Year: 2022

Otter.ai has been updated for iOS, introducing new tools that move it forward from being a transcription solution toward becoming a work productivity hub. Sam Liang, Otter.ai co-founder and CEO, told me a little about the company’s plans.

Otter wants to make distanced working meaningful

We know the pandemic accelerated adoption of remote and hybrid working practices. While this was a visible direction before COVID-19, the need to maintain distance meant even the most refusenik bosses had to support Work from Home (WFH), at least for a while.

It is, of course, true to say that some of these hard-won freedoms have been eroded in some workplaces of late, but remote and hybrid work has seen wider acceptance than ever before. Even Apple, albeit reluctantly, seems to have accepted that staff don’t need to be in the office every day of the week.

A recent Topia study claims 94% of employees think they should be able to work from anywhere, so long as they get their work done. With 34% of workers prepared to resign this year if they don’t get the flexibility they need, it’s only a matter of time before employers truly embrace these new workflows. It turns out that most businesses are run by humans, and they need to be heard.

Perhaps inevitably, remote work prompted a huge shift toward virtual and hybrid meetings. Otter claims over 500 million people attend such meetings daily. The company has seen a 400% increase in the number of meeting minutes it’ transcribed year-on-year — from 3 billion minutes to 12 billion in the last 12 months.

Even while changing the way we work represents a cultural shift that makes some business leaders uncomfortable, it also enables real advantages to smart companies willing to engage with the trend.

Where we are going

Liang explains:

“Before the pandemic, the traditional norms of how meetings were conducted and how businesses were run did not always leverage the skills of everyone and didn’t encourage collaboration,” he said.

“We lived in an extroverted world where meetings were dominated by people who could hear and process information, not worry about distractions, and liked to speak up. This type of communication not only was exclusive and lacking accessibility for many professionals, it prevented a lot of valuable productivity and collaboration.”

Remote work changed this dynamic. It created a slightly more equal environment in which introverts gained a better chance to be heard. And tools like Otter are yielding additional benefits, such as in accessibility. Hard-of-hearing employees can join a meeting and use Otter’s real time transcription to follow the conversation in real time. 

“In this new hybrid work world, more companies are enabling new modalities, meetings, use cases — inherently pushing new tools into the world that empower businesses to leverage all of their talent more and encourage collaboration,” the Otter CEO told me.

The impact? Many improvements in work/life balance that give employees the flexibility they need to do their job both in and out the office, asynchronously, when and where they need to be — with the addition of boosted productivity to ice that cake.

That’s the context, so what’s new in Otter.ai?

Otter.ai’s new tools

The new Otter.ai introduces a series of useful tools to help augment communication using technology – and delivers tools that may optimize those meetings for you.

The Home Feed & Calendar feature, for instance, acts as a central repository of information about your meetings, making it easy to access conversations, highlights of conversations, and any tagged action items.

If you connect your calendar, you’ll also see any upcoming scheduled meetings and can invite Otter Assistant to join in, capture, and share meeting notes. You can also ask the assistant to attend and capture a meeting on your behalf if you can’t make it.

Meeting Gems is another useful tool. These can be generated directly from your meeting by highlighting snippets within the notes. You can use them during the meeting to quickly flag action items or decisions, and then assign, comment, or query those items.

[Also read: In the new workplace, all we want is a chance to Flow and grow]

Why this matters

I think most people can remember when in-person meetings became something like vast workplace icebergs looming into your schedule. You’d know that no matter how busy you happened to be, for the entire period of that meeting you’d get nothing done. You’d sit in a meeting room with your teams to listen to the most dominant voices (and the rare and often-ignored quiet ones) and if you were lucky, someone might remember to take notes.

Poorly managed meetings become a colossal waste of time. This kind of meeting etiquette has been forced to change with the advent of the pandemic. Not only did workers quickly find that taking notes was incredibly important for there to be any chance to make meetings effective, but collaboration software providers soon saw the need to integrate with other solutions to make meeting time productive. Zoom Marketplace (where Otter is also available) is an illustration of how that company recognized this.

Liang said Otter’s primary mission is to make communication productive. Given the root of the solution is AI, he explained: “One way of doing that is turning voice conversations into automated actionable insights,” he said.

To get some sense of the approach Liang’s company is taking, he pointed to Automatic Outlines, another new tool currently in beta with business users. It’s a simple but incredibly useful solution to automatically create a meeting summary, “so you and your colleagues can easily access a summary of what was discussed.”

The final score?

No one ever really needs to leave a meeting without notes again – and you don’t even need to be at a meeting to gain insight into what happened.

In my opinion, the steady confluence of all these technologies means remote meetings will soon become more effective than in-person interactions, because the technology has evolved to augment in-meeting communication with tools to support the realization of the intent.

How much it costs

Not all the new features are available to every user. Otter offers four pricing tiers, the Basic free service, Pro ($8.33 per month), Business ($20 per month) and an Enterprise tier, which is negotiated with large clients. Of the new features, Basic users can access Meeting Gems.

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Have you recently been on a video confefence call, hit the “mute” button and then offered up some nasty comments about a client or a colleague — or even the boss?

Or maybe while in a conference room with colleagues — muted — and pointed out that some proposed action would violate the terms of a secret acquisition in its final stages?

If you were comfortable that the mute button was actively protecting your secret, you shouldn’t have been.

Thanks to some impressive experimentation and research from a group of academics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Loyola University Chicago, utterances made while the app is in mute are still captured and saved into RAM.

On one level, this is something we all already knew. When a user is muted and says something, most videoconferencing apps will display a note alerting the user that they’re talking while muted. How could it say that if it weren’t listening while the mute button is on? 

Just as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa are always listening for a command word, so, too, are those “muted” applications. 

The real question is whether those captured utterances are at meaningful risk for being accessed by an attacker or an insider. First, anything saved in volatile memory is lost — theoretically — the instant the machine restarts or shuts down. Therefore, we are looking at the exposure after the utterance is made and before that machine restarts. Depending on the user’s behavior, that timeframe might be a few hours, a couple of days — possibly multiple weeks. 

Generally, stealing data from volatile memory is difficult, but not impossible. As the report authors said in a group interview, if a bad guy gets into volatile memory, the user and the enterprise have a lot bigger concerns than some saved utterances during a mute. Still, it could happen.

The mute issue is solely based on the app and how it handles such data.

One of the lead authors of the report is Kassem Fawaz, an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is also affiliated with Wisconsin’s Computer Sciences Department. 

“The main implications have to do with the inherent trust users are placing in these videoconferencing apps,” Fawaz said. “We did not find evidence of audio leaving the user’s devices. The only exception was telemetry data leaving from Cisco Webex, which has been fixed since our disclosure to Ciscom. However, even when the user presses the mute button, the app still has access to the audio stream and the user is trusting that the app is well-behaved. The other implication is that the mute functionality — similar to turning off the camera — should not be left to the app, but should be either OS-controlled or hardware-controlled.”

Fawaz’s point about the camera is that the team found that a camera “off” button truly halted any video from being captured in any way. Not so much with audio. Sometimes, the browser can make a difference.

“On Chrome, mute means mute,” Fawaz said. “We can’t say about Safari or Firefox.”

The university’s report was mostly about trust in the app makers. If the vendors are acting honorably and respecting privacy, cybersecurity, and security compliance issues, then the risk is minimal. If they are not acting that way, users and enterprises could be in trouble.

The report didn’t draw conclusions on how the app makers were behaving, but merely stressed that each one can go in its own direction.

That said, the rules of secrecy and even the rules of being a nice person should apply here. With the imminent-acquisition scenario, if you’re not allowed to discuss certain details, don’t say them in front of a microphone with outsiders regardless of what the mute toggle displays. As for being nice, how about not saying nasty comments about your colleagues or clients at all? 

The cardinal rule of email and security/compliance is, “Before you type an email/message, envision yourself testifying to it in open court. If that makes you uncomfortable, don’t type it.” It’s not a far leap to extend that rule to speaking something in front of a microphone. 

For example, I use an Apple Watch. Several times during a typical day, it will say loudly “I didn’t understand that” or “Here’s what I found on that topic.” Although it is highly annoying and frustrating, it’s an effective reminder that I need to take that watch off before saying anything that I don’t want the world to know.

You need to keep in mind the same thing when using a mobile device or a desktop device — especially while using a videoconferencing app.

Amid the on-going coronavirus pandemic, 2021 followed in the footsteps of its predecessor, continuing to be an unpredictable, and at times incredibly difficult, year. But one thing that stayed constant was the steady flow of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across the tech sector.

According to research by Global Data, global tech M&A deals had already neared $3 trillion by Q3, largely supported by the tech, media, and telecom sectors. Although nothing rivalled Xilinx’s $35 billion acquisition of Advanced Micro Devices in 2020, last year did see Intuit buy Mailchimp for $12 billion and Square splash out a princely sum — $29 billion — for Afterpay.

GlobalData

As for whether 2022 will maintain last year’s pace, early signs seem to suggest there will be no slowing of big deals across the industry, with cybersecurity and collaboration software already proving to be hot areas.

Here are the biggest enterprise technology acquisitions of 2022 so far, in reverse chronological order:

April 25: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B

Nine years after going public, and eleven days after billionaire Elon Musk first made an offer to buy Twitter, the social media network announced it would become a privately owned company once again.

The purchase price totals an eye-watering $44 billion and is includes of $21 billion of Musk’s own money, alongside debt funding from Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions. The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1.

Despite initially declining Musk’s offer and enacting anti-takeover measures, the board ultimately decided to accept Musk’s offer once it saw confirmed funding for the acquisition.

In a company statement, Bret Taylor, Twitter’s independent board chair, said: “The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”

April 11: Kaseya buys Datto for $6.2B and takes the company private

Security software company Kaseya has agreed to buy Datto for $6.2 billion and will take the company private again, after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020. Datto was founded in 2007 and provides data backup and security software, primarily to managed service providers.

“This is exciting news for Kaseya’s global customers, who can expect to see more functional, innovative and integrated solutions as a result of the purchase,” said Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO.

April 5: AMD acquires Pensando for $1.9B

Chipmaker AMD has announced the acquisition of Pensando for approximately $1.9 billion.

Pensado specializes in data processing unites (DPUs), which include intelligent, programmable software to support the software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage, and security services that could be rolled out quickly to edge, colocation, or service-provider networks.

“There are a wide range of use cases—such as 5G and IoT—that need to support lots of low-latency traffic,” Soni Jiandani, Pensando cofounder and chief business office told Network World last November. “We’ve taken a ground-up approach to giving enterprise customers a fully programmable system with the ability to support multiple infrastructure services without dedicated CPUs.”

March 29: Celonis acquires Process Analytics Factory

Process mining specialist Celonis is acquiring fellow German software firm, Process Analytics Factory, for a reported $100 million.

Up until now, Celonis has been focused on helping enterprises optimize processes around their ERP systems — and more recently has branched out to help them optimize their use of workflow automation platforms, too. Now it is acquiring Process Analytics Factory to improve its process mining offering and help enterprises automate with Microsoft’s Power Platform.

In October 2020 Celonis launched its Execution Management System (EMS) to visualize and design more efficient processes, and in April 2021 it formed a partnership with Microsoft to deliver process analytics through Power BI and to integrate its process improvement tools with Microsoft power Platform. Then, in October 2021, it partnered with ServiceNow to deliver process mining capabilities to the Now platform. It also has technology partnerships with Appian, Coupa, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, Splunk, and a handful of other software vendors.

March 28: HP to acquire Poly for $3.3B

HP has announced it is acquiring Poly, a company that specializes in video and audio equipment, for a purchase price of $1.7 billion, with a total transaction value of $3.3 billion, including debt. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2022.

The acquisition is set to accelerate HP’s foray into the world of hybrid work, coming eight months after the company purchased remote desktop software provider Teradici.

Founded in 1990 and originally named Polycom, the company was acquired by headset maker Plantronics in 2019, after which the two newly merged companies rebranded themselves as Poly. Since then, the company has focused on providing enterprise-grade collaboration products, such as meeting room speakers and cameras, webcams, headsets, and software.

“The rise of the hybrid office creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redefine the way work gets done,” said Enrique Lores, president and CEO of HP. “Combining HP and Poly creates a leading portfolio of hybrid work solutions across large and growing markets. Poly’s strong technology, complementary go-to-market, and talented team will help to drive long-term profitable growth as we continue building a stronger HP.”

March 23: Apple acquires UK fintech startup Credit Kudos

Apple is acquiring the UK-based fintech startup Credit Kudos for an undisclosed amount. Credit Kudos last raised £5 million ($6.5 million) in funding in April 2020.

Neither Credit Kudos or Apple could be reached to confirm the deal, which was first reported by the crypto-focused publication The Block, citing three sources close to the deal.

Credit Kudos is a challenger credit bureau that uses machine learning and real-time data to build up a fuller picture of a person’s credit score, rather than traditional agencies, which typically rely on older information such as bank and utility statements to build a profile.

The firm has also benefitted from the recent wave of open banking regulations across the globe, which aim to open up consumer financial data via a set of secure application programming interfaces (APIs). Credit Kudos provides this data to clients for services such as affordability and risk assessments.

It is unclear what Apple plans to do with Credit Kudos, but the company has invested significantly in its fintech capabilities over recent years — in particular, its mobile Apple Pay wallet and its Apple Card credit card, which is currently only available in the US and was built in partnership with Goldman Sachs.

March 8: Google buys cybersecurity company Mandiant

Google will acquire cyberdefense and response firm Mandiant for $5.4 billion, in a move to offer an end-to-end security operations suite and advisory services from its cloud platform.

“Cybersecurity is a mission, and we believe it’s one of the most important of our generation,” Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia said in a statement announcing the acquisition. “Google Cloud shares our mission-driven culture to bring security to every organization. Together, we will deliver our expertise and intelligence at scale via the Mandiant Advantage SaaS platform, as part of the Google Cloud security portfolio.”

March 3: Snowflake buys Streamlit for $800M

Data cloud company Snowflake has acquired Streamlit for $800 million, enabling developers and data scientists to build apps using tools with simplified data access and governance.

Streamlit’s open-source framework allows developers and data scientists to build and share data apps quickly and iteratively, without the need to be an expert in front-end development. According to Streamlit, the platform has had more than 8 million downloads and more than 1.5 million applications have been built using it.

“At Snowflake, we believe in bringing together open standards and open source with industry-leading data governance and security,” Snowflake Co-Founder and President of Products Benoit Dageville said in a statement announcing the acquisition. “When Snowflake and Streamlit come together, we will be able to provide developers and data scientists with a single, powerful hub to discover and collaborate with data they can trust to build next generation data apps and shape the future of data science.”

Feb. 28: Rakuten Symphony acquires Kubernetes platform Robin.io

The recently launched telco-focused arm of Japan’s Rakuten Group, Rakuten Symphony, has acquired Robin.io, a startup offering a Kubernetes platform optimized for storage and complex network applications.

The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. Since first launching, Robin.io has moved beyond its original focus on storage to offer a more full-featured Kubernetes platform, providing large telcos with ways of  automating 5G services applications on Kubernetes and orchestrating private 5G and LTE deployments.

“Robin.io’s technology innovations over the last several years will now get a much bigger canvas to lead the vision for cloud-native transformation for the industry. Our vision to deliver simple to use, easy to deploy hyperscale automation is very well aligned,” said Robin.io CEO Partha Seetala.

Feb. 24: Cloudflare acquires security startup Area 1 Security

Cloudflare announced plans to acquire Area 1 Security for around $126 million, using both cash and stock to fund the acquisition.

Cloudflare has its own suite of zero-trust security products designed to prevent data loss, malware and phishing attacks, even when employees aren’t using their office network or a VPN. This deal will see the company add email security to this portfolio.

Area 1 Security has developed a product that stops phishing attacks sent via email before they reach an inbox. The company claims to have blocked more than 40 million phishing attempts in 2021 alone.

Cloudflare cCo-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said in a statement: “To us, the future of Zero Trust includes an integrated, one-click approach to securing all of an organization’s applications, including its most ubiquitous cloud application, email. Together, we expect we’ll be delivering the fastest, most effective, and most reliable email security on the market.”

Feb. 15: Intel to acquire Tower Semiconductor

Intel announced plans to acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion, giving it access to more specialized production as it looks to take advantage of growing demand for semiconductors. The deal has been approved by both company boards, but is expected to take as long as 12 months to move through the normal regulatory channels.

Intel announced last year that it was planning to enter the foundry market to produce chips designed by their customers. Tower has been investing in multiple locations in recent years to boost capacity for 200- and 300-millimeter chips. It serves “fabless” companies, who design chips but outsource manufacturing, and integrated device manufacturers.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sees the move as a good fit for the company’s vision. “Tower’s specialty technology portfolio, geographic reach, deep customer relationships and services-first operations will help scale Intel’s foundry services and advance our goal of becoming a major provider of foundry capacity globally,” he said in a statement.

Feb. 15: Akamai acquires Linode for $900M

Akamai has entered into an agreement to acquire Linode, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform provider, for approximately $900 million. Akamai reportedly expects Linode to add about $100 million in revenue for FY22.

Founded in 2003, Linode has positioned itself as an IaaS alternative to public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Unlike many of its competitors, Linode says it had not raised outside funding, boasting it “has successfully run a profitable business since [its] inception.”

“The opportunity to combine Linode’s developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai’s market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai,” Akamai CEO and co-founder Tom Leighton said  in a statement. “Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge.”

Jan 31: Citrix to be acquired by private equity firms for $16.5B

Cloud computing and virtualization company Citrix is being acquired by private equity firms Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital for $16.5 billion. It’s been reported that Vista plans to combine Citrix with Tibco, which it acquired in 2014 for $4.3 billion.

The all-cash deal will see the publicly traded Citrix go private and will include the assumption of Citrix’s debt, the companies said.