MindLink's integrations with Lync and/or Skype for Business to enhance the chat and messaging functionality within the Microsoft offering.

WhatsApp release updates for iOS 10 and Windows Phone

A new update for WhatsApp for iOS and Windows has arrived. While the one for iOS 10 will make the primarily texting app more like a stock dialer with the new features it comes with, the Windows Beta update will bring easier mass sharing of video and pictures.

The update is also said to specifically bring new features to iOS 10-running iPhone and iPad devices. According to Phone Arena, the latest update, which clocked in at 84.2 MB, lets users answer WhatsApp calls directly from the lockscreen, just like how it is when receiving standard phone calls through the stock dialer. This is all thanks to iOS 10's CallKit that allows third-party apps to run like stock phone apps. 

In addition, the newest update also enables users to command Siri to place a phone call or send a message through the WhatsApp app. And this would be quite useful, especially to iOS 10 users. It can be noted that in late August, IBTimes reported that iOS 10 would come with support for third-party apps, like WeChat, LinkedIn, Slack and WhatsApp. Hence, the update is the realization of Apple’s early plan to integrate Siri into chat apps.

The new WhatsApp for iOS update also comes with other new features and features that are already present in the beta version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone. For example, there is a new widget that makes it easier for users to check if there are unread messages and to jump to any of the latest chat threads without having to launch the WhatsApp app.

Another feature that the WhatsApp update brings is the new gesture command that lets users switch from the front-facing camera to the back-facing camera or vice-versa with just a double tap on the phone’s screen.

The release of the new update comes just a day after news that WhatsApp beta for Windows Phone has been enhanced with the addition of a camera icon at the bottom of the Settings bar in the chat window in order for users to seamlessly share images and videos with anyone they are chatting with. Windows Central added that this feature would also enable Windows Phone users to share media quickly with more than one contact at a time.

For many of users, WhatsApp groups are actually reflective of the many different communities they are a part of, and occasionally they want to share a specific item with multiple groups, such as a graduation or birth picture,  without mingling the different groups by merging them.

Normally this would mean going into each group individually to share the same message, but the latest WhatsApp beta, version 2.16.208, offers a convenient solution.

The update adds a new Camera icon (above), allowing users to share a video or picture from the chats list directly, without entering each chat in turn. WhatsApp have also added OneDrive backup of user data for their Beta users, and as always it is great to see the app in such active development.

The WhatsApp Beta update will soon be availabe for all users.

Key reasons Symantec Acquired Blue Coat Systems

Its already a done deal folks! In a bid to redefine the future of cyber security, this deal worth $4.65b, was consummated a while ago. 

Symantec, the maker of Norton security services, agreed to buy security hardware, software, and service provider Blue Coat in an all-cash deal. Blue Coat, which was acquired by Bain Capital for $2.4 billion last year, had filed to go public earlier this month.

According sources, Blue Coat revenue fell 5% to $598.3 million in the fiscal year ending on April 30 due to deferred revenue writedowns related to Bain's takeover. This means that Symantec is paying a hefty premium for Blue Coat at nearly 8 times sales. But aside the financials, there are key business and sundry decisions that led Symantec to shell out such a huge sum. 

Acquiring Blue Coat is projected to add over 15,000 enterprise customers to Symantec's current customer base of around 370,000 clients. Symantec claims that the acquisition will combine its "leading threat telemetry with Blue Coat's networks and cloud security offerings" to protect servers, emails, and web transactions. Simply put, Symantec needs Blue Coat because its core antivirus business has been dying a slow death over the past decade. Two years ago, a Symantec executive declared that traditional antivirus solutions were "dead" due to the rise of sophisticated attacks that rigid antivirus solutions couldn't keep pace with. Moverover, the rise of mobile and connected devices enabled hackers to attack anything with an active Internet connection.

Symantec's core security products protect PCs, data centers, and emails. Blue Coat's products protect networks and cloud services, so the two companies' businesses don't really overlap. Symantec claims that the combination of those services in end-to-end packages will enable it to protect a wide range of platforms which would typically require "eight to ten" different security vendors. The acquisition will also give Symantec a combined staff of 3,000 engineers and researchers to better counter hackers worldwide.

Symantec hailed the deal as a good match and IDC analyst Chris Christiansen agreed, saying the companies' products "don’t have much overlap.” Symantec has typically focused on device, or “endpoint,” security, while Blue Coat has specialized on the networking side, including managing encrypted traffic. By joining forces, Symantec said it can offer a whole range of products, promising better overall security and threat detection.

Every day, the vendors collect vast amounts of data on the latest threats. For Symantec, that means analyzing billions of emails and watching millions of PCs; for Blue Coat, it means monitoring thousands of cloud-based applications and over a billion Web requests through secure gateways. Combining resources should give them a better view of where and how malware is attacking their clients. 

Also as hackers continue to innovate, Symantec needs more engineers to keep pace. The acquisition will result in a combined staff of 3,000 engineers and researchers, to help it stay ahead of the bad guys. For its business clients, Symantec says it will be able to protect everything from devices to cloud applications.

Additionally, the acquisition could inject some sales growth for Symantec at time when its business has been limping. In April, then-CEO Michael Brown stepped down following poor financial results and amid growing competition. To drive sales, Symantec hopes to sell its products to Blue Coat customers, and vice versa. Symantec has around 370,000 enterprise clients, while Blue Coat has 15,000.

Although Symantec remains a leader in security, the company has been restructuring in a bid to improve profitability, Christiansen noted. Last year, Symantec decided to sharpen its focus on security and sold its information management business, Veritas, for $8 billion. This latest deal with help it beef up again while still focusing on security.

AdStage gets funds from Verizon Ventures to boost its marketing tech platform

AdStage has announced that it has raised new funding, bringing in $2 million to establish a product suite around marketing technology. The company’s latest investment comes from Verizon Ventures, a firm whose limited partner hasn’t been shy in pursuing ad tech acquisitions.

Launched in 2013, AdStage is primarily a social advertising management service for small- and medium-sized businesses. It collects historical data such as keywords, ads, demographics, and competitor data and can provide recommendations and insights based on not only your company, but also your competitors. AdStage integrates directly with Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to provide you with well-rounded insight into what’s happening across social and traditional online media.

With additional capital, AdStage said it’ll turn its attention toward establishing a platform that will address any marketer’s need. Its yet-unnamed product suite will facilitate analysis of pay-per-click performance across channels, automate daily campaign tasks, and integrate the services into existing tools. All four of AdStage’s products — Create, Manage, Automate, and Report — will be consolidated into this offering, and the company will extend its reach beyond paid advertising, bringing in data from complimentary organizations such as sales, marketing, content, and analytics.

Company chief executive Shail Jain said in a statement: “Our vision has always been to unite the various paid channels where the digital marketer or head of demand generation is at the apex of revenue operations. As marketing technology evolves, this individual requires the tools that not only unite the paid channels, but collaborate with the complimentary business units to customer acquisition…”

The relationship between Verizon Ventures and AdStage isn’t new, as the firm previously invested in the company’s Series A round. However, it’s part of a growing effort by Verizon Ventures’ LP to increase its stake in ad tech companies. It already owns AOL, which has a bevy of ad tools and myriad publishing companies. The acquisition of Yahoo was largely based on the ad capabilities that it offered.

To date, AdStage has raised more than $10 million in funding. It now manages more than 18,000 advertising accounts and $100 million in quarterly ad spend.

Marketing Tech Firm Curalate Introduces Vertical Video E-Commerce Product

New technology company Curalate, which helps marketers use digital visual assets to drive and track e-commerce, has introduced a new ad product called Tilt that is designed for the vertical video world. Curalate, which works with over 800 marketers, has signed on Urban Outfitters as the first Tilt partner.

Why does the world need an ad unit for vertical videos? Can’t you just reformat banners and web video ads to work on mobile devices?

Apu Gupta, Curalate co-founder and chief executive, says that people have become accustomed to tapping through a series of video clips and pausing longer on things that interest them, particularly on Snapchat, and advertising needs to reflect this reality. So, Tilt ads are designed to let a brand create vertical video ads that work more like a Snapchat or Instagram Story. Users can jump to the product or information that interests them most and potentially buy something through the ad.

“Vertical videos are more immersive and more personal for people,” Mr. Gupta said. He mentioned that when people search for videos of recipes or DIY projects—and they are accustomed to scrolling through Snapchat or Instagram stories—the experience can be frustrating as they wait for the part of the clip that matters to them. “These ads are designed to be empowering,” he said.

As part of the rollout, Urban Outfitters has created a new mobile, vertical-friendly site called UOTV using the Tilt technology. On UOTV, the retailer might create a vertical video story—i.e. a series of annotated images and short videos spliced together featuring a room makeover or a bedroom set, replete with lots of products. People can jump to the part of the story that interests them, and then theoretically buy something via a “Shop the Story” link.

Initially, the plan is for brands to use Tilt ads on their own websites and social media accounts. But Mr. Gupta said that it isn’t out of the question that Tilt ads could run as paid ads on content sites or social networks.

Tel Aviv voice analysis firm gets China investment

After setting up a $300 million fund to invest in Israeli tech firms, a member of the China-based conglomerate Kuang-Chi Group has announced its second investment in Israel, leading a “multi-million dollar” funding round in Beyond Verbal Communications Ltd., a Tel Aviv-based company that analyzes emotions based on vocal intonations.

“Israel is a main part of our global investment strategy,” Dr. Zhang Yangyang, the co-chief executive officer of KuangChi Science Ltd. said in an interview while on a visit to Tel Aviv this week, as he met with additional startup companies and other members of the local industry and government. “We expect more investments to be announced in Israel in the very near future.”

Kuang-Chi’s $300 million GCI Fund & InCubator, that was launched in May this year, has already invested $20 million in Herzliya, Israel-basedeyeSight Technologies, a machine vision company.

The Chinese company’s investment of $3 million brings the total raised since Beyond Verbal’s founding in 2012 to $10 million, Kuang-Chi said.

The group seeks investments in technologically disruptive, early to mid-stage Israeli and global companies in robotics, machine vision, aviation, and smart-cities technology, Zhang said. The Tel Aviv based emotions analytics company Beyond Verbal fits this profile, he said.

“We want to get access to a wide variety of technologies and integrate them, in order to provide our customers a full solution,” Zhang said. “We are not only financial investors. We work together with our companies and help them grow, by enabling them to deploy and mass-manufacture their product.”

Beyond Verbal, founded by chief executive Yuval Mor and Chief Science Officer Dr. Yoram Levanon, uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to teach computers how we feel, and to react accordingly. It enables the decoding of emotions, well-being and health through analyzing the human voice, and then allows voice-powered devices, applications and solutions to interact with us on that emotional level, just as humans do.

“The voice contains information about your emotional state,” said Dorian Barak, the managing partner at Indigo Global, Kuang-Chi’s partner in Israel. “This technology can change the way robots and virtual assistants interact with humans.”

Beyond Verbal’s patented technology was developed based on ongoing research into the science of emotions that started in 1995. Throughout the years they have collected more than 2.5 million emotion-tagged voices in more than 40 languages and secured their technology with multiple patents. The company’s emotions analytics technology has numerous applications, from improving call center effectiveness to tracking health conditions and even improving relationships — by helping you decipher your partner’s tone of voice — Beyond Verbal said in a video on its website.

Why EMC acquisition makes sense for Dell...job losses expected

As far as October last year, a day ahead of the start of a company conference, Micheal Dell the founder of Dell corp, sat down for an interview with Re/code in a hotel conference room in Austin, Texas, and talked about how Dell, the company, will combine with EMC in a transaction worth about $67 billion employing a strategy that made its target vulnerable to hostile shareholder attack.

From his dream, when the deal closes Dell will have pulled off the single largest M&A deal the technology marketplace has ever seen, one that will result in the biggest single vendor of personal computers, servers, software and storage equipment in the world. In so doing Dell will go against current conventional logic that calls for simpler corporate structures.

Companies like HP and Symantec and eBay have joined a long list of American corporations that have split up to untangle complicated conglomerate structures and focus on growing markets. Ironically, EMC’s path to a sale was reached because its complicated structure made it vulnerable to hostile shareholders demanding a split.

Fast track to a couple of weeks ago, Dell and storage solutions company EMC merged, to "create a $74-billion market leader with an expansive technology portfolio that solves complex problems for customers in the industry's fast-growing areas of hybrid cloud, software-defined data centre, converged infrastructure, platform-as-a-service, data analytics, mobility and cyber security".

Technology companies have always sought newer engines of growth. In most cases, it was achieved through acquisitions. EMC itself was an acquisitive company - if you go back 12 years, EMC transformed from being a single platform company to a firm with a 'family'. It transitioned from being a hardware-centric company to a complete information management company, which offered both software and services. In fact, EMC, by 2005, was one of the world's largest software companies! The talk, then, was also about reducing complexities for the customer. A large hardware+software+services company would take away the headache of negotiating with multiple vendors as also of integration. That logic hasn't changed now; only the circumstances have. Dell's acquisition of EMC is easy to understand through this prism.

While much of the past decade was about the implementation of package software, when it came to information technology, the next 15 could be about transforming enterprises digitally. Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are tasked to help their companies transition from legacy applications to consumer-grade mobile apps. As the trend towards the Internet of Things accelerates, more and more devices will get connected. Gathering information from these devices and analysing them will be the key to both top line and bottom-line performance for every enterprise.

This scenario also implies a greater degree of complexity in tech architectures. A converged infrastructure may make more sense - Dell and EMC combined can offer that converged infrastructure of compute, storage, networking and applications. Global customers also need efficient supply chains. Being able to deal with fewer vendors is always useful. The new scale of Dell Technologies fits into this scheme.

There is, of course, the question of customer lock-in when dealing with a single large vendor. Executives at EMC World had a ready answer whenever it came up: "A single vendor can be much more honest and strategic."

So following its $60bn-plus buy of storage titan EMC, with between 2,000 to 3,000 heads expected to roll. But if sales don’t track to management expectations, sources told us to expect more. A Bloomberg report claimed Dell will seek out $1.7bn in cost savings in the next eighteen months – but it will seek to beef up sales by several times that amount, minimising the need to thin out more.

A Dell spokeswoman gave us the same line Bloomberg carried: “As is common with deals of this size, there will be some overlaps we will need to manage and where some employee reduction will occur. “We will do everything possible to minimise the impact on jobs,” he said, “We expect revenue gains will outweigh any cost savings, and revenue growth drives employment growth”. The redundancies are likely to fall mostly in the US and in roles including supply chain, marketing and general and administrative functions.

Dell completed the acquisition of EMC on Wednesday 7 September, creating a corporate giant turning over more than $70bn and which employs 140,000 people.

Both companies are under pressure from cloud services rivals – in the case of EMC its revenue growth has flatlined, while Dell is still trying to become more than a PC player.