Q&A with Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing, Vidyard

MEDIA 7 | April 3, 2019

Q&A with Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing, Vidyard
Tyler Lessard, VP Marketing of Vidyard has been recently named as an Epic Marketer by Marketo. In this interesting Q&A, Tyler takes us through his marketing journey and shares with us the value of technology in an era where videos are not just visually replenishing, but are also empowering the customer service teams in more ways than one.

MEDIA 7: What were you doing prior to your current position?
TYLER LESSARD:
Prior to joining Vidyard as VP Marketing, I spent 10 years at BlackBerry, building out their developer relations program and global partner community. It was an incredible opportunity to learn the importance of relationship building and strong storytelling on a global scale, and the need to simplify how we articulate and position the value of technology for line-of-business customers.

M7: What are the changes that video hosting and management have undergone over the past couple of years at Vidyard?
TL:
In recent years we’ve seen the conversation with businesses change from “why should I invest in video” to “how do I unlock the power of video across my marketing, sales and customer service teams”. This has driven us to focus on delivering new solutions through the lenses of these key audiences and what they are really trying to achieve.

We’re now helping marketing teams increase audience engagement with personalized and interactive video experiences, boost conversion rates on digital channels with optimized video experiences within their websites and email marketing, and accelerate deal cycles using video engagement data within their marketing automation platforms to qualify prospects. We’re helping sales development reps stand out and increase their response rates using personalized video messages sent via our Vidyard GoVideo app. And we’re helping customer service teams reduce call volumes and increase customer satisfaction with video-based knowledge articles embedded within customer communities. It’s all about helping businesses leverage video in new ways to improve the customer experience and generate more revenue.

"We always need to be searching for that next idea, that next channel, and that next message that will help us stay ahead of the market and build trust with our audiences."



M7: What’s top of the list for what Vidyard wants to achieve this year?
TL:
A big priority for Vidyard is to make it as easy as possible for marketing, sales and customer service teams to create, access, share and track rich video content from within the applications and workflows they already use today. We’re now doing this through integrations with key platforms such as Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, SalesLoft, Outreach, InsideSales.com, Zendesk and others. In 2019 we’re looking to expand this community further to enable any business professional to embrace video as a better way to communicate and deliver information.


"The most important thing for today’s marketer is to never stand still."



M7: In what way will Vidyard’s collaboration with SmartBug Media change the video experience for HubSpot users worldwide?
TL:
In 2018, Vidyard launched a strategic partnership with HubSpot to power their new HubSpot Video solution for marketing, sales and customer service. Now that the solution is available to HubSpot customers, partners like SmartBug Media are critical to helping them learn how to use video effectively and how to take advantage of these new native tools. From how they create video content, to how they optimize them for conversion, to how they track video engagement data within HubSpot CRM, partners like SmartBug Media will help customers make video an integrated part of their own marketing, sales and customer service processes.


"Vidyard delivers hyper-personalized experiences, right down to personalizing the content itself, to stand out from the other noise in the market."



M7: You have been named as an Epic Marketer by Marketo last month. That’s indeed a great achievement, Tyler. What efforts do you take to hone your marketing skills?
TL:
The most important thing for today’s marketer is to never stand still. It’s easy to get caught up in “what has worked before” and “this is how we do it”, but we always need to be searching for that next idea, that next channel, and that next message that will help us stay ahead of the market and build trust with our audiences. I’ve embraced video myself as a content medium to share ideas and connect with customers. We deliver hyper-personalized experiences, right down to personalizing the content itself, to stand out from the other noise in the market. And we stay close to the latest trends and technologies to understand how we can stay one step ahead.

ABOUT VIDYARD

Vidyard is the video platform that helps businesses transform communications and drive more revenue through the strategic use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, we help businesses connect with more viewers through interactive and personalized video experiences, learn powerful insights on their viewing audience, turn insights into action with enterprise integrations, and prove the impact of their video programs.

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But simply providing IT with more data is not enough to empower them to work smarter. VMware’s AI-driven Insights feature now provides anomaly detection that informs IT of potential experience issues for frontline devices and VDI environments, in addition to mobile and desktop environments. Today’s announcement of new Playbooks enables IT to create step-by-step remediation workflows to resolve incidents more efficiently and use success rate analytics to automate the resolution process and streamline execution over time. “Workspace ONE Intelligence has been a game changer for us when it comes to automating life cycle management inside UEM. We have been utilizing it for automatically tagging devices and assigning them into smart groups. 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VMware is committed to innovating together with our technology partners to provide customers with more secure and seamless hybrid experiences. Today, VMware continues this mission by announcing an expanded partnership with Intel through a one-of-a-kind, cloud-native integration of Workspace ONE with Intel vPro®. This chip-to-cloud integration makes it easier to secure and remotely manage work devices entirely from the cloud, with no additional on-premises infrastructure and management software needed. Through line of sight and out-of-band management of vPro powered devices, IT teams can have below-the-OS vulnerability insights, and visibility to reduce the impact of potential exploits quickly and efficiently. Using Workspace ONE, customers can have centralized visibility into Intel vPro-powered PCs and accelerate patch remediation cycles for devices located outside of office perimeters, even if the devices are sleeping or powered off. This improves security and compliance by accomplishing higher patch saturation with fewer remediation steps and reduces potential disruption to employee productivity. Modern App Management Simplifies Virtual Environments Managing and delivering apps across VDI, DaaS, and published app environments has become increasingly complex and inefficient due to silos of legacy tools used. VMware recently introduced Apps on Demand, powered by VMware App Volumes, to unify app management and intelligently deploy apps to published app hosts or non-persistent desktop environments, all based on real-time app usage. Today, VMware announces additional expansion of App Volumes support to deliver apps on demand to persistent virtual desktops. Now in beta availability, customers with persistent VMware Horizon environments will be able to use App Volumes to capture their apps once and deliver to many persistent virtual desktops. This automates the app delivery process with up to 99% compatibility and reduces management time and costs for any desktop or published app environment. VMware App Volumes is the only solution to help organizations deliver and manage apps across VMware Horizon, Citrix, Microsoft, and Amazon virtual desktop and app deployments as part of VMware’s Apps Everywhere vision. Boeing: A ‘Hybrid Workforce Innovator’ The Boeing Company (Boeing) has used VMware Workspace ONE across the United States and in more than 65 countries to support its global workforce of 140,000 employees who develop, manufacture and service commercial airplanes, defense products and space systems for its customers. At VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas, they were named ‘Hybrid Workforce Innovator’ as part of the 2023 VMware Customer Achievement Awards for the Americas for enabling its workforce to work from anywhere in the world, improving the user experience while reinforcing and advancing security for devices and applications. “VMware Anywhere Workspace helps us manage and protect end points, provide a common platform to access apps and tools, as well as helping facilitate a digital experience for our employees,” said Kristina Ross, Boeing Workplace Solutions director for Research & Technology. “Workspace ONE helped streamline our transition from traditional PC lifecycle management to Windows 10 modern management which was enabled by our shift to a SaaS-based solution for the company. Today, we have a unified view to oversee all endpoint requirements, and the adoption of SaaS enhanced our scalability and ability to shift focus from infrastructure to business facing solutions.” About VMware VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda.

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Server Hypervisors, Vsphere

Napatech Leverages Latest Intel Agilex® FPGA to Launch Industry's first 400Gbps SmartNIC Solutions

prnewswire | August 29, 2023

Napatech™ (OSLO: NAPA.OL), a leading provider of programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom datacenter networks, today announced the availability of the Napatech's first 400Gbps programmable SmartNIC solutions, leveraging the latest Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to deliver best-in-class performance for applications in security, cloud services, network monitoring and recording. Enterprises and OEMs providing high-performance solutions for network monitoring and recording require NICs with a performance level that matches the high PCI Express (PCIe) bandwidth available in the latest servers such as those based on 4th Gen Intel Xeon® Scalable Processors. The new Napatech NT400 SmartNIC platform, based on the Intel® FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform, addresses this need through a PCIe Gen 4 16-lane host interface which enables full-duplex 2x100Gbps traffic between network ports and host applications. Similarly, for applications like the 5G packet core in telecom infrastructure that require high-bandwidth inline processing of network data, the NT400 platform sustains a total 400G of traffic over tens of millions of flows. The NT400 programmable SmartNIC platform includes two QSFP56 network ports, supporting up to 2x200G traffic with the flexibility to configure 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G and 200G network links. The SmartNIC hardware is complemented by Napatech's portfolio of production-grade software packages, including Link-Capture™ for use cases such as network monitoring and recording, Link-Virtualization™ that provides a virtualized data plane for cloud services and Link-Inline™ for inline applications such as 5G User Plane Function (UPF). These integrated solutions deliver a true "IT experience" whereby the user just installs the card and the software, immediately achieving seamless acceleration of their application with no requirement to directly program the SmartNIC itself. At the core of the NT400 platform is the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA F-Tile chiplet, which incorporates a configurable, hardened Ethernet protocol stack for supporting rates from 10G to 400G. Napatech chose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for a host of reasons, including scalability options that allow support for five different configurations that meet various price, performance, power and feature goals, tailored to specific customer applications and use cases. The F-Tile features are critical in enabling the NT400 to operate within the space and power limitations of standard servers deployed in network appliances, data centers and edge locations. "As the networking landscape continues to evolve, SmartNICs emerge as the predominant growth catalyst in the expansive NIC market, poised to reach $3.3 billion annually by 2025" said Manoj Sukumaran, Principal Analyst for Datacenter Compute and Networking at Omdia. "High bandwidth programmable Ethernet adapters require very fine optimization in hardware and software to ensure deterministic and predictable processing time and making them suitable for real-time networking applications. Napatech is among the very few vendors who could provide highly optimized SmartNICs and software solutions leveraging FPGAs from vendors like Intel, and deliver highly efficient network offload capabilities" he added. "The NT400 platform represents the latest generation within our portfolio of SmartNIC solutions," said Jarrod Siket, Chief Marketing Officer at Napatech. "We will deliver multiple SKUs based on this platform, providing products with memory configurations as well features like time synchronization and management ports that are precisely tuned to the requirements of our customers' applications, all packaged with the applicable production-grade software." "We are delighted to see Napatech choose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for their leading-edge SmartNIC solutions," said Mike Fitton, Vice President Programmable Solutions Group and General Manager, Network Business Division at Intel. "The combination of our FPGAs, which deliver high performance, and power efficiency plus a rich feature set for the most demanding applications, together with Napatech's production-grade hardware and software, helps ensure that customers can deliver leading solutions for a wide range of enterprise and telecom applications." About Napatech Napatech is the leading supplier of SmartNIC solutions used in cloud, enterprise, and telecom datacenters. Through commercial-grade software suites integrated with high-performance hardware, Napatech accelerates network infrastructure and security workloads to deliver best-in-class system-level performance while maximizing the availability of server compute resources for applications and services.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Desktop

Epson Announces New Ultra Compact Desktop Solutions Offering Document Management Perfect for Remote and Hybrid Workers

prnewswire | September 26, 2023

Epson, the best-selling retail scanner brand in North America,1 today announced three new compact and lightweight document scanning solutions – the WorkForce® ES-C220, ES-C320W, and ES-C380W. Featuring an intuitive design and exceptional flexibility, these modern scanners boast a new footprint that saves 60 percent of desk space,2 ideal for tight spaces. Designed for fast and easy document management, the ES-C320W and ES-C380W offer comprehensive wireless scanning to smartphones, tablets, computers, and the cloud,3 enabling small business owners, hybrid employees and busy professionals to work efficiently and streamline tasks. "With the work environment shifting to a hybrid and remote workforce, compact and lightweight solutions that easily integrate into home offices and tight workspaces are essential for today's workflow needs," said Carrie Fox, director of product marketing, Scanners, Epson America. "Professionals and consumers alike can easily conquer clutter and reclaim office space with the new compact WorkForce scanners, designed for productivity and peace of mind. These unique and flexible solutions offer single step scanning, organizing software and a vertical paper path to help customers accomplish more and streamline active workdays." These high-performance workhorse scanners offer features to keep home offices and business organized. The ultra-compact solutions deliver fast speeds with an innovative, space-saving design and vertical scan path that saves 60 percent of desk space2, making it easy to place virtually anywhere, even when space is limited. With two-sided scanning, and a 20-sheet Auto Document Feeder, the new scanners can efficiently handle stacks of paper in one fast pass at speeds up to 30 ppm/60 ipm.4 Intelligent image adjustments such as automatic cropping and paper skew correction help ensure amazing image quality with each scan. The flexible scan path provides remarkable versatility and the ability to scan most document types, from standard paper to invoices, greeting cards, business cards, and passports.5 Touting robust software, all three scanners include Epson ScanSmart® Software6 allowing users to preview, email and upload scans as well as save valuable time with automatic file name suggestion for streamlined file management and OCR. To enhance workflow efficiency, the WorkForce ES-C380W includes ScanWay® for scanning directly to a USB drive,7 mobile device3 or upload to popular cloud storage services7 Dropbox®, Evernote®, Google Drive™ and OneDrive® using the scanner's bright 2.4" LCD touchscreen, no computer needed. About Epson Epson is a global technology leader whose philosophy of efficient, compact and precise innovation enriches lives and helps create a better world. The company is focused on solving societal issues through innovations in home and office printing, commercial and industrial printing, manufacturing, visual and lifestyle. Epson's goal is to become carbon negative and eliminate use of exhaustible underground resources such as oil and metal by 2050.

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