BUSINESS STRATEGY
Calix | September 18, 2023
Calix, Inc. has announced the launch of Calix SmartBiz in the United Kingdom (UK). This recent development empowers alternative service providers (altnets) to expand their markets with a tailored managed service explicitly designed to cater to the unique requirements of the 5.5 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within the UK.
SmartBiz, on the Calix broadband platform, encompasses all the essential elements altnets need to foster SME growth within their communities. This includes managed Wi-Fi services (both indoor and outdoor), top-notch network security, business productivity applications, and high-speed internet access.
Historically, altnets lacked access to a broadband solution designed explicitly for SMEs, leaving them with the choice of repurposing residential products or downsizing complex and costly enterprise-grade solutions to accommodate the SME market. The introduction of SmartBiz provides altnets with a turnkey solution that not only enables the creation of additional revenue streams but also facilitates the expansion of their subscriber base, empowering them to compete more effectively within the fiercely competitive broadband markets.
SmartBiz comprises two main components: SmartBizWorx productivity software and the CommandWorx mobile app. CommandWorx is seamlessly integrated with the award-winning Calix Wi-Fi systems and Calix Support Cloud, allowing for self-service access to SmartBiz and its associated features. Small business owners can conveniently monitor and manage SmartBiz from any location using a user-friendly app tailored to their specific needs. Furthermore, a customizable customer Wi-Fi portal empowers business owners to offer secure and convenient internet access while enhancing brand loyalty.
Eoin Heaney, VP of international at Calix, stated:
SMEs underpin the UK economy. With an annual turnover of £1.4 trillion, they account for more than 30 percent of UK revenue and employ almost half the country's workforce.
[Source: Business Wire]
He also pointed out that small business owners face numerous challenges, including the search for suitable productivity solutions to support their growth. With SmartBiz, altnets can now offer SMEs the essential productivity capabilities they require, eliminating the need for dedicated IT staff or the typically associated hefty price tag.
Furthermore, Heaney highlighted that SmartBiz represents an opportunity for altnets to expand their business or explore new markets. He expressed enthusiasm about collaborating with innovative altnets such as Connexin, who provide distinctive managed services that empower their SME customers to focus on their core competency, which is running their own businesses.
SmartBiz also equips small business owners with:
Dedicated Networks for Enhanced Productivity:With network access control, SmartBiz offers pre-configured, dedicated primary, staff, point-of-sale, and customer networks. This ensures that every user enjoys appropriate access to the network resources they require, significantly improving role efficiency and overall productivity.
Robust Network-Level Security:To safeguard staff, customers, and critical business infrastructure from cyber threats, SmartBiz delivers robust security features alongside network-specific, customizable content restrictions.
Network Resilience:Recognizing that network outages can prove catastrophic for SMEs, SmartBiz provides automatic cellular failover, ensuring that SMEs can continue their operations uninterrupted, maintaining productivity levels, and preventing potential losses, which can be as high as £20,000 per hour of downtime.
About Calix
Calix is a leading global provider of cloud and software platforms, systems, and services essential for the realization of the unified access network and intelligent premises of the future. With a forward-looking perspective, it empowers its customers to forge the networks of tomorrow by adopting a DevOps operating model, enabling them to optimize the subscriber experience through the strategic application of big data analytics. Furthermore, the company simplifies the intricacies of the smart home and business, converting them into lucrative avenues for generating new streams of revenue.
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BUSINESS STRATEGY
Tarci | September 15, 2023
Tarci, a leading continuous intelligence platform that generates dynamic SMB data, has recently introduced the Tarci for Foodservice data suite. This cutting-edge new series of dynamic data modules is crafted to empower enterprises that cater to SMBs in the food service sector with insights to optimize their sales, marketing, risk management, and client retention strategies.
By integrating precise and up-to-date SMB profiles with industry-specific data-driven insights, Tarci provides invaluable support to food and beverage manufacturers and distributors, enabling them to proactively identify both opportunities and potential risks among their current and prospective clients.
Within the Tarci for Foodservice suite, the following data modules are presently available:
Restaurant with Emerging Needs: New and emerging SMBs engaged in preparing food for immediate consumption.
Food & Beverage Retailers: New and emerging specialty food, grocery, and convenience retailers.
Licensed Establishments: New and growing SMBs that offer alcohol for on-premise consumption.
SMBs with Refreshment Needs: Growing SMBs with 50 or more on-site employees who may be interested in enhancing workplace experiences by offering refreshment perks.
Foodservice Risk Management: Enhanced credit term decisions by augmenting existing SMB profiles with business stability, growth, or decline indicators.
Tarci's continuous intelligence engine draws from a diverse array of external data sources to craft dynamic SMB profiles, which are updated on a weekly basis. What sets Tarci apart is its proactive approach; it not only monitors these profiles for changes but also analyzes them for emerging trends.
This distinctive methodology in parsing and interpreting SMB data accurately mirrors the dynamic nature of the marketplace. With Tarci, clients can seize opportunities and respond to changes in real-time.
Tarci's Co-Founder and CEO, Leetal Gruper, commented,
With the launch of Tarci for Foodservice, we address the churn challenges in the Foodservice industry. Our real-time insights and dynamic data modules empower businesses to adapt, thrive, and build lasting client relationships with the right SMBs, offering stability and growth in an industry where change is constant.
[Source: Cision PR Newswire]
About Tarci
Tarci is a prominent, continuous intelligence platform that generates dynamic SMB data. Employing a cutting-edge continuous intelligence engine, Tarci consistently collects, analyzes, and translates an extensive array of signals sourced from diverse outlets, effectively transforming vast datasets into actionable insights. The company's impact is felt prominently across customer-facing teams within Fortune 200 corporations, spanning leading financial institutions, insurance entities, and enterprises catering to small and mid-size businesses. Tarci garners support from esteemed backers, including Sound Ventures, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and strategic investors.
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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
GlobeNewswire | October 06, 2023
JumpCloud Inc., the leading open directory platform provider, and Electric, the leader in IT management software for small businesses, today announced a joint partnership to bring secure and affordable enterprise-grade technology to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Electric, serving over 55,000 end users, is one of the latest large partners joining JumpCloud’s managed service provider (MSP) program, which spans 60 countries. JumpCloud enters the Electric Partner Program, bringing enterprise IT tech to the SMB market. Both companies are actively evaluating new partnerships for each of their programs.
Electric is in R&D with JumpCloud’s device and identity management technology, preparing early access to a select group of customers to test the financial and accessibility benefits of the two companies’ integration. JumpCloud’s enterprise-grade identity, access, and device management capabilities, bundled with Electric’s seamless IT support and management capabilities, allow SMBs to focus on their mission rather than IT.
JumpCloud reimagined the directory to fit the modern world with an open, cloud-based directory for secure, frictionless access from any authorized device to any resource, anywhere. Electric makes technical and often complex initiatives such as security standardization, device management, software provisioning, and employee IT support manageable in one easy-to-use platform.
“The JumpCloud and Electric partnership pairs the best of both for SMBs with limited or no in-house IT teams with affordable, progressive IT capabilities — enabling a whole new generation of companies to take advantage of the cloud,” said Antoine Jebara, co-founder and general manager of MSP products, JumpCloud. “We’re excited to have Electric join our partner program and design their next-generation offerings around the JumpCloud platform. Our partnership will enable SMBs with enterprise-level security, allowing them to focus on their mission and scale their companies.”
“Electric and JumpCloud are teaming up to start R&D on a cutting-edge enterprise-level identity, access, and device management system specifically designed for SMBs,” says Joe Fahrner, Chief Revenue Officer, Electric. “Combining our strengths, both commercially and through our product development, brings crucial enterprise security systems within reach of businesses that previously lacked the internal resources to handle them.”
About JumpCloud
JumpCloud® helps IT teams Make Work Happen® by centralizing management of user identities and devices, enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt Zero Trust security models. JumpCloud has been used by a global user base of more than 200,000 organizations, including GoFundMe, Grab, ClassPass, Beyond Finance, and Foursquare. JumpCloud has raised over $400M from world-class investors including Sapphire Ventures, General Atlantic, Sands Capital, Atlassian, and CrowdStrike.
About Electric
Electric’s IT platform makes IT easy for users who want to be something other than IT managers. Its technology simplifies the management of employees, devices, applications, and networks while providing compliance-ready reporting. This all-star team of investors backs Electric: Bessemer Venture Partners, GGV Capital, 01 Advisors, Primary Venture Partners, Bowery Capital, Slack, Atreides Management, Vintage Investment Partners, Greenspring Associates, and Harmonic Growth Partners.
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