Summer '18 release amplifies business intelligence investments for enterprises with scalable infrastructure, distributed deployments and enhanced data governance

Datawatch Corporation (NASDAQ-CM:DWCH) today announced that Datawatch Swarm, the industry's first enterprise data intelligence platform, is offering corporations new deployment options to fuel their self-service analytics initiatives and capture the full return of their business intelligence investments. The new release aligns directly with enterprises' needs for flexible, scalable and collaborative infrastructure and also provides multi-tenancy and SaaS deployment options for Datawatch partners.

"Datawatch Swarm is designed to empower business analysts, while also meeting the data governance needs of the enterprise's IT department. It fills the void in the corporate data stacks by connecting the IT and data governance tenets to the self-service and predictive analytics needs of business analysts," said Jon Pilkington, chief product officer, Datawatch. "The collaborative nature of the solution and centralized data management platform allow analysts to quickly find, prepare, analyze and visualize the right data for business intelligence and analytical purposes. By creating an enterprise-wide data community, our Swarm customers are achieving true collaboration, agility and expedited outcomes that drive better business decisions and operational processes."

Datawatch Swarm offers a full suite of enterprise features that supports the needs and goals of IT and business intelligence teams of the world's largest corporations. These latest features include:

• Scalable Linux deployments - Offers enterprises cluster load balancing, fault tolerance and configuration management, allowing IT to easily implement Swarm across all departments.
• Kubernetes containerization - Automates the distribution, scaling and management of the Swarm platform for all business users and analysts to ensure proper data governance and sharing of data, models and outcomes in the centralized data management platform.
• Wider integrations and enterprise deployment support- Adds integrations to key enterprise technologies, such as single sign-on, to provide a friction-free, user-friendly experience for employees to encourage data sharing and collaboration.   

The recent Dresner Advisory Services report, "2018 Data Catalog Market Study," which examines current and future use of data catalogs, governance and collaboration, ranked Datawatch as one of the top solutions for market-leading collaboration features with powerful administrative and governance tools that aligns enterprises.

"As our study found, close to half of all analysts are struggling to locate and access data, which greatly impacts their success in deriving business intelligence insights. Additionally, more then 70 percent stated that governing content creation and sharing is critical and leads to greater consistency, accuracy and data management," said Howard Dresner, founder and chief research officer at Dresner Advisory Services.

By combining a centralized data marketplace with data preparation, cataloging and governance features, Datawatch Swarm is the first multi-tenant, cloud-ready enterprise platform that transforms how business analysts interact with and perceive data. The solution amplifies existing investments in business intelligence, data lakes, data warehouses, master data management platforms and catalogs with advanced data preparation and socialization technology to solve analytical challenges. Swarm provides a centralized data management platform offering strong governance for IT teams and collaboration features for business analysts to create, access, validate and share governed, trustworthy datasets, models and outcomes across departments.

Global Shop Solutions, a leading provider of
ERP software for small to medium-size manufacturers, has a long history of listening to its customer base for ideas on new features to improve the software. The company recently continues to improve its listening abilities with the integration of Canny – a software application that lets software companies gather, organize and analyze customer feedback all in one place – into its ERP software. “Since day one, customer feedback has played an integral role in the ongoing development of our manufacturing software,” says Chris Okamuro, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Global Shop Solutions. “However, like most companies, our data gathering relied on human interaction and did not leverage a technology platform or automation. Integrating Canny into our ERP software suite gives our customers a simple, transparent, and responsive mechanism for submitting product enhancement feedback. Formally tracking the data in one place enables us to make better decisions about which new features would benefit large portions of our user base.”

Founded by two former Facebook employees, Canny helps B2B software companies keep track of customer and employee feedback to build better products. Global Shop Solutions chose Canny for several reasons. Their customers can:

• Use Canny without having to log out of their ERP software or bother with different
logins and passwords

• Quickly and easily enter requests for product enhancement into the application

• Search all requests made by other customers.

• Upvote requests that are similar to theirs or meet a specific need

• Comment on other requests, including suggesting other features that would
expand the capabilities of the request

The benefits of using Canny have been so immediate, Global Shop Solutions management is so impressed with the results they are already building the application into their next system version upgrade. “Canny is doing exactly what we wanted it to do, which is give us a better idea of what will be useful to our customer base as a whole,” adds Okamuro. “It also promotes more of a feeling of community within our customer base, which we actively strive to nurture. Not only can our customers see the kinds of challenges their peers are dealing with, they can also contribute ideas for possible solutions, which helps everyone.”

 Top Image Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ: TISA), a global innovator of intelligent content processing solutions, today announces the appointment of Mr. John London as Interim Chief Financial Officer. Mr. London will be responsible for global finance efforts and will be based in the Company’s Plano, Texas, office.

Brendan Reidy, CEO of Top Image Systems, commented, “John has over 30 years of finance and accounting experience, including at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), and Xerox Business Services, following its $6.4 billion acquisition of ACS. He has in-depth experience in technology, software, and services. His roles have been both strategic and operational in nature, with a heavy emphasis on growth activities. I’m pleased to welcome John to the team.”

Prior to joining Top Image Systems, Mr. London was CFO of Magna5, a communications services business, including voice, data, cloud, and managed solutions. Before that, he was EVP, Finance & Accounting, CFO, and Operations for Xerox Business Services. At Xerox, Mr. London completed the integration and transition actions resulting from the 2010 acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS). He also directed finance, accounting, budgeting, forecasting, and modeling responsibilities for its $7 billion services business.

Prior to Xerox, Mr. London was CFO of Zenta, where he helped create a business process optimization (BPO) platform that was later sold to Accenture and used for their expansion into the Mortgage Services vertical. Earlier in his career, Mr. London was with PricewaterhouseCoopers for 11 years, where his practice experience included a variety of industries, for both public and private companies. Mr. London received a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in Accounting from Texas A&M University, where he was also a member of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets; Ross Volunteers – Texas Governor’s Honor Guard.
Top Image Systems today also announces that Patti Barton will be leaving her position as Acting Chief Financial Officer of Top Image Systems in mid-August.

Mr. Reidy stated: “For the past three and a half years, Patti has served Top Image Systems well as the Controller of the Americas, VP of Global Finance, and most recently as Acting Chief Financial Officer. I want to thank Patti for her dedication and tireless efforts in working with me and in managing the Company’s business and finance requirements, and for her great contribution to Top Image Systems.”

Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a fully owned subsidiary of Infosys (NYSE: INFY), today announced that it has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Global Retail Core Banking¹. Gartner evaluated 10 Core Banking solution vendors on 15 criteria spread across ‘Ability to execute’ and ‘Completeness of vision’.

EdgeVerve Systems has been recognized as a Leader by Gartner for the 11th consecutive year.

According to Gartner, “Core banking market demand is surging to support digital banking transformation, with an increased focus on commercial off-the-shelf packages and public cloud.” It goes on to say, ”The definition of a CBS hasn't changed significantly over the years. However, a number of leading vendors are making progress in some aspects of the ways core banking functionality is delivered, leading to critical competitive differentiators among their offerings. These advancements include the migration to component-based systems, the embryonic use of microservices, and the use of cloud computing, embedded analytics and artificial intelligence (AI). Moreover, the shift to open banking platforms integrates all of the stakeholders in a bank's value chain: financial technologies (fintechs), technology partners, bank employees, customers, regulatory authorities and other banks.”

Gartner also notes in the report that, “The number of net-new deals for core banking replacement increased during the past year, expanding across all banking tiers and geographies. Based on client inquiries, face-to-face interactions and surveys, Gartner has identified a growing demand for core banking renewal, driven mainly by digital banking initiatives for which legacy systems are proving to be inadequate.”

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Global Retail Core Banking report can be accessed here.

Vittorio D'Orazio, Gartner Research Director, mentions in the report, “EdgeVerve Systems excels in collecting, understanding and analyzing market conditions and trends, and in translating this analysis into its strategy for hiring and training resources to bring on to CBS projects. This enables Finacle to be a forerunner in delivering the latest innovations to its clients (for example, open banking, blockchain and India's Unified Payments Interface [UPI]). According to surveyed users, key factors for choosing this product include (in this order): product functionality and performance, strong services expertise and product roadmap and future vision."

Sanat Rao, Chief Business Officer and Global Head, Infosys Finacle said, “To achieve digital transformation objectives, banks need to be digital inside-out. Banks with legacy core systems will increasingly struggle to keep up with the pace of innovation and emerging expectations around cloud, open banking, AI and insights driven customer engagements. Our componentized Finacle solution offers a risk-mitigated approach for progressive transformation. We believe our foremost position across both the axis of Gartner’s evaluation underlines our ability to offer the industry-leading core banking solution to banks looking at true digital transformation.”

• M-Files will use the financing for international growth, partner channel expansion and accelerating R&D in Europe
• The company will expand its offices in UK, Germany, France, Australia and the US, and increase investment in its intelligent information management platform
• Loan backed under European Fund for Strategic Investments, part of successful Juncker Plan

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 27 million financing agreement with software company M-Files from Tampere, Finland. The loan was made possible by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI),central pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe, which was launched by the EIB Group and the European Commission to boost the competitiveness of the European economy. This operation is the EIB’s largest commitment in the Finnish IT sector for years. With these funds, the rapidly growing company aims to revolutionise the way organisations manage and use information, making it more intelligent, intuitive and compliant.

EIB Vice-President Alexander Stubb, responsible for lending in Northern Europe, said: “The amount of data that organisations have to deal with on a daily basis has been exploding for quite some time now, and the systems used to manage and process that data have not always kept up. M-Files already has an excellent position in the market, but we believe that it has the potential to fundamentally change how businesses leverage information in the future and, in the process, get much bigger. We’re happy to support that.”

M-Files CEO Miika Mäkitalo, added: “To compete and succeed in the future requires a new way of thinking; the old approach of storing everything in one central system no longer works. M-Files takes an entirely different approach, applying artificial intelligence to organise data based on what it is and what it's related to, regardless of where it's stored. This unifies information across the organisation, putting it in context, so it's instantly available when it's needed. It's dynamic and personalised, whereas the old way is static, top-down and based on a one-size-fits-all approach. We call this intelligent information management, and it's going to change the way the world manages information."

European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, responsible for jobs, growth, investment and competitiveness, said: "I am pleased that the European Fund for Strategic Investments is supporting M‑Files' international growth and R&D activities. M-Files is a great example of the sort of innovative, fast-growing company that we want to enable in Europe, and this agreement should provide inspiration to other companies working in the digital and artificial intelligence sectors. It's also gratifying that this investment is directly supporting the creation of numerous jobs: a core objective of the Investment Plan."

M-Files’ customer base includes both small-to-midsize businesses and large enterprises in a variety of industries and markets, including manufacturing, professional services, finance, engineering, construction, energy and life sciences. Recent research[1]shows growing demand for new approaches to information management, with the Content Services Platforms market growing by almost 12% in the last year. Over the same period, M-Files grew by almost 40%, reflecting a rapid expansion of its market share in an already competitive and expanding market. The EIB financing will not only allow M-Files to better serve its customer base, but also allow it to accelerate its already fast growth, creating new specialised jobs in Europe and beyond.

Comviva, the global leader in mobility solutions, is pleased to announce that Nuria Oliver has joined its advisory board. Nuria is director of research in data science at Vodafone, chief data scientist at Data-Pop Alliance and chief scientific advisor for the Vodafone Institute.

Nuria will assist Comviva with achieving its current vision and capitalizing on future growth opportunities. She will work with the Comviva leadership team, providing strategic recommendations on the company’s existing portfolio and new initiatives. She will also provide her expertise on strategic alliances and investments.

She brings to the table over 20 years of research experience in the areas of human behavior modeling and prediction from data and human-computer interaction. She holds a PhD in perceptual intelligence from MIT and has worked at Microsoft Research and as the first female scientific director at Telefónica R&D. Her work is well known, with over 150 scientific publications that have received ~ 14000 citations. She is the co-inventor of 40 filed patents and a regular keynote speaker at international conferences.

Manoranjan Mohapatra, chief executive officer, Comviva said, “We are proud to be adding someone of Nuria Oliver’s caliber to our advisory board.  We have had numerous discussions with regard to our lines of business, and felt she was the perfect fit for our organization. We look to leverage her vast experience as we continue our journey into an innovations led, data centered and customer centric organization.” 

Nuria Oliver stated, “I am excited to be a part of Comviva’s advisory board. My decision was shaped upon reviewing the amount and consistency of projects undertaken in the past and exploring the future with the leadership team. The excellent level of communication built a frame of mutual appreciation and trust that secured my decision to join Comviva’s advisory board of Comviva.” 

Comviva’s advisory board will include advisors with a range of experience and expertise from a range of industries. Among other matters, the board will provide counsel to the leadership team as Comviva looks to scale and expand its business globally.   

A fully functioning version of Exscudo exchange has been launched to bring possibly the fastest and easiest trading to the world. The exchange is working in an ecosystem with the mobile wallet and encrypted messenger app called “Channels”. Both of these products are based on the in-house blockchain of Exscudo – EON, ensuring the safety of funds. The exchange is designed to combine the benefits of decentralized and centralized technology to couple high speed of operation, scalability, and security.

At the moment Exscudo exchange allows making deposits in five different currencies:  EON, BTC, BСH, ETC, and ETH but in the team plans to add support of over 50 different currencies. It is possible to track quotations of chosen currency pairs, 24 hours trading volume and price change. The exchange allows making orders in two tabs, on either EON or BTC markets allowing to follow the best buying price for specific currency and to see the maximum amount of funds to be purchased. Exchange supports easy withdrawal to the Exscudo Channels wallet App or any other wallet of choice. KYC information and personal identity is verified with Google 2FA on a mobile device to protect the funds further.

The problem of most centralized exchanges is that the deposits are stored in a single centralized database, creating a singular point of entry that can be exploited by hackers. The centralized approach is the most popular on the market, even though it prioritizes speed of operation over the safety of funds. Exscudo exchange combines the best of both worlds by storing deposits directly in user’s wallets, that are connected to the exchange through the EON blockchain. Therefore, the exchange merely plays a role of an escrow agent, signing transactions and ensuring safety. This approach guarantees that Exscudo deposit system brings the maximum protection, ease, and effectiveness to trading.

Possibly the main advantage of Exscudo is its backend. The Exscudo team will release an open API that will allow users to connect their trading bots and connect to the exchange with desktop software and trading terminals in the near future. According to the developers, once all infrastructure goes live, Exscudo will be able to operate as productive as NASDAQ trading platform. Thanks to the API of Exscudo, the exchange will allow connecting other products of Exscudo ecosystem directly. For example, Exscudo merchant will enable businesses to receive automatically converted cryptocurrency payments to their bank accounts in a matter of seconds.

Exscudo team makes an effort to redesign the way exchanges work to achieve a site of strategic goals, rather than release another ordinary product.  Whereas some aspects of the Exscudo Exchange that make it unique are not fully released, it will be exciting to revisit the project in the next months, when other platforms of the ecosystem will go live.

Avaloq, the leading global provider of software as a service (SaaS) and business process as a service (BPaaS) solutions to banks and wealth managers, has been recognised as an industry Leader by Gartner in its June 2018 Magic Quadrant for Global Retail Core Banking report. 

The annual Magic Quadrant report from IT research firm Gartner evaluates core banking vendors against a range of factors such as their ability to execute, viability and completeness of vision. Each vendor is asked to demonstrate market traction and momentum, as well as breadth of product capabilities in retail core banking.

According to Gartner, “Leaders in the global retail core banking market tend to possess a high-order market understanding. They make it their business to monitor market trends and funnel progressive innovation into their product roadmaps. Most of them possess software development quality certifications (such as Capability Maturity Model Integration [CMMI]) or are pursuing them. The Leaders are also, without exception, "thinking small" or targeting component-based architecture as a gateway to providing increased accessibility to the granular functionality that banks need to drive the basis for differentiation. Leaders have high viability and great customer feedback. They also focus on innovation – and the innovation trends that affect this particular market. They especially focus on trends with visionary capability in managing the ecosystem for open banking platforms by fostering open banking with their products and services and in a collaborative environment with partners.” 

Juerg Hunziker, Avaloq’s Group CEO, said: “As a whole, Avaloq spends 1.5 million hours a year on innovation and making sure that we – and our customers – are at the forefront of the technological changes driving the financial services sector. We are proud to be named by Gartner as a Leader in the global retail core banking space. We believe placement in the Leaders quadrant validates Avaloq’s focus on providing our customers with the latest, most flexible solutions, particularly the significant benefits that automation delivers in terms of costs, efficiencies, compliance and operational excellence.”

The Avaloq Banking Suite and related Software as a Service and Business Process as a Service solutions span digital front-to-back technology, application management, IT infrastructure and operational solutions. Avaloq provides a centralized and agile operating model which brings significantly greater efficiencies and enhanced scalability to financial institutions and allows them to better accommodate and benefit from state-of-the-art processes and innovations.

More than 1,300 third-party developers have signed up to Avaloq’s co-innovation portal; in addition, over 90 fintech solutions now form part of the Avaloq Software Exchange platform, boosting Avaloq’s unique global ecosystem. In the second half of 2018, Avaloq is forecasting it will launch in excess of 150 API endpoints – an indication of the importance the firm places on developing the wider Avaloq ecosystem and its focus on innovation.

Juerg Hunziker, Avaloq’s Group CEO, added: “We believe that Avaloq is offering a truly market-leading product and service proposition for the banking industry by capitalizing on the powerful benefits and efficiencies that technology and digital processes offer, and we feel this assessment from Gartner is a tangible proof of what we have achieved and our ambition for the future. The on-going implementation of Avaloq at Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank in Germany as well as our long-standing, highly successful relationship with the Swiss cantonal banks confirm our strong capabilities in retail and universal banking, and we will build on this momentum across 2018 and beyond as we continue to lead the sector.”