Page 5545 – SalesTech Star

SAP Cloud Business Soars

Sales & Marketing

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July 23, 2018

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Operating Profit Up Double-Digit
Raises 2018 Outlook and 2020 Ambition
– Cloud Revenue Growth Accelerates, Up 30% (IFRS) and Up 40% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies), Outpacing Competition
– New Cloud Bookings Up 29% at Constant Currencies on Top of a Strong Prior Year Quarter
– Strong Digital Core Innovation Cycle – 600 S/4HANA Customers Added in Q2, S/4HANA Customer Count Now Close to 9,000
– Double-Digit Operating Profit Growth Continues, Up 13% (IFRS) and Up 12% (Non-IFRS at Constant Currencies)

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2018.

“The 4th generation of enterprise applications has taken another major step forward with C/4HANA. Together with S/4HANA, SAP customers are finally able to focus their entire business on delivering a personalized experience to their customers. The intelligent enterprise is the elixir to bridge silos inside fractured businesses and beyond so CEOs get a single view of the customer. SAP is presenting a clear strategy, customers are already validating it in Q2 and we are increasing guidance as a signal that a new wave of growth has been unleashed.” – Bill McDermott, CEO

“This quarter is exemplary for the road we have chosen: rapidly transforming the company to the cloud while substantially growing profits and margins. I am very confident that this momentum will continue to expand. That’s why we raised our 2018 outlook and 2020 ambition.” – Luka Mucic, CFO

Business Highlights
Financial Highlights
Second Quarter 2018

New cloud bookings¹ grew 24% (29% at constant currencies) in the second quarter and reached €421 million. Cloud subscriptions and support revenue grew 30% year over year to €1.21 billion (IFRS), up 40% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).² Software revenue was down 9% year over year to €996 million (IFRS), down 5% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). New cloud and software license order entry³ grew 12% at constant currencies year over year in the second quarter. Cloud and software revenue grew 4% year over year to €4.94 billion (IFRS), up 10% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Total revenue grew 4% year over year to €6.00 billion (IFRS), up 10% (non-IFRS at constant currencies).

SAP’s rapidly expanding cloud business together with solid growth in support revenue continued to drive the share of more predictable revenue. The total of cloud subscriptions & support revenue and software support revenue as a percentage of total revenue grew 2 percentage points year-over-year to 66% in the second quarter.

Second quarter operating profit was up 13% year over year to €1.04 billion (IFRS), up 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). As announced in January 2018, the Company expects a positive revenue and profit impact from the adoption of IFRS 15 in 2018. In the second quarter, this positive impact on SAP’s operating profit was around €54 million. Earnings per share increased 8% to €0.60 (IFRS) and increased 5% to €0.98 (non-IFRS).

Operating cash flow for the first six months was €2.99 billion, down 15% year over year. The decrease in operating cash flow was mainly due to timing of stock based compensation payments, currency headwinds as well as higher tax and insurance payments. Free cash flow decreased 25% year over year to €2.17 billion. Free cash flow was also lower due to the previously announced additional CapEx for 2018. At the end of the second quarter, net liquidity was -€2.97 billion.

SAP S/4HANA

With SAP’s next generation ERP S/4HANA, customers can massively simplify their IT landscape, turn real-time data into actions and reinvent their business models for the digital economy across every industry.

S/4HANA adoption grew to more than 8,900 customers, up 41% year over year. In the second quarter, approximately 600 additional customers signed up of which approximately 40% were net new.

S/4HANA continues to be selected by world-class global companies, including McDonalds (China) in the quarter. A growing number of companies are now adopting S/4HANA in the Cloud. TechnipFMC, China Sports Lemon, and Spirit Airlines chose S/4HANA Cloud.

SAP C/4HANA (Customer Experience)

SAP’s C/4HANA solutions serve a wide range of industries across both B2C and B2B and enable businesses to manage their entire front office: marketing, sales, commerce, service, customer data cloud – seamlessly and in real-time.

In the second quarter, SAP’s C/4HANA customer experience solutions achieved high double-digit year-over-year growth in new cloud bookings and total revenue in the SAP Customer Experience segment was up 65% to €242 million at constant currencies.

Whirlpool, Deutsche Telekom, and Novartis were among those that chose SAP’s C/4HANA solutions this quarter.

Human Capital Management

With SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass, SAP delivers total workforce management across both permanent and contingent labor. The SAP SuccessFactors suite is localized for 92 countries and 42 languages.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, which is the flagship of SAP’s HCM offering, ended the quarter with more than 2,600 customers and scored numerous competitive wins including BMW, Telecom Argentina, Shiseido, and MG Motors India.

SAP Leonardo

With SAP Leonardo SAP delivers powerful innovation by bringing together deep process and industry expertise, advanced design thinking methodology and cutting edge software capabilities such as IoT, Big Data, Machine Learning, Analytics, and Blockchain. All of this is integrated on the SAP Cloud Platform with new technologies easily added as they emerge.

Toyota and Porsche are among many others that adopted SAP Leonardo solutions in the second quarter.

Business Networks

With the SAP Business Networks SAP provides collaborative commerce capabilities (Ariba), flexible workforce management (Fieldglass) and effortless travel and expense processing (Concur). SAP Business Network is the largest commerce platform in the world with approximately $2.4 trillion⁴ in global commerce annually transacted in more than 180 countries.

In the second quarter, total revenue in the SAP Business Network segment was up 21% to €688 million at constant currencies year over year. Bosch-Siemens Hausgeräte, and Avianca chose SAP’s Business Network Solutions in the second quarter.

Regional Revenue Performance in the Second Quarter 2018

SAP had a very strong performance in the EMEA region with cloud and software revenue increasing 10% (IFRS) and 12% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was strong and grew by 40% (IFRS) and 46% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Germany and the UK being highlights. In addition, SAP had strong double-digit software revenue growth in the UK, and the Middle East and Germany had another strong software revenue quarter with solid single digit growth.

The Company had a solid performance in the Americas region with a significant currency headwind. Cloud and software revenue decreased by 3% (IFRS) and increased by 8% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue increased by 24% (IFRS) and 35% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with Brazil being a highlight.

In the APJ region, SAP had a strong performance. Cloud and software revenue was up by 4% (IFRS) and grew by 11% (non-IFRS at constant currencies). Cloud subscriptions and support revenue was exceptional and grew by 42% (IFRS) and 52% (non-IFRS at constant currencies) with China and Japan being highlights. For software revenue, Australia, China and India had impressive quarters and grew by double digits.

Financial Results at a Glance

Second Quarter 2018¹⁾
	IFRS			Non-IFRS²⁾
€ million, unless otherwise stated	Q2 2018	Q2 2017	∆ in %	Q2 2018	Q2 2017	∆ in %	∆ in % const. curr.
New Cloud Bookings³⁾	N/A	N/A	N/A	421	340	24	29
Cloud subscriptions and support revenue	1,213	932	30	1,227	932	32	40
Software licenses and support revenue	3,731	3,826	–2	3,731	3,826	–2	3
Cloud and software revenue	4,944	4,757	4	4,959	4,758	4	10
Total revenue	5,999	5,782	4	6,014	5,782	4	10
Share of predictable revenue (in %)	66	63	2pp	66	63	2pp
Operating profit	1,044	926	13	1,640	1,570	4	12
Profit after tax	720	666	8	1,173	1,120	5
Basic earnings per share (€)	0.60	0.56	8	0.98	0.94	5
Number of employees (FTE, June 30)	93,846	87,114	8	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Six months ended June 2018¹⁾
	IFRS			Non-IFRS²⁾
€ million, unless otherwise stated	Q1–Q2 2018	Q1–Q2 2017	∆ in %	Q1–Q2 2018	Q1–Q2 2017	∆ in %	∆ in % const. curr.
New Cloud Bookings³⁾	N/A	N/A	N/A	667	555	20	28
Cloud subscriptions and support revenue	2,283	1,837	24	2,299	1,837	25	36
Software licenses and support revenue	7,012	7,248	–3	7,012	7,248	–3	3
Cloud and software revenue	9,295	9,085	2	9,311	9,085	2	10
Total revenue	11,260	11,066	2	11,276	11,067	2	10
Share of predictable revenue (in %)	68	66	2pp	68	66	2pp
Operating profit	2,069	1,599	29	2,876	2,768	4	13
Profit after tax	1,428	1,197	19	2,041	2,006	2
Basic earnings per share (€)	1.20	0.99	21	1.71	1.67	3
Number of employees (FTE, December 31)	93,846	87,114	8	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

¹⁾ All figures are unaudited.

²⁾ For a detailed description of SAP’s non-IFRS measures see Explanation of Non-IFRS Measures online. For a breakdown of the individual adjustments see table “Non-IFRS Adjustments by Functional Areas” in this Quarterly Statement.

³⁾ As this is an order entry metric, there is no IFRS equivalent.

Due to rounding, numbers may not add up precisely.

Business Outlook 2018

Due to the strong momentum in SAP’s cloud business the Company is raising its outlook for the full year 2018:

Non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue is now expected to be in a range of €5.050 billion − €5.200 billion at constant currencies (2017: €3.77 billion), up 34.0% – 38.0% at constant currencies. The previous range was €4.95 billion − €5.15 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS cloud and software revenue is now expected to be in a range of €21.025 – €21.250 billion at constant currencies (2017: €19.55 billion), up 7.5% – 8.5% at constant currencies. The previous range was €20.85 – €21.25 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS total revenue is now expected to be in a range of €24.975 billion − €25.300 billion at constant currencies (2017: €23.46 billion), up 6.0% – 7.5% at constant currencies. The previous range was €24.80 billion − €25.30 billion at constant currencies.
Non-IFRS operating profit is now expected to be in a range of €7.400 billion − €7.500 billion at constant currencies (2017: €6.77 billion), up 9.0% – 11.0% at constant currencies. The previous range was €7.35 billion − €7.50 billion at constant currencies.

While SAP’s full-year 2018 business outlook is at constant currencies, actual currency reported figures are expected to be impacted by currency exchange rate fluctuations as the Company progresses through the year. See the table below for the Q3 and FY 2018 expected currency impacts.

Expected Currency Impact Based on June 2018 Level for the Rest of the Year
In percentage points	Q3	FY
Cloud subscriptions and support	1 to -1pp	-4 to -6pp
Cloud and software	1 to -1pp	-2 to -4pp
Operating profit	1 to -1pp	-2 to -4pp

IFRS 15 Impact

As of January 1, 2018, SAP changed several of its accounting policies to adopt IFRS 15 ‘Revenue from Contracts with Customers’. Under the IFRS 15 adoption method chosen by SAP prior years are not restated to conform to the new policies. Consequently, the year-over-year growth of revenue and profit in 2018 will be impacted by the new policies.

As already announced in SAP’s Q4 2017 Quarterly Statement, the Company expects the full year 2018 impact of the policy change⁵ on revenue, operating expenses and profit to be as follows:

Revenues are expected to experience a benefit of substantially less than €0.1 billion with most of the difference resulting from exercises of customer software purchase options granted in prior years which result in software revenue.
Operating expenses are expected to benefit, in cost of sales and marketing, in the amount of approximately €0.2 billion from higher capitalization of sales commissions. Other policy changes will weigh on operating expenses with an additional cost of revenue of substantially less than €0.1 billion.
The above-mentioned effects will result in a net positive impact on operating profit of approximately €0.2 billion.

The new revenue recognition policies are described in our Half Year Report. Details regarding the IFRS 15 impact in the second quarter and first six months can be found in the section ‘Impact of Changes in Accounting Policies’ in this Quarterly Statement.

Ambition 2020

Looking beyond 2018, SAP is updating its 2020 ambition. This update reflects the strong momentum in SAP’s cloud business, the acquisition of Callidus Software as well as a more challenging currency environment compared to 2017.

SAP now expects 2020 non-IFRS cloud subscriptions and support revenue in a range of €8.2 − €8.7 billion (previously: €8.0 – €8.5 billion).

SAP continues to expect:

€28 − €29 billion non-IFRS total revenue
€8.5 − €9.0 billion non-IFRS operating profit
The share of more predictable revenue (defined as the total of cloud subscriptions & support revenue and software support revenue) in a range of 70% − 75%.

The updated ambition is based on estimated average 2018 currencies, assuming the current foreign exchange environment prevails until year-end. The previous ambition was based on average 2017 currencies. The change in currency assumptions negatively impacts the cloud subscriptions and support revenue ambition by approximately -€0.35 billion, the total revenue ambition by approximately -€1.0 billion and the operating profit ambition by approximately -€0.4 billion. These negative impacts are now included in the updated 2020 ambition.

CAKE by Accelerize Delivers Vertical Enterprise Software Solution for Mortgage Industry that Combines Customer Journey Analytics with Lead Generation Technology

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July 23, 2018

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CAKE by Accelerize Delivers Vertical Enterprise Software Solution for Mortgage Industry that Combines Customer Journey Analytics with Lead Generation Technology

Digital Marketing SaaS Provider Transforms Lead Acquisition, Management and Routing Process to Boost ROAS and Increase Lead Monetization

Accelerize and its digital marketing software division CAKE announced the availability of a marketing intelligence solution that seamlessly integrates lead generation technology with multi-channel measurement for complete visibility into campaign performance and lead quality for key optimization opportunities. With Journey by CAKE – an enterprise, cloud-based platform that collects and analyzes data in real-time – mortgage companies gain wider visibility into lead acquisition and multi-channel digital marketing activities, enabling them to monetize leads for higher returns on advertising spend (ROAS).

Journey by CAKE provides marketers with the ability to capture the complete customer journey, from the first interaction with a brand’s message all the way to the funding of a loan. Journey delivers advantages to mortgage providers including:

Powerful Lead Distribution and Monetization – Automate lead generation and monetization efforts with powerful tools for collecting, analyzing and distributing leads in real-time.
Lead Qualification – Qualify leads in real-time based on unique criteria to optimize ROAS.
Closing the Loop – Gain clarity into the customer journey all the way from initial interaction to loan origination and fulfillment, providing insights to further optimize lead generation processes.
Powerful Insights – Advanced analytics dashboards provide powerful customer journey insights and performance of multi-channel marketing efforts to help optimize lead to loan origination (funding) efficiency.
Digital Marketing Integrations – Easily extract performance data from media platforms including Google, Facebook and Bing to better understand channel performance and ROAS.

“Mortgage companies have encountered significant pain points during the customer journey and lead distribution process including a lack of marketing performance insights and closed-loop measurement,” said Santi Pierini, CAKE President and Chief Operating Officer. “We are entering a new era and it’s crucial for mortgage providers to embrace marketing solutions to gain an end-to-end view of the customer journey and help them move forward in the evolving landscape. Mortgage industry leaders leveraging CAKE’s marketing intelligence platform have already achieved a 255% month over month ROAS improvement. It is clear that mortgage companies able to prioritize the channels, sources and campaigns that result in the strongest ROAS have a clear competitive advantage.”

An effective online marketing strategy requires a lot of time and expertise. In fact, according to a 2017 Mortgage Marketing Report, the majority of survey respondents cited their biggest challenges are that they do not consider themselves to be marketing experts and are unsure about where to focus their marketing efforts nor how to prioritize channels such as paid search, direct, display, email and social.

Parascript Delivers Breakthrough Self-learning Document Automation

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July 23, 2018

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Parascript Delivers Breakthrough Self-learning Document Automation

Parascript, which provides document automation solutions that process more than 100 billion documents per year, today announced the availability of FormXtra.AI. This high performance capture system significantly reduces the complexity and costs associated with document classification and data extraction through a self-learning system that automatically configures rules and learns by itself in order to improve performance. Maintaining ongoing system performance in dynamic production environments becomes effortless because FormXtra.AI adapts to new changing streams of documents in the background while documents are processed.

“With FormXtra.AI, we approached our clients’ challenges from an entirely new angle,” said Greg Council, Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at Parascript. “Our system automatically configures itself and adapts to the most dynamic document streams while it simultaneously measures and improves performance in the background. It learns what data is able to run ‘straight-through’ with no user intervention and preserves better than human-level precision. It’s the first of its kind. All those time-consuming—and sometimes costly—professional services for configuration and to ensure quality performance are no longer necessary.”

Read More: Decoding The Current State of SDR Automation Platform Powered by AI
The new smart-learning capability is based on Parascript’s 25 years of expertise with advanced artificial intelligence. While leading capture systems have some “learning” capabilities, they are based upon the combination of user-supplied instruction and template creation. This means that they require a user to sit with the application and tell it where the required data is through an explicit action. This typical process fails to reduce work with the initial configuration and creates a large, unmanageable system. Parascript solves this problem.

Beyond Disruptive Innovation

“Parascript’s approach is to analyze documents through FormXtra.AI self-learning,” Mr. Council explained. “You can provide FormXtra.AI a structured form or you can provide tagged samples, and it will analyze and automatically create a ‘document map’ with the push of a button.”

Bill Johnson

In production, FormXtra.AI monitors and collects background data from operations and uses it to measure and improve performance with no change to existing workflows. By working in the background, it completely eliminates manual efforts to configure or optimize the system. In addition, the data resulting from the self-learning process are stored in a file that can be transferred or shared from one system to another.

“I’ve been in the capture business for decades both as an end user and on the software side, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Parascript machine learning makes processing complex documents and forms not only easy, but painless,” said Bill Johnson, Vice President of Sales at Parascript. “FormXtra.AI processes high volumes of documents faster, using fewer people with less errors.”

Host Analytics Spotlight for Office Takes the Pain out of Reporting with New Microsoft Office Integrations

Pipeline & Analytics

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July 23, 2018

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Host Analytics Spotlight for Office Takes the Pain out of Reporting with New Microsoft Office Integrations

Finance can now embed and refresh data in Excel, PowerPoint and Word with the push of a button

Further integrating the ecosystem of tools finance professionals rely on most, Host Analytics, the leading innovator of cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions, today extended its reporting capabilities for Microsoft Office. With Host Analytics Spotlight for Office, customers can seamlessly build management and financial reports directly within Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. With the push of a button, data can be dynamically refreshed within the applications; ensuring it is always accurate and up to date.

Sanjay Vyas

“Prepping data for presentations and reporting is an unavoidable and arduous task for finance teams. Often times the information needed is rendered in Microsoft Office, making it time consuming and difficult to manage,” said Sanjay Vyas, chief product officer, Host Analytics. “Spotlight for Office was designed to make this kind of process painless for our users, by enabling them to embed the data once, with minimal formatting, and then giving them the ability to quickly refresh with the correct, up-to-the-minute information.”

With Spotlight for Office, customers can harness the power of Microsoft Office for presenting information while ensuring “one version of the truth” from a centralized, secure data store. Presentations and documents can be built once with live links to the data and used as often as needed, saving valuable time and eliminating errors caused by manual cutting and pasting. Once a report is created in Excel, PowerPoint or Word it can be accessed anywhere and delivers data security, integrity, and confidence in the data by relying on the Host Analytics platform as its foundation. With the push of a button, data can be dynamically refreshed; ensuring it is always accurate and up to date.

In addition to delivering management and financial reporting from Word and PowerPoint, Host Analytics customers can now build and analyze Spotlight XL and Spotlight Web reports directly from the Host Planning Finance cube, reducing the time and effort required to build and analyze financial reports in Spotlight.

ARHT Media Streams Live Holographic Telepresence from Los Angeles to Singapore trade show Office Expo Asia and wins Best Designed Booth Award

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July 23, 2018

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ARHT Media Streams Live Holographic Telepresence from Los Angeles to Singapore trade show Office Expo Asia and wins Best Designed Booth Award

ARHT Media Inc. a global leader in the development, production and distribution of high quality hologram content through its patented Augmented Reality Holographic Telepresence technology announced that they were awarded Best Design Booth Award at the Office Expo Asia conference in Singapore, a trade show who’s slogan is “Better. Smarter. Workspaces.” with a focus on the future workspace for a new generation.

Larry O’Reilly

“This is the second major trade show where we have demonstrated the highest quality live holographic telepresence,” added ARHT CEO Larry O’Reilly. “And the leads coming in thus far will certainly help launch our business in South East Asia. The people of Singapore love our technology, as witnessed earlier this year at an investment banking event with a major international investment firm.”

“It was incredible that we have been streaming live two way full body holographic telepresence for the past two days over the internet using a 4G SIM card,” shared ARHT Asia VP and GM Lincoln Cheung. “The conference organizers and delegates loved seeing this new technology and partnerships are already in discussion.”

Newgen Demonstrates Technologies to Drive Digital Transformation at its Customer Conference 2018, Orlando

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July 23, 2018

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Newgen Demonstrates Technologies to Drive Digital Transformation at its Customer Conference 2018, Orlando

Newgen Software Inc., a provider of Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Customer Communication Management (CCM) platforms, today announced that it successfully hosted its Customer Conference at Marriott World Center, Orlando, FL on June 21 and 22, 2018. The conference brought together industry leaders, influencers, and analysts from leading organizations across the US, Canada, Caribbean and South America. Newgen’s customers, across verticals, presented their digital transformation stories through interesting case studies.

“We started 26 years ago and have been building world-class software products since then. Building complex business applications are imperative for the ever-changing needs of enterprises and we are committed to delivering beyond expectations. We will strive to continuously innovate our products and keep them state-of-the-art in order to keep our customers ahead of the curve. We have no failed installations till date,” said Diwakar Nigam, Chairman and Managing Director, Newgen Software.

At the conference, Nigel Fenwick, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc. delivered a keynote on accelerating digital transformation with automation platforms; followed by a presentation by Anand Raman, VP – Sales & Marketing, Newgen Software Inc. titled “Navigate the Digital Storm and deliver 2x value”.

Mr Raman talked about ‘how enterprises can delight their customers, be faster than the fastest, and make their business infinite’. He also highlighted the need for a connected enterprise which can orchestrate, contextualize and engage with the customers with the help of a unified digital platform.

Virender Jeet

Virender Jeet, Senior Vice President, Newgen Software, delivered a presentation titled “Platforms to Drive Digital Business” and spoke about how industry framework built on agile digital platforms like BPM, ECM and CCM offer value to enterprises.

Alyson Clarke, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc., delivered a banking keynote on how banks can accelerate digital transformation.

The second day of the conference featured a technology showcase, organized to provide a first-hand experience of new innovations in the space of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Sensing, Predictive Analytics, RPA and low-code. An interactive solution showcase allowed customers to deep-dive into Newgen Solutions in Banking, Healthcare, Government and Insurance domains.

Fastly Secures $40M Investment to Help the World’s Most Important Companies Deliver Secure Content at Scale

Content & Collaboration

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July 23, 2018

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Fastly Secures $40M Investment to Help the World’s Most Important Companies Deliver Secure Content at Scale

Key to the company’s success in content delivery, security, and edge computing is its values-first approach to growth that’s resulted in reaching over 3 billion global internet users a month and achieving a 42 percent female-executive team

Fastly, the leading edge cloud platform, announced that it has raised $40 million in funding, led by Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) with participation from Sozo Ventures, Swisscom Ventures, and existing investors. The round will allow Fastly to continue expanding its edge cloud services for leading digital publishing, e-commerce, and streaming companies, as well as explore the increasing market demand across financial services, healthcare, and connected vehicles and devices. This comes on the heels of a record year for Fastly, having reached a $100 million revenue run rate in 2017 due to its developer-friendly approach and powerful edge computing platform. Founded on the premise that everyone should have access to fast and secure content, Fastly has tripled its overall customer base, adding leading brands like Alaska Airlines, Audi of America, BuzzFeed, USA TODAY NETWORK, Reddit, TED, and Vice.

With a values-first approach to growth, Fastly has prioritized scaling its workforce, services, customer portfolio, and investment partners responsibly. Contrary to others in Silicon Valley that burn through capital and operate in a ‘get big, fast’ manner that can be both unsustainable and often culturally toxic, Fastly has instead grown with a focus on both transparency and inclusion. The company has maintained a concentration on the privacy and security of its customers and does not exploit customers’ end-user data. Fastly has also continued to support charitable nonprofit organizations and open source projects by offering free edge services, increasing donated bandwidth over 100 percent year-over-year.

In tandem, Fastly welcomes industry veteran Kelly Breslin Wright to its Board of Directors. Wright brings global enterprise sales expertise as well as a history of building inclusive workforces to Fastly, having formerly helped grow Tableau from launch into a multi-billion dollar public company as Executive Vice President, Sales. Her addition to the board supports Fastly’s commitment to scaling world-class global field operations and superior customer experiences with a culture of belonging.

“Fastly’s unique combination of strong technology, people, and values empowers developers and customers with a platform that provides faster and more secure content,” commented Wright. “I’m thrilled to work with Fastly through this next stage of hyper-growth.”

Fastly is dedicated to building a diverse team that reflects the unique needs of its global customer base. Currently, women comprise 42 percent of the company’s executive team, while 65 percent of its engineering leads have self-identified as women, people of color, or LGBTQ. Over 50 percent of the company works outside of San Francisco. With the latest infusion of capital, Fastly will continue to build a diverse workforce and inclusive culture that empowers and supports its employees while enabling online brands to create fast, secure, and scalable experiences.

“Today, content served through Fastly is viewed by more than three billion people around the globe every month, equating to more than 75 percent of all worldwide internet users. It’s impossible to build a product that serves the world without building an inclusive team that reflects it,” said Artur Bergman, founder and CEO of Fastly. “Studies show that diverse teams deliver better outcomes. The more diverse our leadership, the easier it is to grow the right way — hiring diverse talent and building technology that provides true value for leading businesses and their users across the world.”

The need for quick data transmissions between servers and physical objects like self-driving cars, IoT sensors, and smartphones is increasing at an exponential rate. According to Mary Meeker’s Annual Internet Trends Report, digital data gathered by 2025 is projected to increase by 1,258 percent. Users are promised the fastest possible experience, whether they are simply interacting with a company online, where latency impacts the digital experience, or riding in a connected autonomous vehicle, where the speed of data impacts real-time driving decisions.

To deliver on this promise Fastly takes a fundamentally different network approach: rather than deploying many small servers around the world, Fastly builds powerful servers with large amounts of memory and 100GE circuits for rapid scalability; the company currently has data centers placed in 51 strategic, well-connected global locations. This puts Fastly’s 25 Tbps capacity network within milliseconds of 90 percent of the world, thereby significantly reducing the need for data requests to go back to the origin and instead processing them en route to the user.

“Speed and security are the backbone of a strong Internet, and Fastly provides the most valuable, differentiated approach to this that we’ve seen,” remarked Jack Young, Partner and Head of Venture Capital at Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) in the Silicon Valley Office. “We look forward to supporting Fastly as it corners the cloud services market and accelerates its diverse leadership.”

AlphaNetworks Announces the Future of Media on the Blockchain with AI, Gamification, Tokens, Rewards, and Premium Content

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July 23, 2018

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AlphaNetworks Announces the Future of Media on the Blockchain with AI, Gamification, Tokens, Rewards, and Premium Content

AlphaNetworks is creating the first global A.I. powered media platform combining cable, OTT, and online video with transparent economics, fair creator compensation, Proof of Engagement, and rewarding viewer, content owner, and advertiser experiences.

Seth Shapiro

AlphaNetworks announced its video infrastructure powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain for the new era of media. The company’s digital framework provides creators, media companies and advertisers with applications for better video monetization, management and analytics.

“The media business is at an inflection point,” said Seth Shapiro, Founder and CEO of AlphaNetworks. “The average household pays for 206 networks but watches 15 of them. Forty years ago, TV news was a trusted source that helped end a war; now, its perceived as playing the same scandals ad infinitum. While there are lots of great influencers and content creators online, it’s incredibly hard for them to make a living. These are some of the challenges we want to take on with AlphaNetworks—rebuilding the best parts of the media business on the blockchain.”

AlphaNetworks combines components of online video services such as Netflix, online video aggregators such as YouTube, interactive platforms such as Twitch, and premium cable models such as HBO. It adds AI-powered recommendation and compensation mechanisms, for revolutionary dynamic pricing and accountability. All programming consumption data is made available on a transparent ledger, providing content owners equitable and transparent compensation.

AlphaNetworks was developed by prominent figures in blockchain and entertainment, including Seth Shapiro, a leading media consultant, author of ‘Television Vol. 1,’ a two-time Emmy Award winner and former Governor of the Television Academy. The team and its advisors include John Maatta, former COO of the CW and the WB; Jay Samit, former digital head of Sony; David Moss, former SVP of the company behind blockchain giant EOS; and Frank Scherma, President of RadicalMedia. The team aims to deliver higher customer engagement and conversions through its “Proof of Engagement” (PoE) algorithm, which accurately monitors and reports real interaction with content, giving media creators and advertisers unparalleled insights into audience behavior.

Viewers and advertisers within the network can use AlphaNetworks’ ScreenR tokens to gain access to content, products and services. Creators and rights holders are paid in ScreenR tokens in proportion to the consumption of their content by viewers.

21Vianet Group, Inc. Expands Its Cloud Business

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July 23, 2018

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21Vianet Group, Inc. Expands Its Cloud Business

21Vianet Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:VNET) (“21Vianet” or the “Company”), a leading carrier- and cloud-neutral Internet data center services provider in China has announced, that on 16 July 2018 at the Microsoft Inspire 2018 Worldwide Partner Conference its wholly-owned subsidiary Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology Co., Ltd. (“21V Blue Cloud”) has entered into distribution agreements (the “Agreements”) with four world-class cloud service providers including Unify Cloud, AvePoint, Agile Point and Fadada.com (collectively, the “Partners”) who have officially authorized 21V Blue Cloud as a distributor of their products and services in mainland China.

According to the Agreements, 21V Blue Cloud will be responsible for the sales and marketing of the Partners’ cloud solutions, as well as all related implementation and maintenance services. Through these collaborations, 21V Blue Cloud will once again demonstrate its expertise and capabilities in the localization of high quality cloud solutions in China, especially with its landmark collaboration with Microsoft.

Key Facts:

Over the past four years, 21V Blue Cloud has established a sustainable and trusted model for global public cloud operation. The partnership between 21V Blue Cloud and Microsoft has continued to attract cloud service providers worldwide by showcasing the effectiveness of 21V Blue Cloud’s turn-key solutions in helping foreign cloud service providers enter into the Chinese market.
21V Blue Cloud has extensive experience in providing its turn-key solutions to internet service providers. In addition, 21V Blue Cloud’s Cloud Landing in China (CLIC) strategy has a strong track record in helping service providers successfully localize their services in the Chinese market. 21V Blue Cloud’s existing partners include BitTitan MigrationWiz, GigaTrust Intelligent Rights Management, and Bespin Intelligent Cloud Management among others.
The cooperation with the Partners will allow 21V Blue Cloud to provide a more comprehensive range of cloud services, including a complete cloud ecosystem, to customers in China.
As an industry pioneer, 21V Blue Cloud’s operations are in full compliance with international and domestic legislation, regulations and standards. 21V Blue Cloud is committed to leveraging its licenses and relevant experiences to help its partners navigate through the obstacles in the Chinese market.

21V Blue Cloud Service Offerings:

Cloud operation and management services in China, for international cloud service providers in need of local deployment and implementation services;
Localization of operation systems of customer management, contract management and financial management, as well as localized sales channels to expand the local distribution channels;
Constant and comprehensive pre-sales and post-sales customer service systems for cloud service providers;
Intelligence gathering and educational services for international service providers to gain an insight into the demands, characteristics, and other elements that are necessary for successful operations and expansions in the Chinese market.

Mr. Alvin Wang, Chief Executive Officer and President of 21Vianet, stated, “We are delighted with the development of our cloud computing business, which is an integral part of our long-term growth strategy. By collaborating with Microsoft, we have established 21V Blue Cloud as the leading operator of international cloud services in China, able to provide customers with optimal service quality and reliability. Looking ahead, we remain committed to bringing more world-class cloud services to Chinese customers. We are confident that our strong localization capabilities as well as our experience and expertise in cloud operations will make us the preferred operator for domestic and international cloud solution services”.

Mr. Wenda “Wing” Ke, President of 21V Blue Cloud, stated, “With the rapid expansion of the cloud computing market in China, we aim to establish a mature and robust industry ecosystem by utilizing our localization and solution expertise to facilitate and accelerate mutually-beneficial cooperation with cloud solutions service providers. We are pleased to see an increasing number of enterprise users who now have access to stronger and more efficient support and are able to advance their business innovations through our products and services. Going forward, by building upon our competitive advantages and forging close partnerships with more world-class cloud service providers, we will remain committed to making localization easier for all the industry-leading cloud products and ensuring that all the solutions are easily-accessible and safe for users in China.”

Mr. Alain Crozier, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Chairman and CEO of Greater China Region, stated, “Since Microsoft Azure and Office 365 were launched in China four years ago under 21Vianet’s operation, they have performed beyond our expectations and achieved rapid growth. Our close cooperation with 21V Blue Cloud have provided the global market with an archetype for how international cloud services should be successfully commercialized in China. Currently in China, Azure serves more than 110,000 corporate customers and is favored by more than 1,400 partners, while Office365 currently has more than 1.5 million paying enterprise users. The two Azure data center areas, which we utilized for commercial use in Beijing and Shanghai recently, will offer better support to domestic and international customers with cloud business deployment and innovation projects in the Chinese market. With an open and welcoming business environment, China is the ideal market for Microsoft Azure intelligent cloud to scale quickly and efficiently. Moving forward, we will continue to work closely with 21V Blue Cloud to build the best development platform for cloud partners. Additionally, this cooperation will expand the Chinese cloud computing market with diversified cloud innovations that will drive digital transformations in various industries.”

AdTiming Reveals How to Deliver Better UX and Ad Revenue with Innovation, Localization and Refined Operation

Mobile & Field Sales Enablement

Sudipto Ghosh

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July 23, 2018

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AdTiming Reveals How to Deliver Better UX and Ad Revenue with Innovation, Localization and Refined Operation

AdTiming Reveals Three Ways to Achieve the Balance of User Experience and Ad Revenue: Innovation, Localization and Refine Operation

The mobile advertisement technologies have grown rapidly in the highly mobilized internet market. According to a recent report, mobile advertising could see close to 70% entire digital advertising’s revenue share. As traditional and digital advertising formats continue to transform around programmatic technologies and AI, advertisers are not leaving the stone unturned about spending a million dollars on mobile.

AdTiming held a discussion with its global renowned app-developing partners to share in-depth learning about topics concerned by developers. These included discussions on topics such as localization, monetization, user experience, and innovation, as an ad network.

Localize and Refine Operation with Ad Network

The mobile commerce industry, powered by cross-channel advertising technologies and location data analytics, is set for a magnanimous growth between 2018 and 2022. For those who came in late here, ad performance from mobile display ad placements has already leaped the performance from those targeting the desktop. Forecasts show that the mobile is set to scoop close to 50% percent share of total media ad spend by 2022.

The Importance of Ad Format Has Been Increasingly Noticed

Leo Yang, CEO of AdTiming, said, “To better serve developers, ad networks need to know users better than developers do. To achieve that, developers need to adjust ad formats according to their development stage. For instance, with the rapid development of mobile video advertisement, especially incentive video ads, the importance of ad format has been increasingly noticed.”

Leo added, “If an advertiser cannot control ad frequency to fit each user segment group and ad format, the ARPU will drop after watching too many times of ads and a vicious circle begins. To help that, AdTiming has launched AdMuing, an open source incentive video ad tool features live-commenting to make ads more interactive and exciting.”

AdTiming leveraged AI to match contents with the ad format according to the user behavior of different countries and regions, meanwhile uplift ad performance with the innovative ad experience.

The ever-growing mobile advertisement has supported the sustained revenue growth of app developers. According to a survey by AdColony, advertising monetization accounts for 55 percent of total mobile publisher revenue. This is higher than the In-App Purchase (IAP) volume. The successful experience of in-app developers proves that monetizing within ads could be deemed as safe and effective.

As AI further percolate into mobile marketing, mobile app developers know there are many more formats available to turn their current ad format into an effective platform to monetize. The tech-driven mobile ad networks are embracing a vertical and refined climb , powered by newer mobile marketing technology, such as programmatic advertising. This leads to working with a more precise traffic matching, automated creative generation, and marketing insights tracking. However, all these technologies are complex, forcing a majority of the mobile developers to rely on ad networks to achieve their goal.

Programmatic Is Highly Technical for Ad Revenue Optimization

Yuning Hu, Commercial and Monetization Director of Camera360, said,

When selecting a programmatic advertising network, the ability to integrate resources is developers’ key consideration. An excellent ad network can not only offer traffic with quality and scale but also be good at innovation. As one of the pioneers to develop the international market, the beauty camera App Camera360 has made much effort to localize its product and operation in target markets.

We are more than happy to see AdNetworks to help us in localization or catch users’ eyeball with creative ad display format. These initiatives make them stand out among their counterparts. In essence, programmatic is highly technical.

Traffic quality, user labels, request processability and anti-fraud ability, are all necessary to increase monetization revenue.

Make Sure the Ads Are Precisely Personalized, Valuable and Attractive

International Business Director of Inveno, said,

We can see more and more “playable” ads with native, video and interactive becoming the significant advertising trends. Our product Noticias Aguila is now one of the most popular news apps in Mexico. As a major resource of information for over 10 million users, personalized information recommendation is crucial in improving the user experience. Meanwhile, we believe a refined operation can not only increase our monetization revenue but also increase our customer loyalty.

Therefore, we want to see more detailed engagement data collected in each process of advertisement, and automatically analyze with ad network with the help of artificial intelligence, conduct A/B testing, feedback data and in-depth learning, understand user behavior and build our audience tag system, finally make sure our ads are precisely personalized, valuable and attractive.

Balance User Experience and Ad Revenue with Innovative Ad Format

Meng Zhu, Commercial Product Director of Xiaomi, said,

During the past year, we are most surprised to see the in-depth integration between product user growth and ad monetization. A series of incentive ads were created, thus bringing some new ideas for the whole industry. To balance user experience and ad revenue, we believe that building resources, approaches, and methods to understand and monitor the current challenge is fundamental. We can only address the problem after making clear of that.

For instance, if we only look at comments from app stores, social media and focused user group, the chances are that we may miss the opinion from the “silent majority.” Xiaomi has designed 17 monetizable media in our high-performance products.

To better understand user experience, we need to have an in-depth understanding of users and make sure we are studying at a complete and unbiased sample. Companies should set special KPI according to their product category to quantify changes and update qualitative awareness via regular communication with users of all levels.

Dan Su, Monetization Director of CamScanner, said,

CamScanner is a powerful file scanner and organizer with over 400 million global users. CamScanner started to focus on the international market since 2015 and has taken a leading position in Europe and the Americas and gained a significant number of high-value users.

CamScanner is well experienced and developed in IAP (In-App-Purchase), but still in the early stage of monetization. The primary users of the app are business users and students, who have a high standard on user experience. Therefore, CamScanner will pick monetization partners with the same standard, and find the perfect match for user experience and ad revenue.

A Spokesperson from Instanza, said,

SOMA Messenger & COCO are two communication apps produced by Instanza, which owns over 300 million users around the globe with a large user base in emerging markets like India. Instanza has just stepped into mobile monetization and is in great need of experience and professional instructions.

To serve such a large user base with satisfaction, Instanza plans to have the monetization experts do their work. Our priority of monetization solution is to find a situation where ad traffic can match user demand. We want our advertising partners to know our users better than we do, find a native and customized monetization strategy that suits us through multiple trials.

AdTiming at the Center of Delivering AI-Powered Mobile Marketing Solutions

AdTiming is an intelligent mobile marketing platform, providing solutions to worldwide mobile developers and brands. We provide the intelligent mobile marketing solutions in the age of Big Data.

In its course of existence, AdTiming has applied AI in mobile marketing to improve platform data analysis, parameter adjustment, and operation capacity, aiming at maximizing the value of data and providing developers with stable and productive services.

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21Vianet Group, Inc. Expands Its Cloud Business

AdTiming Reveals How to Deliver Better UX and Ad Revenue with Innovation, Localization and Refined Operation

AdTiming Reveals Three Ways to Achieve the Balance of User Experience and Ad Revenue: Innovation, Localization and Refine Operation

Localize and Refine Operation with Ad Network

The Importance of Ad Format Has Been Increasingly Noticed

Programmatic Is Highly Technical for Ad Revenue Optimization

Yuning Hu, Commercial and Monetization Director of Camera360, said,

Make Sure the Ads Are Precisely Personalized, Valuable and Attractive

International Business Director of Inveno, said,

Balance User Experience and Ad Revenue with Innovative Ad Format

Meng Zhu, Commercial Product Director of Xiaomi, said,

Dan Su, Monetization Director of CamScanner, said,

A Spokesperson from Instanza, said,

AdTiming at the Center of Delivering AI-Powered Mobile Marketing Solutions

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