Posted by Richy George on 7 August, 2019

Zendesk has always been all about customer service. Last spring it purchased Smooch to move more deeply into messaging app integration. Today, the company announced it was integrating WhatsApp, the popular messaging tool, into the Zendesk customer service toolkit.

Smooch was an early participant in the WhatsApp Business API program. What that does in practice says Warren Levitan, who came over as part of the Smooch deal, is provide a direct WhatsApp phone number for businesses using Zendesk . Given how many people, especially in Asia and Latin America, use WhatsApp as a primary channel for communication, this is a big deal.

“The WhatsApp Business API Connector is now fully integrated into Zendesk support. It will allow any Zendesk support customer to be up and running with a new WhatsApp number quicker than ever before, allowing them to connect to the 1.5 billion WhatsApp users worldwide, communicating with them on their channel of choice,” Levitan explained.

Levitan says the entire WhatsApp interaction experience is now fully integrated into the same Zendesk interface that customer service reps are used to using. WhatsApp simply becomes another channel for them.

“They can access WhatsApp conversations from within the same workspace and agent desktop, where they handle all of their other conversations. From an agent perspective, there are no new tools, no new workflows, no new reporting. And that’s what really allows them to get up and running quickly,” he said.

Customers may click or touch a button to dial the WhatsApp number, or they may use a QR code, which is a popular way of accessing WhatsApp customer service. As an example, Levitan says Four Seasons hotels prints a QR code on room key cards, and if customers want to access customer service, they can simply scan the code and the number dials automatically.

Zendesk has been able to get 1000 businesses up and running as part of the early access program, but now it really wants to scale that and allow many more businesses to participate. Up until now, Facebook has taken a controlled approach to on-boarding, having to approve each brand’s number before allowing it on the platform. Zendesk has been working to streamline that.

“We’ve worked tightly with Facebook (the owner of WhatsApp), so that we can have an integrated brand approval and on-boarding/activation to get their number lit up. We can now launch customers at scale, and have them up and running in days, whereas before it was more typically a multi-week process,” Levitan said.

For now, when the person connects to customer service via WhatsApp, it’s only via text messaging, There is no voice connection, and no plans for any for the time being, according to Levitan. Zendesk-WhatsApp integration is available starting today worldwide.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

Here at TechCrunch, we like to think about what’s next, and there are few technologies quite as exotic and futuristic as quantum computing. After what felt like decades of being “almost there,” we now have working quantum computers that are able to run basic algorithms, even if only for a very short time. As those times increase, we’ll slowly but surely get to the point where we can realize the full potential of quantum computing.

For our TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise event in San Francisco on September 5, we’re bringing together some of the sharpest minds from some of the leading companies in quantum computing to talk about what this technology will mean for enterprises (p.s. early-bird ticket sales end this Friday). This could, after all, be one of those technologies where early movers will gain a massive advantage over their competitors. But how do you prepare yourself for this future today, while many aspects of quantum computing are still in development?

IBM’s quantum computer demonstrated at Disrupt SF 2018

Joining us onstage will be Microsoft’s Krysta Svore, who leads the company’s Quantum efforts; IBM’s Jay Gambetta, the principal theoretical scientist behind IBM’s quantum computing effort; and Jim Clark, the director of quantum hardware at Intel Labs.

That’s pretty much a Who’s Who of the current state of quantum computing, even though all of these companies are at different stages of their quantum journey. IBM already has working quantum computers, Intel has built a quantum processor and is investing heavily into the technology and Microsoft is trying a very different approach to the technology that may lead to a breakthrough in the long run but that is currently keeping it from having a working machine. In return, though, Microsoft has invested heavily into building the software tools for building quantum applications.

During the panel, we’ll discuss the current state of the industry, where quantum computing can already help enterprises today and what they can do to prepare for the future. The implications of this new technology also go well beyond faster computing (for some use cases); there are also the security issues that will arise once quantum computers become widely available and current encryption methodologies become easily breakable.

The early-bird ticket discount ends this Friday, August 9. Be sure to grab your tickets to get the max $100 savings before prices go up. If you’re a startup in the enterprise space, we still have some startup demo tables available! Each demo table comes with four tickets to the show and a high-visibility exhibit space to showcase your company to attendees — learn more here.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

Synchronize your Fitbits, people. You have 72 hours left to get your fiscal fitness on. Three days to save $100 on tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 in San Francisco on September 5. Buy your early-bird ticket by August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and then go back to counting your steps.

We say with confidence that no tech category’s more competitive than enterprise software. The gigantic, $500 billion market generates a constant flow of multibillion-dollar acquisitions every year. And it takes a special kind of fierce early-stage enterprise startup to jump in, invent new services and shake up old-school incumbents.

More than 1,000 attendees will be in the house to explore this rich, complex topic, TechCrunch-style. Our editors will interview top titans in the enterprise world — like SAP CEO, Bill McDermott; Atlassian co-founder, Scott Farquhar; and Jocelyn Goldfein, managing director at Zetta Venture Partners. They’ll also tap rising founders of upstart startups.

The enterprise just can’t get enough of AI, but large companies face a huge challenge: packaging all that data in machine learning models — a necessary element for using AI to automate processes. That’s why we’re especially excited that Bindu Reddy, co-founder and CEO at RealityEngines, will join us onstage.

Her company aims to create research-driven cloud services to reduce some of the inherent complexity of working with AI tools. Reddy, along with investor Jocelyn Goldfein, a managing director at Zetta Venture Partners, and others will talk about the growing role of AI in the enterprise.

That’s just the tip of the Enterprise iceberg. More than 20 interviews, panel discussions, Q&As and breakout sessions will cover a wide range of technologies, including intelligent marketing automation, the cloud, Kubernetes and even quantum and blockchain. Peruse the agenda to see what else we have in store for you.

Early-bird pricing for TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 ends in just 72 hours. Buy your ticket by August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and you’ll save $100. But wait, there’s more — for every ticket you buy, we’ll register you for a free Expo-only pass to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019. Now that’s fiscal fitness.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Enterprise? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

As Slack makes its way deeper into the enterprise, it needs to layer on more sophisticated security measures like the encryption key management feature it released last year. Today, the company published a blog post outlining its latest security strategy, and while it still doesn’t include end-to-end encryption of Slack messaging, it is a big step forward.

For many companies, there is a minimum level of security they will require before they use a tool like Slack company-wide, and this is particularly true for regulated industries. Slack is trying to answer some of these concerns with today’s post.

As for end-to-end (E2E) encryption, Slack believes it would adversely affect the user experience and says there hasn’t been a lot of customer demand for it so far. “If we were to add E2E encryption, it would result in limited functionality in Slack. With EKM (encryption key management), you gain cryptographic controls, providing visibility and opportunity for key revocation with granularity, control and no sacrifice to user experience,” a Slack spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Today, the company provides the ability for admins to require Touch ID or Face ID or to enter a passcode on a mobile device. In addition, if a user reports a device stolen, admins can wipe Slack conversations remotely, although this is currently only available through an API.

What they have coming soon is a new administrative dashboard, where admins can manage all of this kind of security in a single place. They will even be able to detect if a person is using a jail-broken phone and shut down access to the phone. In addition, they will be able to force upgrades to the latest version of Slack by not allowing access until the person downloads the latest version.

Later this year, admins will be able to block files downloaded from Slack desktop that come from outside of a set of pre-approved IP addresses. And on the mobile side, they will be able to force file links to open in an approved browser.

All of these features are designed to make administrators feel more comfortable using Slack in a secure and reliable way. One of Slack’s big strengths is its ability to integrate with other pieces of the enterprise software ecosystem, but companies still want control over what files are shared and how they open across devices. These new tools go a long way toward easing those types of concerns.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

Remember Claris, the 1987 Apple spin-off that made applications like MacWrite, MacPaint and FileMaker? In 1998, Apple brought all of those products in-house again, with the exception of the low-code application platform FileMaker . With that move, Claris changed its name to FileMaker Inc. Today, however, the Claris name rises from the dead, as FileMaker Inc. is changing its name to Claris International. The name of the FileMaker product itself, though, remains the same.

As FileMaker Claris CEO Brad Freitag, who recently took over this role from Dominique Goupil, told me, the reason for this move is because the company is starting to look beyond its core FileMaker product. “We’re accelerating our vision and our strategy,” he said. “We’ve described our vision for a long time as making powerful technology accessible to everyone. And with the leadership change, we are really asserting a more aggressive posture in bringing that product roadmap to life.”

Claris CEO Brad Freitag

To put a point on this and clarify its strategy, Claris is also using today’s announcement to launch Claris Connect, a tool for integrating various cloud services and automating workflows between them. With this, Claris also confirmed the previously reported acquisition of Stamplay, a small Italian startup that makes tools for connecting the APIs of various enterprise tools. Claris Connect is going to be the second product in Claris’ lineup, with FileMaker remaining its flagship product.

FileMaker, the product, currently serves more than a million end users who work at about 50,000 different companies. The company has great brand recognition and has been profitable for more than 80 consecutive quarters, Freitag said, but with its foray into workflow and business process automation, it was time to look for a different brand name.

Although low-code/no-code has been a growing buzzword in the industry for a few years now, FileMaker didn’t really make any waves. That, too, is going to change a bit, it seems, as Freitag actually hopes to expand the business significantly. “As we look out five years, we see multiplying the user community by at least 3x and there’s a pretty clear path to getting there,” he said. “If you look at our business, we’re over 50% outside of the U.S. The market opportunities for us exist in the Americas, as well as Europe and Asia.”

Freitag admits that FileMaker was “relatively modest” in its go-to-market posture, so it will expand its brand and category awareness efforts. Chances are then, you’ll hear the Claris and FileMaker names a bit more often going forward (and Freitag stressed that the company remains “100% committed to the FileMaker platform”).

Claris also expects to expand its product offerings going forward — and that may include additional acquisitions. “We are investing heavily in organic innovation as we expand the product lines — and we are open to additional acquisitions,” he said.

FileMaker Inc./Claris is making this move while the overall market for products like FileMaker continues to grow. That’s something Freitag hopes to capitalize on as the company looks ahead. What exactly that will look like remains to be seen, but Freitag noted that the kind of next-generation platform will go beyond the kind of database-driven applications FileMaker itself is known for today and focus on services that support workflow applications. He also believes there is an opportunity for IoT solutions under the Claris brand and maybe, in the long run, augmented reality applications.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, sits in a tough position in the database market. On one side, it has traditional database vendors like Oracle, and on the other there’s AWS and its family of databases. It takes some good technology and serious dollars to compete with those companies. Cockroach took care of the latter with a $55 million Series C round today.

The round was led by Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global along with existing investor GV. Other existing investors including Benchmark, Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, FirstMark Capital and Work-Bench also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to over $110 million, according to the company.

Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO, says the company is building a modern database to compete with these industry giants. “CockroachDB is architected from the ground up as a cloud native database. Fundamentally, what that means is that it’s distributed, not just across nodes in a single data center, which is really table stakes as the database gets bigger, but also across data centers to be resilient. It’s also distributed potentially across the planet in order to give a global customer base what feels like a local experience to keep the data near them,” Kimball explained.

At the same time, even while it has a cloud product hosted on AWS, it also competes with several AWS database products including Amazon Aurora, Redshift and DynamoDB. Much like MongoDB, which changed its open source licensing structure last year, Cockroach did as well, for many of the same reasons. They both believed bigger players were taking advantage of the open source nature of their products to undermine their markets.

“If you’re trying to build a business around an open source product, you have to be careful that a much bigger player doesn’t come along and extract too much of the value out of the open source product that you’ve been building and maintaining,” Kimball explained.

As the company deals with all of these competitive pressures, it takes a fair bit of money to continue building a piece of technology to beat the competition, while going up against much deeper-pocketed rivals. So far the company has been doing well with Q1 revenue this year doubling all of last year. Kimball indicated that Q2 could double Q1, but he wants to keep that going, and that takes money.

“We need to accelerate that sales momentum and that’s usually what the Series C is about. Fundamentally, we have, I think, the most advanced capabilities in the market right now. Certainly we do if you look at the differentiator around just global capability. We nevertheless are competing with Oracle on one side, and Amazon on the other side. So a lot of this money is going towards product development too,” he said.

Cockroach Labs was founded in 2015, and is based in New York City.

Posted by Richy George on 6 August, 2019

Cybereason, which uses machine learning to increase the number of endpoints a single analyst can manage across a network of distributed resources, has raised $200 million in new financing from SoftBank Group and its affiliates. 

It’s a sign of the belief that SoftBank has in the technology, since the Japanese investment firm is basically doubling down on commitments it made to the Boston-based company four years ago.

The company first came to our attention five years ago when it raised a $25 million financing from investors, including CRV, Spark Capital and Lockheed Martin.

Cybereason’s technology processes and analyzes data in real time across an organization’s daily operations and relationships. It looks for anomalies in behavior across nodes on networks and uses those anomalies to flag suspicious activity.

The company also provides reporting tools to inform customers of the root cause, the timeline, the person involved in the breach or breaches, which tools they use and what information was being disseminated within and outside of the organization.

For co-founder Lior Div, Cybereason’s work is the continuation of the six years of training and service he spent working with the Israeli army’s 8200 Unit, the military incubator for half of the security startups pitching their wares today. After his time in the military, Div worked for the Israeli government as a private contractor reverse-engineering hacking operations.

Over the last two years, Cybereason has expanded the scope of its service to a network that spans 6 million endpoints tracked by 500 employees, with offices in Boston, Tel Aviv, Tokyo and London.

“Cybereason’s big data analytics approach to mitigating cyber risk has fueled explosive expansion at the leading edge of the EDR domain, disrupting the EPP market. We are leading the wave, becoming the world’s most reliable and effective endpoint prevention and detection solution because of our technology, our people and our partners,” said Div, in a statement. “We help all security teams prevent more attacks, sooner, in ways that enable understanding and taking decisive action faster.”

The company said it will use the new funding to accelerate its sales and marketing efforts across all geographies and push further ahead with research and development to make more of its security operations autonomous.

“Today, there is a shortage of more than three million level 1-3 analysts,” said Yonatan Striem-Amit, chief technology officer and co-founder, Cybereason, in a statement. “The new autonomous SOC enables SOC teams of the future to harness technology where manual work is being relied on today and it will elevate  L1 analysts to spend time on higher value tasks and accelerate the advanced analysis L3 analysts do.”

Most recently the company was behind the discovery of Operation SoftCell, the largest nation-state cyber espionage attack on telecommunications companies. 

That attack, which was either conducted by Chinese-backed actors or made to look like it was conducted by Chinese-backed actors, according to Cybereason, targeted a select group of users in an effort to acquire cell phone records.

As we wrote at the time:

… hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world to date over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts of call records — including times and dates of calls, and their cell-based locations — on at least 20 individuals.

Researchers at Boston-based Cybereason, who discovered the operation and shared their findings with TechCrunch, said the hackers could track the physical location of any customer of the hacked telcos — including spies and politicians — using the call records.

Lior Div, Cybereason’s co-founder and chief executive, told TechCrunch it’s “massive-scale” espionage.

Call detail records — or CDRs — are the crown jewels of any intelligence agency’s collection efforts. These call records are highly detailed metadata logs generated by a phone provider to connect calls and messages from one person to another. Although they don’t include the recordings of calls or the contents of messages, they can offer detailed insight into a person’s life. The National Security Agency  has for years controversially collected the call records of Americans from cell providers like AT&T and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch), despite the questionable legality.

It’s not the first time that Cybereason has uncovered major security threats.

Back when it had just raised capital from CRV and Spark, Cybereason’s chief executive was touting its work with a defense contractor who’d been hacked. Again, the suspected culprit was the Chinese government.

As we reported, during one of the early product demos for a private defense contractor, Cybereason identified a full-blown attack by the Chinese — 10,000 thousand usernames and passwords were leaked, and the attackers had access to nearly half of the organization on a daily basis.

The security breach was too sensitive to be shared with the press, but Div says that the FBI was involved and that the company had no indication that they were being hacked until Cybereason detected it.

Posted by Richy George on 5 August, 2019

There are few topics as hot right now in the enterprise as customer experience management, that ability to collect detailed data about your customers, then deliver customized experiences based on what you have learned about them. To help understand the challenges companies face building this kind of experience, we are bringing Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt to TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise on September 5 in San Francisco (p.s. early-bird sales end this Friday, August 9).

At the root of customer experience management is data — tons and tons of data. It may come from the customer journey through a website or app, basic information you know about the customer or the customer’s transaction history. It’s hundreds of signals and collecting that data in order to build the experience where Reinhardt’s company comes in.

Segment wants to provide the infrastructure to collect and understand all of that data. Once you have that in place, you can build data models and then develop applications that make use of the data to drive a better experience.

Reinhardt, and a panel that includes Qualtrics’ Julie Larson-Green and Adobe’s Amit Ahuja, will discuss with TechCrunch editors the difficulties companies face collecting all of that data to build a picture of the customer, then using it to deliver more meaningful experiences for them. See the full agenda here.

Segment was born in the proverbial dorm room at MIT when Reinhardt and his co-founders were students there. They have raised more than $280 million since inception. Customers include Atlassian, Bonobos, Instacart, Levis and Intuit .

Early-bird tickets to see Peter and our lineup of enterprise influencers at TC Sessions: Enterprise are on sale for just $249 when you book here; but hurry, prices go up by $100 after this Friday!

Are you an early-stage startup in the enterprise-tech space? Book a demo table for $2,000 and get in front of TechCrunch editors and future customers/investors. Each demo table comes with four tickets to enjoy the show.

Posted by Richy George on 5 August, 2019

We’re just one month away from TC Sessions: Enterprise, which takes place on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. But you have only four days left to score an early-bird ticket and save yourself $100. Right now, you pay $249, but once the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) on August 9, the bird flies south and the price flies north. Get your early-bird ticket today and save.

Focused on the current and future state of enterprise software, this day-long conference offers tremendous value — even at full price. Considering the rate at which this $500 billion industry acquires startups — and how quickly it’s evolving — TC Sessions: Enterprise makes perfect sense for enterprise-minded founders, investors, CTOs, CIOs, engineers and MBA students (student tickets cost $75).

We’ve packed the conference with interviews, panel discussions, Q&As and breakout sessions. TechCrunch editors will dig deep to separate hype from reality as they explore crucial issues, complex technologies and investment trends with both industry giants and up-and-coming startups.

Here’s a sample of just some of what we have planned. You can also check out the agenda — and we might add a few surprises along the way.

Curious about the latest in enterprise investment? TechCrunch editor Connie Loizos will interview VCs Jason Green, founder and general partner at Emergence; Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan Partners; and Rebecca Lynn, co-founder and general partner at Canvas Ventures. They’ll examine trends in early-stage enterprise investments and discuss different sectors and companies that have their attention.

Maybe you want to learn from a founder who’s been there and done that. Don’t miss Aaron Levie, Box co-founder, chairman and CEO, as he outlines what it took to travel the entire startup journey. He’ll also offer his take on the future of data platforms.

Want to cover more ground at TC Sessions: Enterprise? Take advantage of our group discount and bring the whole team. Buy four or more tickets at once and save 20%. Don’t forget: For every ticket you buy to TC Sessions: Enterprise, we’ll register you for a free Expo Only pass to TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4.

TC Sessions: Enterprise takes place on September 5, but your chance to save $100 ends in just four short days. Don’t wait — buy an early-bird ticket today, and we’ll see you in September!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Enterprise? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Posted by Richy George on 5 August, 2019

Mesosphere was born as the commercial face of the open source Mesos project. It was surely a clever solution to make virtual machines run much more efficiently, but times change and companies change. Today the company announced it was changing its name to Day2IQ or D2IQ for short, and fixing its sights on Kubernetes and cloud native, which have grown quickly in the years since Mesos appeared on the scene.

D2IQ CEO Mike Fey says that the name reflects the company’s new approach. Instead of focusing entirely on the Mesos project, it wants to concentrate on helping more mature organizations adopt cloud native technologies.

“We felt like the Mesosphere name was somewhat of constrictive. It made statements about the company that really allocated us to a given technology, instead of to our core mission, which is supporting successful Day Two operations, making cloud native a viable approach not just for the early adopters, but for everybody,” Fey explained.

Fey is careful to point out that the company will continue to support the Mesos-driven DC/OS solution, but the general focus of the company has shifted, and the new name is meant to illustrate that. “The Mesos product line is still doing well, and there are things that it does that nothing else can deliver on yet. So we’re not abandoning that totally, but we do see that Kubernetes is very powerful, and the community behind it is amazing, and we want to be a value added member of that community,” he said.

He adds that this is not about jumping on the cloud native bandwagon all of a sudden. He points out his company has had a Kubernetes product for more than a year running on top of DC/OS, and it has been a contributing member to the cloud native community.

It’s not just about a name change and refocusing the company and the brand, it also involves several new cloud native products that the company has built to serve the type of audience, the more mature organization, that the new name was inspired by.

For starters, it’s introducing its own flavor of Kubernetes called Konvoy, which it says, provides an “enterprise-grade Kubernetes experience.” The company will also provide a support and training layer, which it believes is a key missing piece, and one that is required by larger organizations looking to move to cloud native.

In addition, it is offering a data integration layer, which is designed to help integrate large amounts of data in a cloud-native fashion. To that end, it is introducing a Beta of Kudo, an open source cloud-native tool for building stateful operations in Kubernetes. The company has already donated this tool to the Cloud Native Computing foundation, the open source organization that houses Kubernetes and other cloud native projects.

The company faces stiff competition in this space from some heavy hitters like the newly combined IBM and Red Hat, but it believes by adhering to a strong open source ethos, it can move beyond its Mesos roots to become a player in the cloud native space. Time will tell if it made a good bet.