Startup
Amazon Web Services Expands Serverless Computing Strategy
After unveiling a satellite data service, an on-premise infrastructure offering and countless new features in the first two days of its annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Amazon Web Services Inc. this morning introduced yet another set of enhancements for its cloud platform.
Expanded serverless features
Many of the capabilities announced today are rolling out for AWS Lambda. Itâs a serverless computing service introduced in 2014 that enables companies to run code on the providerâs cloud without having to manually manage the underlying hardware resources, which frees up a great deal of time and resources.
Lambda is receiving a feature that AWS calls Lambda Layers. It enables developers to take duplicate code that appears in multiple Lambda workloads and bundle it into a sort of master copy. When the master copy is changed, the modification is applied is applied to all the workloads that depend on it. This feature will make it simpler for companies that rely heavily on Lambda in their operations to ensure that important updates are rolled out consistently across applications.
Already, Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels (pictured) said in his re:Invent keynote this morning, hundreds of thousands of customers building serverless applications. And itâs not just cloud-native startups. âLarge enterprises are the ones that are really embracing serverless technology,â he said.
Together with Lambda Layers, AWS is giving customers more flexibility in how they use the service. The provider has added support for external runtime systems, which means that developers can now write serverless applications in just about every programming language out there. Moreover, theyâre gaining the freedom to write their code in three popular third-party editors: PyCharm, IntelliJ and Microsoft Corp.âs Visual Studio Code.
While at it, the provider has also enhanced AWS Step Functions, another one of its serverless computing offerings. Companies can now use the tool to create multi-application workflows that harness the Amazon SageMaker machine learning engine, the DynamoDB NoSQL database and a few other previously unsupported AWS services. AWS also debuted Nested Applications, which is intended to make it easy to stitch serverless applications together.
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New offerings
Alongside the updates to its serverless computing portfolio, the Amazon.com Inc. subsidiary has pulled back the covers on a couple of new services. The most significant addition is a managed version of Kafka.
Kafka is an open-source system for transporting real-time data that enjoys widespread adoption in the enterprise. Originally developed by LinkedIn to process user activity metrics from its website, the platform is today used for a wide range of applications ranging from infrastructure performance monitoring to cybersecurity.
Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka, or MSK for short, offers to free up enterprises from having to manage their deployments of the software in-house. The service is also fully compatible with open-source Kafka versions, which will make it easier for companies to migrate existing deployments to AWS.
âAmazon MSK operates highly available Apache Kafka clusters, provides security features out of the box, is fully compatible with open-source versions of Apache Kafka allowing existing applications to migrate without code changes, and has built-in AWS integrations that accelerate application development,â AWS wrote in the announcement.
Capping off todayâs lineup of product announcements is a new self-service version of the providerâs Well-Architected Framework. The tool, which was previously only used by AWSâ in-house solution architects as part of consultations, enables companies to assess their cloud environments against common best practices.
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Business
Virtual Numbers for Small Businesses: Affordable Solutions for Enhanced Communication
Virtual phone numbers have become popular all over the world. They are popular because virtual phone numbers are practical and provide a wide range of benefits. There are several significant variations between a virtual number and a regular number, and there is no direct connection between a virtual number and a telephone.
Small businesses can quickly and affordably enhance their business by using virtual phone numbers. As it helps to maintain a professional image, the majority of small business owners are choosing a virtual number for customer care solutions. Here are the reasons why virtual phone number India can be an affordable solution for small businesses:
Virtual numbers are economical for startups and small companies
What financial savings may your company expect from a virtual phone number? The first thing is that there are no additional tools or equipment are initially required. Second, unlike mobile phone plans, you can pick and choose the functions you need, saving you money on extras your team won’t use.
A virtual number will assist you with customer retention, which will increase income and is the third reason to get a virtual number.
Establish local presence
Most existing and prospective clients prefer to contact a local vendor for their needs. No matter where they are physically located, small businesses can create and maintain a strong local presence by using virtual phone numbers.
Choosing a local virtual call phone number gives businesses the opportunity to add customization. Using a virtual phone number has other benefits, like handling increased call volume because people are more likely to call a nearby company than one located miles away.
Keep personal communication and business separate.
Your personal cell phone number should be kept private if you don’t want others to know it. This is specifically true if you want to publish a phone number for your company online.
With a virtual number, you can manage both your friends and family’s direct cell numbers from the same device. You can do it while also having a separate phone number for your business contacts.
Virtual numbers are more than just a number.
The best thing about virtual Indian number is that they come with more high-tech and sophisticated functions than your regular number. There are many other services that come with virtual phone lines, including call forwarding, sophisticated conference tools, SMS and email notifications, comprehensive customization, etc.
You can also easily get voicemail service in addition to a variety of other helpful features with efficient business solutions.
Maintain a level of privacy.
It is not always easy to communicate with coworkers or business partners using personal phone numbers. But with virtual phone numbers it is easy to be connected to a personal number without compromising privacy.
For lone proprietors who want to operate a business while keeping their home numbers confidential virtual numbers can work incredibly well.
Choosing a virtual phone service: Things to take into account
Getting a virtual phone number is not too difficult. But when getting ready to get one or more for work, there are several important things to consider:
â Free telephone numbers: A virtual phone number is a freebie that some service providers give to subscribers. As part of an upgrade or add-on, you can also get multiple free numbers.
â Use and access: To make sure that business numbers are used properly and by the appropriate persons, it is important to keep track of usage and access. Most services come with extras that let you better track phone line usage and make sure everything works as it should.
â Pricing and overall value for the money: For getting a virtual number, there are several economical choices available. The service that will provide you with the best value for your money is the one you should choose. While a free service might be adequate for a very small business, a larger corporation would need to look around for options that offer the best integrations.
Final thoughts
Small businesses benefit from using virtual phone numbers as they enable them to reduce unnecessary costs and improve overall performance. The virtual mobile number India also offers a lot of sophisticated and advanced features to small businesses. So, consider getting a virtual phone number for your company if you want to improve effectiveness and make it simpler for customers to contact you.
Business
Twitterâs X rebrand revives Elon Muskâs superapp plans
Driving the news: Elon Musk started implementing Twitter’s long-teased rebranding as X on Sunday night.
Why it matters: Finding the “on” switch for the money printers is crucial because Musk purchased Twitter last year for $44 billion with the aid of other stock investors and billions in loans.
Backstory: Ever since he acquired the social networking company, Musk has talked frequently about transforming the service into a “superapp” that combines a variety of services onto a single platform.
In addition, Musk seems determined to revive the “X” brand, which he has adored since the 1990s (it was the name of the business he co-founded and then merged with PayPal).
And he has been open about his dislike of advertising from the beginning.
Current Situation: The company has so far experimented with a few product features (mainly reserved for paying members), such as extending the character limit for postings and enabling longer video uploads.
To improve Twitter’s services for business users, the firm bought job-matching startup Laskie in May.
And he has been devoted to using both carrots and sticks to get people to subscribe to the commercial version of the service.
The euphoria of some investors has already been muted, though.
Fidelity’s valuation has been gradually declining, most recently to roughly $15 billion as of April 28.
The company’s valuation was most recently reduced to roughly $23 billion by Cathy Wood of Event Ark Invest, who defended Musk’s management of it at our BFD event in May.
Musk has his job cut out for him, in my thought bubble.
Super-apps have had tremendous success in Asia, but for a variety of contextual factors, they haven’t fared as well in Western internet culture.
And while Musk has been successful in winning over his supporters with his changes at Twitter, such as signing up for the paid subscription service, completely abandoning the Twitter brand may alienate a large portion of the user base that has remained for nostalgic reasons.
Alphabet and Meta are two such digital companies that have changed their branding as a result of corporate reorganizations. What’s most significant is that they kept the names of the consumer goods.
The bottom line is that Musk is almost starting from scratch.
Business
Pylon wants to make it easier to manage B2B conversations in Slack
Businesses searching for more direct ways to connect with their consumers in a B2B setting have been turning to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other channels as email becomes an increasingly congested communication tool. However, it can be difficult for firms to keep track of those talks and ensure that they are routed to the appropriate parties.
Pylon, a startup in its early stages, steps in to help with that. It assists businesses in managing, prioritizing, and directing communications from different channels to the appropriate individuals. When necessary, it also collaborates with technologies like Zendesk to produce tickets.
Pylon revealed a $3.2 million seed investment today. The business, which debuted in November, was a part of the Y Combinator cohort for Winter 2023.
Marty Kausas, a co-founder of the business, claims that he and his co-founders, Robert Eng and Advith Chelikani, noticed that businesses were gradually transferring B2B talks from email to Slack for more direct and personal discussions at their prior workplaces. They simultaneously observed how difficult it was for their companies to control these dialogues.
“Consider the scenario if I am a salesperson or a support person trying to manage all [these discussions]. In Slack, there is no way to track anything. The result is Pylon, which, according to Kausas of TechCrunch, “is effectively the data unlock tool for all your consumer discussions that are happening across chat systems.
The company is initially supporting Slack because it must manage the most external discussions, but it hopes to soon begin layering on Microsoft Teams and other platforms as well.
Pylon only has access to the channels that you as the customer choose for monitoring, thus it cannot read DMs or listen in on internal company talks. According to Kausas, one early user, Hightouch, is using Pylon to keep an eye on more than 300 common consumer channels.
The business finalized the funding agreement in March, and since then, it has hired two more people, bringing the total to five, including the founders. By the end of the year, it hopes to have close to ten employees. In the upcoming months, they intend to add a few additional engineering and business development employment vacancies. He claims that the organization is seeking for the best candidates it can find to fill each open position and that diversity is unquestionably a focus.
Even though his business is starting during a period of economic instability, Kausas is optimistic about its prospects for success since he is addressing a genuine issue that clients have with tracking this kind of behavior. In spite of the fact that his business is just a few months old, he claims that it is already profitable.
The good news is that we have happy, paying clients and that we are making money. Therefore, at this time, we aren’t really burning anything, he remarked.
General Catalyst led today’s $3.2 million seed investment, which also included contributions from Y Combinator, Horizon VC, AirAngels, and Comma Capital.
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