NRT Technology Corp. ("NRT") a leading provider of integrated ticket redemption and payment services to global casino operators, and Sightline Payments ("Sightline"), developers of the disruptive Play+ platform that's powering the next generation of cashless and mobile gaming payment solutions, announced today an agreement to merge.  The company on closing will be named NRT Sightline and will form one of the largest pure play gaming payment technology companies in the world with an equity value of over $300 million.

Following the closing of the transaction and subject to regulatory approvals, Sightline's CEO and Founder, Kirk Sanford, will assume the role of President and CEO of NRT Sightline.  NRT's current Founder, President and CEO, John Dominelli, will become Chairman of NRT Sightline and will remain active in leading the overall company strategy with a keen focus on driving the technology roadmap.

"Sightline is a perfect fit with NRT," said NRT President and Founder John Dominelli. "Kirk Sanford and his team add complementary talent and technology that we believe will help accelerate NRT's global leadership in casino payments. Together, we expect that NRT and Sightline also will accelerate our leadership in delivering innovative solutions for next generation commerce, mobile, and big data."

Sightline's cloud-based Play+ payment platform powers industry innovators such as Caesars, MGM Resorts International, Mohegan Sun, Station Casinos, Golden Nugget, William Hill, PokerStars and BetFair, which are creating compelling new consumer experiences and disrupting traditional cash-based ecosystem models.

Sightline's Founder and CEO Kirk Sanford said: "Sightline's growth has skyrocketed over the past several years and the alignment with NRT will continue to push the boundaries of innovation while expanding its customer base with increased speed and support from the extensive resources of the NRT infrastructure.  John and I have a shared vision for the global gaming industry, which we intend to rapidly transform with many technological advancements that we already have in the works."

Play+, Sightline's award winning technology gives patrons a convenient and cost effective alternative to obtaining cash from current methods by allowing them to pay for their gaming experience using only their mobile devices or directly at gaming devices and POS using only their casino loyalty card.  NRT already has a strong presence in gaming with payment volumes of more than $15 billion a year.

Aryaka®, the leading global SD-WAN provider, and 8x8, Inc, the world's first Communications Cloud provider, today announced that they are entering a strategic partnership that will improve the performance and reliability of business-critical cloud unified communications. This will enable global mid-market and enterprise companies to enhance business communications, collaboration and customer engagement for their employees, customers and partners around the world.

Through this partnership, Aryaka's global SD-WAN solution will provide enterprise-grade private connectivity to further enhance the superior voice and video quality delivered by the 8x8 Communications Cloud(TM). When tested against several leading Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) providers, 8x8 was recently found by the Tolly Group to deliver the highest voice quality across multiple client platforms and network impairment conditions.  8x8 was also recently named a Leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide1 for the sixth year in a row. 

When 8x8 and Aryaka are deployed together, enterprise voice and video traffic is routed through Aryaka's global private network instead of over the public Internet, thereby minimizing latencies, packet loss and jitter.  As a result, organizations will benefit from increased employee productivity by reducing service interruptions and dropped calls.

"Our partnership with 8x8 enables enterprises to significantly enhance the performance of their voice and video communications globally regardless of changing network conditions," said Shawn Farshchi, President and CEO of Aryaka. "This improves business execution and delivers the stable and high-quality experiences that employees, partners, and customers demand from communications, collaboration and customer engagement operations."

"8x8 is committed to providing mid-market and enterprise companies with the highest levels of quality and reliability for cloud communications, collaboration and contact center services while simplifying service deployment and reducing costs," said Mehdi Salour, Senior Vice President of Global Network and DevOps at 8x8. "The Aryaka partnership will enable us to further improve quality of service for voice, video and web conferencing, delivering a superior end-user experience for employees, partners and customers around the world, even in the face of adverse customer network conditions."

Platform Specialty Products (PSP), a global, diversified producer of high technology specialty chemical products, has deployed 8x8-over-Aryaka to improve its UCaaS operations and provide high-quality communications and collaboration to its employees.

"Prior to deploying 8x8 and Aryaka, our remote locations were experiencing WAN performance issues, which resulted in dropped calls when attempting to connect to other offices around the world," said Dustin Collins, Vice President of Global Infrastructure Services at PSP. "Post deployment, not only do we no longer drop calls, but voice quality has improved immensely. Our team is more productive as a result. With such a noticeable improvement in network and communications quality, we're looking to implement the solution in several locations in Latin America and Asia."

The 8x8 Communications Cloud combines unified communications (8x8 Virtual Office), team collaboration interoperability (8x8 Sameroom(TM)), contact center (8x8 Virtual Contact Center and 8x8 ContactNow(TM)) and real-time analytics in a single open platform that integrates across clouds, applications and devices, eliminating information silos to expose vital, real-time intelligence.

K2 today announced the availability of its new low-code process automation platform - furthering innovation in the way organizations drive digital efficiencies. With a new managed cloud service, K2 Cloud, new on-premises version, K2 Five, and completely redesigned user interfaces and experiences, the platform helps businesses of all types around the globe rapidly deliver powerful process automation and realize business productivity gains.

Automating business processes across an enterprise is crucial to the success of companies in the era of digital transformation. However, many initiatives are impacted by a lack of sufficient resources and the use of inefficient systems to manage processes. K2's low-code process automation platform solves these problems by enabling organizations to automate in every area of the business without needing to hire highly skilled developers or spend inordinate amounts of time on repetitive coding. With intuitive and powerful tools, organizations can rapidly deliver mission-critical applications as well as fast-changing, lightweight departmental processes, all with a single platform.

"From the inception, K2 has always been focused on making process automation easier as we recognized over 15 years ago that building these solutions and solving these problems was too hard and complex for many organizations. This left many organizations ignoring this initiative and subsequently putting their businesses at risk of becoming obsolete," said Adriaan van Wyk, CEO of K2. "The same is still generally true, ordinarily solving these problems is still hard for many businesses, but the pressure to transform has multiplied. That's what makes K2 even more necessary today than it already was years ago, so that every organization can automate every business process on our platform and digitally transform their business."

Process automation platforms have several interconnected components and features that define its usability and feasibility, hence why K2 built a comprehensive, end-to-end platform around eight core tenets that when all combined make it possible for any organization to automate their processes with K2:

• Workflows: Customers can use visual, intuitive process and rules designers on top of an engine that is built to deliver scalable workflows.
• Forms: Visually design powerful user experiences using forms that connect to workflows and line-of-business data. Components are reusable to drive speed and scale as well as consistency.
• Integration: Point-and-click integration with virtually any line-of-business system.
• Analytics: Rich reports and visual analytics deliver the information needed to identify issues and drive optimization.
• Mobile: Responsive user experience that works on all major devices, whether on or offline.
• Security and Governance: Comprehensive, role-based management tools that provide security and governance on all aspects of the platform.
• Deployment: The platform is flexible and can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises.
• Pre-built Apps: Customers can choose from many customizable pre-built processes or use the K2 App Wizard to quickly create a new process in a few steps.

Several existing K2 tools and features have been significantly updated with the release of the new platform, while completely new functionality has also been added. Some of these include:

• New Workflow Designer: A re-envisioned approach to how workflow solutions are built with a designer that has been re-engineered from the ground up using modern HTML5 technologies. Designing workflows is accelerated rapidly with Smart Assist, which guides developers on logical steps in the workflow and surfaces relevant data throughout the design experience.
• App Wizard: Empowers citizen developers to build and deploy process apps in just a few steps, without having to code or design anything. These apps can later be extended using more advanced tools.
• Workspace: A completely redesigned K2 Workspace experience, which provides a single centralized location for all K2 tasks and process applications.

At launch, K2 Cloud and K2 Five will have feature parity. However, the company will rapidly iterate on K2 Cloud with feature and functionality shipments every six weeks in order to innovate rapidly for customers. New K2 Five versions will be released annually to bring already released cloud features to customers that are deployed on-premises or in hosted environments. The two products will be available for use in the coming weeks.

"To enable enterprise-level process automation that supports robust mission-critical applications as well as fast-changing, lightweight departmental processes, we developed a platform that provides businesses a unique ability to build simpler applications quickly and more complex applications and processes that scale an entire enterprise," said Olaf Wagner, co-founder and senior vice president of engineering and product at K2. "Further, our new K2 Cloud platform, based on our more than two-years of cloud experience managing K2 Appit for SharePoint, will enable our customers to take advantage of innovative functionality that we have and will continue to bring to light along the lines of voice-enabled apps, artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things, bots, and much more."

To learn more about the platform and specific information on K2 Cloud and K2 Five, as well as all of the new features and functionality, please visit K2.com. The company will also be showcasing this new technology at Microsoft Ignite, September 25-29, in Orlando; as well as in eight cities around the world during the recently announced K2 Velocity Global Tour.

CoInvestor, the alternative assets platform, has partnered with five major fund managers in the run-up to the height of the tax season.  

Albion Capital, Amati Global Investors, Blackfinch Investments, Stellar Asset Management and Unicorn Asset Management have chosen to partner with CoInvestor to access the growing number of advisory firms allocating to alternative assets via the platform. This announcement comes amid increasing demand from financial advisers for a more simplified application process into tax-efficient funds.

CoInvestor is bringing alternative assets into the mainstream with its ability to remove paperwork and allow advisers to allocate online. By applying digitally, advisers benefit from improved investor reporting and the ability to see their clients’ full range of tax-efficient investments, all in one place, with unprecedented standardised performance information.

Sam Plumptre, Chief Executive of CoInvestor, said: “The support from the fund managers for what we are doing at CoInvestor is fantastic. Our streamlined online applications, back office integrations and enriched client reporting enable industry-leading straight-through processing, designed to save managers and advisers a significant amount of time.”

“By working with these leading managers we are providing advisers and investors better access, more choice and improving transparency across a historically opaque asset class.”

Doug Lawson, Co-founder of Amati Global Investors, said: “In order to remain at the forefront of the sector we have chosen to work with CoInvestor, as investors and advisers increasingly seek to transact online.”  

CoInvestor has enjoyed strong growth in the third quarter following the launch of its white label adviser proposition in June 2017. An increasing number of financial advisory firms have adopted the technology to streamline their business processes, increase internal efficiencies and enhance compliance and risk control.  

Asure Software,, a leading provider in human capital management and workspace management software, will be sponsoring Quora Consulting's Smartworking Summit in central London, September 28th 2017. These summits have continued to lead in addressing work space issues, such as occupancy, utilization, and productivity in the workforce. 

Dominic Jackson, Asure Sales Director of EMEA commented, "It is workplace issues like productivity that have driven thought leadership here at Asure." He continued "Utilization of workspace solutions help you recruit and retain the best talent, improve employee productivity, streamline operations, and realize a significant ROI on your most valuable assets - people, space and technology. We are thrilled to be not only part of the discussion, but part of the solution." 

Quora Consulting is noted for staging three Smartworking Summits a year.  You get to share experiences with seasoned main board executives - CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs, CHROs, and Group Property/FM Directors in a PowerPoint-free environment with about 250 c-suite and senior level executives, openly discussing how they are addressing the changing nature of work. This dynamic environment allows you to engage with your peers in an informal and collegial setting. 

Dominic Jackson will host a round table discussion titled 'Workplace technologies - an enabler for change?' at Quora Consulting's Smartworking Summit on the 28th of September. The inclusive format draws on the collective experience of all present to offer deeper dives into the issues challenging all organisations.  Asure is committed to developing a network of best-in-class partners stationed at the forefront of the changes that are happening in the workplace. This only furthers our growing position as an industry leader.

Governor Software Ltd, today announced its partnership with Neo4j, the #1 Graph Platform. The partnership will see Neo4j provide its proven enterprise graph database to Governor’s regulatory oversight proposition which supports financial institutions communicate obligations, understand risk status and prove compliance. 

Governor Software was founded on the principle of making risk and compliance programmes accessible, consumable and actionable for senior leaders within large enterprise organisations.

“Complex and unstructured data based on a firm’s risk appetite needs to be connected and presented in context in order for senior leaders to make informed decisions,” commented Richard Pike, Founder and CEO, Governor Software. “We are delighted to partner with Neo4j, an innovative leader in native graph databases, as we strive to provide an agile, scalable and secure environment to our clients.”

As a native graph database, Neo4j is specifically optimized to store and traverse multiple graphs of connected data. By intuitively mapping data points and the connections between them, Neo4j powers intelligent, real-time applications that tackle enterprise challenges in today’s big data environment.

“Neo4j enables organizations to unlock the business value of connections in data: through new applications that can adapt to changing business needs, and by enabling existing applications to scale with the business,” added Rik Van Bruggen, VP of Sales – Northern Europe, Neo4j. “We are excited to be partnering with Governor Software as it will expand our presence in the financial services sector with a compelling risk and compliance use case.”

Core banking provider Ohpen has announced its acquisition of FYNN Advice, an implementation consulting company that advises financial institutions on the implementation of core banking systems. Their consultants will now be part of Ohpen’s implementation department, a move that will strengthen Ohpen’s international growth capacity.

Pieter Aartsen and Rogier van Arkel, Managing Partners at FYNN Advice, will remain at Ohpen after the acquisition. Pieter Aartsen will join the Ohpen board. He will be responsible for activities in the Dutch market. Rogier van Arkel will become Chief Delivery Officer.

Ohpen founder and CEO, Chris Zadeh: “We are very enthusiastic about this acquisition. We know the team at FYNN Advice very well, and have the same DNA. This has been the basis of our collaboration. Both our teams want to exceed customer expectations. Our people define our business, having the same core values was an essential driver for this acquisition.”

Pieter Aartsen: “Bringing our team’s expertise to Ohpen is a great step. We have extensive knowledge of the financial services industry and the core banking systems in use. Couple this knowledge with Ohpen’s unique platform and you get a very special collaboration. I am thrilled to be part of it.”

NTT Security Corporation (Head Office: Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo; CEO: Jun Sawada), the specialized security company of NTT Group, has launched "IT/OT Integrated Security Services". The new services will be taken to market globally through the NTT Group companies, Dimension Data, NTT Communications and NTT DATA, forming part of its suite of integrated services to enable successful digital transformation initiatives for its clients.

Companies are increasingly working towards IT/OT (Operational Technology) alignment. OT systems, when connected to the internet, streamline business operations by advanced supply chain management, realization of mass customization and improvement of customer experience as well as find new intelligence employing IoT (the Internet of Things) and Big Data analytics. As a result, IT/OT convergence is exposing everything, including critical infrastructure (such as electricity, gas, water) and industrial control systems (such as factories, transportation, and logistics), to traditional and OT threats. Meanwhile, cyberattacks and cybersecurity incidents on these infrastructures are also increasing, which spans ransomware infections like WannaCry(1) to cyberweapon strikes like Stuxnet(2) and CrashOverride(3).

Jun Sawada, CEO at NTT Security says: "In the era of IoT, cybersecurity incidents can cause huge impact and damage on enterprise business operations and society. Therefore, in addition to conventional cybersecurity measures to protect information assets, OT Security measures to protect critical assets and ensure business continuity must also be considered as part of a continuous approach to cybersecurity and risk management."

NTT Security provides "IT/OT Integrated Security Services" based on its strength in Global Threat Intelligence and Cyber Threat Advanced Analytics accumulated through global operations.

"IT/OT Integrated Security Services" are delivered via a combination of both Consulting Services (CS) and Managed Security Services (MSS). Consulting Services (CS) visualize components and potential risks of an industrial control system, and provides effective and efficient security measures. Managed Security Service (MSS) provides proactive defense for industrial control system by continuously monitoring, detecting and blocking a cyberattack.

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Paul Thomalla, senior vice president, Corporate Relations & Development, has been appointed to Ecommerce Europe’s Payments Experts Taskforce, which supports the development of online payments strategies.

The Payments Experts Taskforce was launched by Ecommerce Europe to assess opportunities and challenges in eCommerce arising from the changing dynamics of the fintech sector. The taskforce will assist Ecommerce Europe, which represents more than 35,000 online retailers across Europe, in developing comprehensive financial and digital strategies. It will also advise national associations and the e-Payments Working Committee on technical issues and market trends, and establish technical links to the Euro Retail Payments Board (ERPB) and other stakeholder groups.

ACI Worldwide serves payment providers and retailers throughout Europe with its UP eCommerce Payments solution, combining extensive global reach through a network of more than 350 card acquirers and alternative payment methods with integrated real-time fraud management. ACI’s leading role in eCommerce payments is affirmed through recent industry recognition, including MPE Awards 2017 (International Award), PayFORUM 2017 (Cross-border Payments), and FStech Payments Awards 2016 (Best Online Payments Solution).

“Major changes like PSD2’s Regulatory Technical Standards for Secure Customer Authentication, implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the use of electronic identification and trust services will present significant challenges for the online retail sector,” said Paul Thomalla. “It is an honor to be invited to join the Ecommerce Europe Payments Experts Taskforce, but more importantly, to have the opportunity to shape strategies that will help the sector successfully navigate current and future changes.”

“The rapid adoption of digital payments methods across both physical and online retail is driving improved operational efficiencies, better liquidity management, and improved customer satisfaction,” added Marlene ten Ham, Secretary General of Ecommerce Europe. “The expertise and experience of senior payments industry executives such as Mr. Thomalla will be instrumental in helping Ecommerce Europe and its members strike the right balance between customer convenience, technological neutrality and payment security.”

ACI Worldwide has also been at the forefront of championing the nexo standards, which aim to remove barriers that exist due to individual country protocols for card payment acceptance, and advance universal payments interoperability standards. Paul Thomalla joined the nexo executive board in June 2016 to support the adoption of these standards by retailers and organizations throughout Europe and globally.