Users of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud on Tuesday gained easier access to Instagram’s roughly 300 million users thanks to an integration made possible by a new API.Marketers can now use Salesforce’s cloud software to buy and manage Instagram advertising, publish content and offer customer service on the photo and video sharing site, among other capabilities.Making the new integration possible is Instagram’s Ad API, which was originally announced in June. At the time, the site said it would initially open up the application programming interface just to a select group of Facebook marketing partners and agencies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google had its sights fixed firmly on Amazon Thursday as it launched its new, low-cost Nearline cloud storage service out of beta and into general availability.Originally introduced to much fanfare in March, Cloud Storage Nearline now promises 99 percent uptime, on-demand I/O, lifecycle management and a broadly expanded partner ecosystem. Aiming to further sweeten the deal for companies currently using other providers, Google is now offering the service with 100 free petabytes of storage—equivalent to 100 million gigabytes—for new users for up to six months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Audi, BMW and Daimler will jointly purchase Nokia’s Here digital mapping service for roughly $2.7 billion, and they plan to invite other auto makers to take a stake in the company as well, according to reports published on Tuesday.The deal could be signed in the next few days, with an announcement targeted for next week, according to separate reports in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and German publication Manager Magazin. All reports were based on anonymous sources familiar with the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
IBM’s Watson has already proven its mettle in the kitchen and on game shows, but its latest skill set is one that could help us all: making sure our writing conveys what we want it to.Now in experimental mode, Watson Tone Analyzer is a new service that can analyze text for the attitude and tone that underlie it. The tool could help anyone refine an email, marketing message, presentation or blog post before releasing it into the world, IBM said.“To read a message and to judge the tone conveyed in the message comes naturally to humans,” explained Rama Akkiraju, a distinguished engineer and master inventor for IBM Watson User Technologies, in a Thursday blog post announcing the project. “But, at times, the tone may be overlooked, undesired or not conveyed well by the author.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft and FieldOne have been partners for several years already, but on Thursday Microsoft took the relationship a step further and acquired the New Jersey-based provider of field-service software.Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it comes just four months after the two companies signed a global strategic agreement to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM and FieldOne’s Sky platform, which offers features such as automated routing, scheduling and dispatch, work-order management, mobile collaboration and more.Field-service management software is used by companies that need to send workers to customers’ locations to provide on-site support. Typically, it relies heavily upon cloud and mobile technologies, with an increasing use of data science and predictive analytics.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Good programmers are notoriously hard to find, but HackerRank thinks it has the answer. A fresh cash infusion suggests it may be on to something.Employers looking for programming talent begin by sponsoring coding “challenges” on HackerRank’s merit-based hiring platform—contests that force applicants to use the skills the company needs. For example, a company seeking a junior developer might sponsor a challenge from HackerRank’s library that says, “Given a list of points in the 2D plane, sort them in ascending order of their polar angle.” Alternatively, it could create its own and have HackerRank host and score it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security has been an increasingly dominant theme in the enterprise software chorus in recent months, and on Tuesday Salesforce added a new voice to the mix with Shield, a set of platform services designed to help companies build secure apps.Designed as part of the Salesforce1 platform, Shield offers four security-minded components intended to make it easier for companies with regulatory, compliance or governance requirements to build cloud apps with built-in auditing, encryption, archiving and monitoring functions.A platform encryption feature, for instance, means that companies can easily designate sensitive data to be encrypted while preserving key business capabilities and workflow. A health insurance company, say, could manage personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) without compromising its agents’ ability to perform key functions using that data, such as searching claims, determining coverage eligibility and approving payments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There’s no shortage of software vendors paying lip service to data science in this analytics-infused era, but Workday is putting its money where its mouth is.On Tuesday, the company is announcing the launch of Workday Ventures, a new fund it will use to identify, invest in and partner with young startups that apply data-science and machine-learning in the areas of analytics, applications, security and platform technologies.“We believe the last 10 years of enterprise software have been about migration to the cloud,” said Dan Beck, senior vice president of technology products at Workday. “We think the next 10 years is going to be about machine learning and companies making sense of data.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hard on the heels of the publication of the latest Top 500 ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers, IBM and Nvidia on Monday announced they have teamed up to launch two new supercomputer centers of excellence to develop the next generation of contenders.Created as part of IBM’s supercomputing contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, the new centers will be located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and will focus on development of the forthcoming Summit and Sierra supercomputer systems, which are expected to be delivered in 2017. The Summit supercomputer will be housed at Oak Ridge, while the Sierra will be situated at Lawrence Livermore; both are due to become operational in 2018.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Oracle took another step forward in its efforts to bolster its cloud offerings Monday with the launch of two new products designed to help companies conduct their entire order-fulfillment processes in the cloud.Oracle Order Management Cloud and Oracle Global Order Promising Cloud are both extensions of the company’s Supply Chain Management Cloud and aim to provide modern order-management, visibility and fulfillment capabilities.The new Order Management Cloud focuses on order capture and fulfillment with the goal of improving order handling. Among the potential benefits for users are centralized order monitoring and the ability to proactively manage order exceptions. Companies can also define, implement and maintain their own fulfillment policies without the need for technical programming tools, Oracle said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Facebook is building a new data center in Fort Worth, Texas, that will be powered entirely by renewable energy.The company will invest at least US$500 million in the 110-acre site, which is expected to come online late next year.The new location will be the social-networking giant’s fifth such facility, joining existing data centers in Altoona, Iowa; Prineville, Oregon; Forest City, North Carolina; and Luleå, Sweden. It will feature equipment based on the latest in Facebook’s Open Compute Project data-center hardware designs, it said.For sustainability, the Fort Worth data center will be cooled using outdoor air rather than energy-intensive air conditioners, thanks to technology it pioneered in its Oregon location. Those designs are now offered through the Open Compute Project.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s no secret that security has been a tripping point for enterprises considering cloud storage, but OwnCloud on Tuesday took a fresh step toward alleviating such concerns with the addition of a new encryption framework.OwnCloud’s file, sync and share service offers an open-source and self-hosted alternative to platforms such as Box and Dropbox that’s designed specifically to allow companies to retain control of their data.Now, Encryption 2.0 gives users the ability to manage their own encryption keys in their enterprise key store. It also allows them to adopt the encryption standard of their choice and write a server app to meet their company’s unique encryption requirements.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel president Renée James will step down in order to pursue a CEO role at another company, the chip giant announced on Thursday.No successor has been named, but James will remain at Intel through the end of the year to help ease the transition to another executive leader.In the wake of her departure, two groups that were under her purview—Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group and HR—will report to CEO Brian Krzanich instead. The remainder of her direct reports will transition to other internal organizations.James and Krzanich assumed their respective roles in 2013 following the retirement of former CEO Paul Otellini.“When Brian and I were appointed to our current roles, I knew then that being the leader of a company was something that I desired as part of my own leadership journey,” James wrote in a letter to Intel employees. “Now is the right time for me to take that next step.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s become common practice to use virtual private networks for extra privacy and security in this era of mass surveillance, but a study published this week suggests such networks may not be as safe as they’re commonly made out to be.In fact, because of a vulnerability known as IPv6 leakage, many of them can expose user information to prying eyes, according to a paper from researchers at Sapienza University of Rome and Queen Mary University of London.Entitled “A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass: IPv6 Leakage and DNS Hijacking in Commercial VPN clients,” the report describes a study conducted late last year that examined 14 popular commercial VPN providers around the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Scott McNealy is best known for his role as cofounder and long-serving CEO at Sun Microsystems, but some remember him even better for a few choice comments he made about privacy back in 1999.Consumer privacy issues are a “red herring,” McNealy told a group of reporters that year. “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”The statement seemed shocking all those years ago, but its pertinence has only increased over time. Privacy is the hot-button issue in this era of social profiling and mass surveillance, and concern among consumers is growing—with good reason.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Companies large and small are scrambling to keep up with the demands of an increasingly mobile world, and on Thursday Salesforce unveiled a new line of tools that’s designed to help.Salesforce Service for Apps taps the CRM giant’s Service Cloud to let any organization to embed multichannel customer service—including live video chat with a customer-service agent—directly into the mobile apps they offer their customers.Salesforce SOS is the first to arrive in the new line. Similar to the Amazon “Mayday” button, it provides live, personalized and interactive video support, on-screen guided assistance and screen-sharing with an agent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketers now face tougher restrictions on their use of “robocalls” and other automated telemarketing techniques thanks to a new set of declaratory rulings issued by the FCC on Thursday.Although the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 requires prior consent for autodialed, prerecorded or artificial voice calls to wireless and residential wireline numbers, marketers have still been able to exploit numerous loopholes to make questionable calls anyway.Now, in response to thousands of consumer complaints and nearly two dozen petitions, the FCC has affirmed consumers’ rights to control the calls they receive and made it clear that telephone companies can use robocall-blocking technology to help them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Confirming rumors dating back to as early as March, Oracle announced on Thursday it has appointed former Hewlett-Packard executive David Donatelli as executive vice president for converged infrastructure.Donatelli will report directly to Oracle CEO Mark Hurd and will be responsible for infrastructure offerings including the company’s engineered systems, server, storage, networking and tape products. He will also help oversee Oracle hardware products designed for hybrid cloud environments.Donatelli joined HP in 2009 and served as executive vice president and general manager of HP’s Enterprise Group, with responsibility for the enterprise hardware business, including storage, server, networking and converged infrastructure products. He reportedly was considered a contender for HP’s CEO role before the appointment of Meg Whitman.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hard on the heels of the release of a newly updated version of SAP Hana, a security researcher has warned of a potentially serious vulnerability in the in-memory platform.“If an attacker can exploit this vulnerability, he can get access to all encrypted data stored in an SAP Hana database,” said Alexander Polyakov, CTO with ERPScan, which presented the details Thursday at the Black Hat Sessions XIII conference in the Netherlands.Polyakov’s firm specializes in testing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from companies such as Oracle and SAP for security purposes. Last year, it had already found SAP Hana installations to be vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Marketers have long struggled with the challenge of engaging customers across channels, but an updated version of Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud could help.Unveiled on Wednesday, the new software offers several enhancements designed to give companies a single place for planning customer “journeys,” or managing their interactions with a brand across sales, service, marketing and more. It also aims to make it easier for marketers to orchestrate ad targeting across the digital advertising ecosystem.First, Marketing Cloud’s updated Journey Builder tool promises to give marketers the ability to guide customers on journeys across channels and devices and ensure that those customers always get the right message in the right place at the right time. Essentially, it does that by enabling companies to connect every interaction customers have with their brand across every department, making it easier to see and manage the overall picture.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Katherine Noyes