BUSINESS STRATEGY
PR Newswire | October 27, 2023
Incline Equity Partners, a leading private equity firm dedicated to investing across the middle market, is pleased to announce its partnership with White Label Communications ("WLC" or the "Company"), a provider of private label communication solutions to Managed Service Providers ("MSPs").
Based in Pittsburgh, PA, WLC offers Atlas, a proprietary technology platform that enables MSPs to provide solutions to their customers via core operations such as sales, finance and reporting. Atlas also allows MSPs to deploy private-labeled customer communication tools such as VoIP, video conferencing, SMS and chat to their clients, typically small and medium-sized businesses ("SMBs").
"White Label Communications was founded in 2011 to create a simple solution for private label unified communications," said Tom Joseph, Founder and CEO of WLC. "Our partnership with Incline will provide continued investment and expertise to advance our technology platform, further enabling our MSP partners to grow their businesses."
"We are excited to support Tom and the WLC team who have built a differentiated and diversified platform," said Victor Martinelli, Managing Director at Incline. "To broaden the Company's private label solutions set, we plan to add complementary products through strategic acquisitions. The goal is to position our MSP partners to be full-service providers capable of delivering a complete set of essential solutions for their SMB customers."
About Incline Equity Partners
Incline Equity Partners is a leading private equity firm dedicated to investing across the middle market in distribution, business services and manufacturing companies. Incline is generally seeking growing companies with enterprise values of $25 – $750 million. Incline's typical investment types are ownership transitions for privately held businesses, buyouts and corporate divestitures within the U.S. and Canada.
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MANAGEMENT
Business Wire | September 27, 2023
DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., the cloud for startups and SMBs, today announced the launch of DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, a new, fully managed data streaming platform as a service offering for Apache Kafka. DigitalOcean Managed Kafka helps small and medium-sized businesses across industries, including video streaming, the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, gaming, and eCommerce, access and process data streams in real time while eliminating the complexity associated with the Kafka administration. Through this offering and other enhancements across DigitalOcean’s portfolio, startups and tech entrepreneurs can more easily grow their businesses in the cloud.
“While Kafka is the gold standard for data streaming, it frequently presents technical challenges for smaller businesses with budget and resource limitations. We are excited to introduce a solution that makes this technology more accessible and meets DigitalOcean’s standard for simplicity,” said Megan Wood, Chief Strategy & Product Officer at DigitalOcean. “By reducing the burden of implementing a new platform, companies can shift their focus away from the complexity of managing their data streaming services and get back to building apps that differentiate their business.”
As businesses receive higher amounts of data inputs, the ability to rapidly capture and process this data becomes crucial. Thousands of companies, including over 80% of Fortune 100 companies, rely on Kafka to optimize their data streams and provide leaders with insights that inform decision-making. With DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, startups and SMBs can benefit from the ability to scale up and down clusters with ease while setting up alerts for proactive maintenance. Additionally, DigitalOcean customers can expect end-to-end security via private networking and data encryption along with cost-effective, predictable pricing starting at $147 for a three-node cluster.
“DigitalOcean's Managed Kafka offering has been a game-changer for us at Datacake,” said Lukas Klein, Chief Technical Officer at Datacake. “By taking care of the operational aspects of running our Kafka cluster, we have been able to focus our attention on what really matters – building a great product. With this new service, we were able to migrate seamlessly to an event-based architecture while maintaining the highest levels of operational security.”
Alongside DigitalOcean Managed Kafka, DigitalOcean has been making investments in its product and infrastructure offerings to provide peace of mind, increased productivity, and more affordable solutions to SMBs and startups. Some of those recent updates include:
GPUs with the acquisition of Paperspace-The computing power needed for training AI models and deploying at scale
Premium CPU-Optimized Droplets-Higher outbound network speeds, higher performance, and faster disk writes than standard Droplets
Enhanced memory and storage for Basic Premium Droplets-More flexibility with a wider choice of virtual machines
Low-cost support plans for every size of business-Eight-hour response times for all issues, regardless of severity
Object Storage in the Bangalore data center-Increased performance with compute and storage in one location
In addition, over the coming quarters, DigitalOcean will unveil the following enhancements and capabilities to continue to make DigitalOcean the cloud of choice for SMBs and startups:
More flexible storage offerings -Effortlessly accommodate dynamic storage requirements with Scalable Storage for Managed Databases, a cost-effective solution that helps businesses expand their data footprints with confidence
Faster, frequent, and comprehensive Backups -Ability to create daily Droplet backups that are differential, significantly reducing the time required to create them
Better performance for a range of products -Extending the premium variant to the General Purpose line of Droplets, providing newer generation CPUs, faster NVME drives, and up to 10 Gbps of outbound data transfer speeds making them ideal for running e-commerce, consumer, and SaaS apps
About DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean simplifies cloud computing so builders and businesses can spend more time creating software that changes the world. With its mission-critical infrastructure and fully managed offerings, DigitalOcean helps developers at startups and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rapidly build, deploy and scale, whether creating a digital presence or building digital products. DigitalOcean combines the power of simplicity, security, community and customer support so customers can spend less time managing their infrastructure and more time building innovative applications that drive business growth.
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TECHNOLOGY
Cloudinary | September 22, 2023
Cloudinary, a renowned image and video platform, has recently unveiled an addition to its asset management suite with the launch of Cloudinary Nexus. This digital asset management (DAM) solution is explicitly tailored to meet the needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Available immediately, Cloudinary Nexus offers both free and premium options. This AI-powered solution empowers SMBs and teams with enterprise-grade capabilities, making it effortless for them to connect, explore, and optimize their digital assets, all while streamlining their branding efforts with minimal time and complexity.
Drawing upon the strengths of Cloudinary's acclaimed DAM solution designed for enterprise clientele, known as Cloudinary Assets, Nexus equips smaller brands with the ability to automate essential yet time-consuming tasks associated with asset management. Nexus incorporates advanced AI functionalities and automation to handle tasks like metadata tagging and file format and size optimization. This ensures that teams can dedicate more of their time to more rewarding and high-impact activities. Nexus places significant emphasis on user-friendliness and accessibility, making it a valuable asset for a wide range of teams and individuals.
With features such as generative AI, Studio, collections, smart search, and auto-tagging, Nexus equips users with all the tools necessary to unlock the full potential of their images and videos. It enables users to:
Instantly Prepare Images and Videos: Users can effortlessly adapt designs, resize, and fine-tune assets in bulk within seconds. The inclusion of subject-aware AI enables the generation of new assets, while readily available creative presets facilitate the creation of multiple variations from a single master asset.
Transform User-Generated Content into Brand-Ready Assets: AI and automation simplify the task of moderating, managing, and approving user uploads, requiring minimal to no effort.
Facilitate Seamless and Effective Collaboration: By controlling file visibility through custom user roles and permissions, Nexus enhances productivity. Users can collaborate seamlessly with other contributors, teams, and partners, simplifying asset handovers.
Instantly Organize and Discover Assets: The automatic addition of tags and metadata, including colors, faces, and objects, improves asset discoverability. An AI-driven visual search feature provides highly accurate and personalized search results.
Effortless Setup: Nexus offers easy visual content import and integration with existing storage platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox, ensuring a smooth transition.
About Cloudinary
Cloudinary is a leading image and video technology platform that empowers the world's most engaging brands to deliver transformative visual experiences on a global scale. Consisting of a user base of over 1.5 million and serving more than 10,000 esteemed customers, including Bleacher Report, Apartment Therapy, Bombas, NBC, Grubhub, Mediavine, Paul Smith, Minted, and Peloton, Cloudinary is the trusted choice for bringing campaigns, applications, and websites to life. With unrivaled image and video APIs, supported by cutting-edge AI and patented technology, Cloudinary provides brands with a singular source of truth to effectively manage, transform, optimize, and seamlessly deliver visual experiences at scale.
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FINANCE
PR Newswire | October 20, 2023
NEWITY, America's source for small business capital, announces access to larger business loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration's (SBA) update to their Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). NEWITY is proud to simplify and streamline access to small business financing for entrepreneurs through an SBA-licensed lender.
The SBA's SOP updates enable lenders to approve larger loans for businesses who meet lower qualification standards, helping more small business owners access capital. The SBA 7(a) program changes that are live in NEWITY's portal include:
Larger loan amounts, enabling borrowers who qualified for a$25,000loan to qualify for a loan up to$50,000
No collateral requirements for loans under$50,000
Lower credit scores accepted for loans between$50,001to$150,000
Relaxed rulings on affiliate businesses and ownership interests
Easier to refinance and consolidate high interest rate debt
Ability for qualifying businesses to receive a secondSBA loan 90 days after the funding of their first SBA loan
Commenting on the SBA SOP updates, David Cody, NEWITY Co-Founder and Co-CEO said, "In pursuing the SBA's mission to 'help Americans start, grow and build resilient businesses', the SBA 7(a) loan program is a financial lifeline for over 33 million small businesses. The SBA's latest updates allow lender service providers like NEWITY to support a broader network of American businesses in accessing a greater amount of capital."
While NEWITY's portal has undergone changes to include the SBA's updates, NEWITY's streamlined application process has not changed. Small businesses can still determine their eligibility for an SBA 7(a) loan in less than 15 minutes without impacting their credit score.
Luke LaHaie, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of NEWITY added, "We're thrilled to offer business owners access to larger loans. Likewise, we're happy to enable lenders to provide larger loans to their clients through our nimble, compliant platform. We're proud to help businesses secure more capital to fuel their success and growth."
The SBA 7(a) application is available to qualifying businesses and accessible in the NEWITY Portal.
About NEWITY
NEWITY is America's source for small business capital, focused on empowering entrepreneurs with access to affordable loan solutions, streamlined tax credits, and trusted service providers – all in one place. NEWITY uses leading technology and real human support to help small businesses make their companies more efficient and profitable. Today, that includes equitable access to SBA 7(a) loans; streamlined processes to claim tax credits; simplified online bookkeeping with Xendoo; customized, competitive insurance with Mylo; personalized business advisory with Cultivate; and access to a marketing agency marketplace with Breef.
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