The MarTech Minute: Microsoft acquires BlueTalon, startup funding new in martech

MarTech Minute briefs always appear first in our daily newsletter throughout the week. Click here to subscribe. The following is our compilation of the past week’s briefs from those newsletters.

Armory raises $28 million to commercialize Spinnaker. Armory announced that the series B funding led by Insight Partners will go towards increased research and development around Spinnaker and the company’s sales, marketing, support and training efforts. “Spinnaker is quickly emerging as the world’s leading continuous delivery platform,” said Insight Partners managing director Lonne Jaffe, who intends to join Armory’s board of directors. “Armory is bringing Spinnaker’s powerful open source technology — such as canary deployments that limit the blast radius of production errors, one-click rollback capabilities, and immutable deployments across multiple public and private clouds — to enterprises across the world. We’re excited to work with the seasoned executive team of Armory and to provide them with capital and support to accelerate their growth and scale-up.”

Monday.com announces latest funding results. Workplace collaboration platform Monday.com announced that it has closed its Series D funding, led by Sapphire Ventures, with Hamilton Lane, HarbourVest Partners, ION Crossover Partners and Vintage Investment Partners also participating — coming in at a valuation of $1.9 billion, nearly four times Monday.com’s valuation when it last raised money a year ago.

IAB Tech Lab releases new solutions for fighting ad fraud. IAB Tech Lab’s sellers.json and SupplyChain object specifications are ready for adoption. The object specifications seek to create a safer ad display change for DSPs and intermediaries with a transparent view into their ad investments.

Microsoft acquires unified data access control provider BlueTalon. The acquisition will bring BlueTalon under Microsoft’s Azure Data Governance group. “We realized the technology could be used to help govern data in new data systems such as Hadoop,” wrote BlueTalon CEO Eric Tilenius.” Our customers soon started asking for us to extend our coverage to other databases — they were building large data estates that had a heterogeneous mix of data platforms. With the help of an amazing and talented team, we were able to build the first truly Unified Data Access Control solution to govern on-premises data estates. BlueTalon enterprise customers increasingly began to migrate more and more of their data to the cloud and asked us to support them in that process. As we began exploring partnership opportunities with various hyperscale cloud providers to better serve our customers, Microsoft deeply impressed us. The Azure Data team was uniquely thoughtful and visionary when it came to data governance. We found them to be the perfect fit for us in both mission and culture. So when Microsoft asked us to join forces, we jumped at the opportunity.”

SummitSync announces partnership with Conversica. Meeting automation platform SummitSync will partner with Conversica, an automated lead engagement platform. The combination will allow marketers with event execution tasks like pre-booking meetings at events and coordinating onsite demos. “By partnering with SummitSync, our customers will gain the ability to leverage real-time data for multiple conferences and trade shows they cannot access anywhere else to further establish and build more lead-engagement opportunities,” said Andrew McCraith, vice president of business and corporate development at Conversica. “We’ll enable the companies we mutually serve to better engage buyers throughout the entire customer journey by including SummitSync’s ability to dramatically boost meetings with the right prospects at events and automate the delivery of information across other platforms such as calendars, mobile texts and CRM systems.”

Adswerve achieves Marketing Analytics Partner Specialization in the Google Cloud Partner Program. Adswerve is one of the only Google Cloud and Google Marketing Platform partners with specializations in both data analytics and marketing analytics. “As we move into a data-driven industry, it’s more important than ever that we empower our clients to better understand their data and what the analytics are telling them in order to turn those insights into action,” said Adswerve CEO Clint Tasset. “This specialization demonstrations our dedicating to bridging media and analytics, helping our brand and agency clients be successful marketers with insights that power transparency and agility and ultimately deliver solid results.”

Metadata.io becomes Hubspot integrator. ABM platform Metadata.io announced that it has partnered with HubSpot as a Connect Beta Integrator. The integration will help digital marketers and advertisers execute. “We are honored to become a HubSpot Connect Beta Integrator as we aim to help B2B marketers amplify and attribute ABM results while cutting down on manual tasks through the power of AI,” said Gil Allouche, CEO of Metadata. “With our HubSpot integration, marketers can automatically test all the possible ad variables and optimize campaigns based on real-time data to drive more leads and sales pipeline.”

MindTickle raises $40 million. The sales enablement provider announced that it has raised $40 million in series C funding led by Northwest Venture Partners. This latest round follows a series B funding round that raised $27 million last year. “Sales and service organizations are facing a perfect storm on many fronts and company representatives that are not equipped to handle complex buyer needs and competitive challenges are being left behind,” said CEO Krishna Depura, who co-founded the company in 2011 with Deepak Diwakar, Mohit Garg and Nishant Mungali. “MindTickle is empowering companies to grow revenue and build their brand value by transforming customer-facing teams preparing them to be on message and on task every time they engage with a prospect or customer. Our series C funding will fuel our strategic, long-term growth plans while supporting ongoing investment in our expanding products and services.”

WEVO secures an additional $2 million. Campaign testing platform WEVO announced it has raised an additional $2 million, bringing the startup’s total funding to $3.6 million. The latest funding will be used for product development and growth. “We are pleased with the completion of this round of funding and the capabilities it will help us add to our growth. We have seen incredible uptick in new clients over the last quarter and have already witnessed outstanding ROI from customers, who can now learn the issues and challenges with their website pre-launch. WEVO is a game changer for digital marketers and agencies.”

New study from Barracuda highlights impact of email attacks on businesses. Cloud security firm Barracuda released its 2019 Email Security Trends report, finding that email attacks are having a significant impact on businesses across the globe. 74% of respondents indicated that email attacks are a major threat, with employees falling for phishing attempts among the top risk factors for companies. 

Marketers on the move

Survey software provider SurveyMonkey announced the appointments of three new executives: DuVal Hicks, vice president of sales operations; Lara Sasken Lindenbaum, vice president of communications; and Denis Scott, vice president of growth marketing. “DuVal, Lara, and Denis each bring nearly 20 years of experience in their respective fields and proven leadership managing successful teams,” said Zander Lurie, chief executive officer at SurveyMonkey. “All three new hires will play a critical role in SurveyMonkey’s key priorities—scaling our enterprise sales go-to-market strategy, strengthening our self-service business, growing our international presence, and informing current and future customers about how SurveyMonkey helps organizations around the world transform feedback into business intelligence that drives growth and innovation.”

Advertising data automation company PremiumMedia 360 has brought two ad tech industry veterans aboard. Michelle Clayton has been named SVP of client services and Julie Giammattei has joined as Implementation Director. Clayton will initially focus on agency relationship management. She previously served as VP, strategic account director at Mediaocean, where she was managing relationships with several of the company’s largest ad agency clients. Giammattei previously served as strategic account director at Mediaocean and was responsible for relationships with owned and operated station groups, local broadcasters. “We are fortunate to attract executives with the deep industry knowledge, relationships and expertise that Michelle and Julie bring to PremiumMedia360,” said John Bowser, CEO, PremiumMedia360. “Their combined breadth of experience is exactly what we need to grow both sides of the business and I’m thrilled to have them on board.”

Process management and automation solution Nintex announced the appointment of Michael Schultz as vice president of product, channel and field marketing and Florian Haarhaus as vice president of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). As seasoned Software as a Service (SaaS) executives, Schultz and Haarhaus together bring more than five decades of experience to Nintex from previous senior roles at Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle, DocuSign, Box and other leading SaaS companies. Nintex also announced the promotions of four senior and high-performing leaders across the business to vice president roles, including:Alistair Cloke, vice president of customer success programs; Phil Luong, vice president of inside sales; Vahid Taslimi, vice president of product for forms, mobile and analytics; and Kristin Treat, vice president of corporate marketing.