Here’s a sign that customer data is increasingly important: open source database vendor Couchbase has introduced a “engagement database” that is says is new class of system, distinct from transactional and analytical databases. It’s optimized for real time interactions at scale, with key features including in-memory data, full text search, and mobile deployment. They’ve written a helpful white paper explaining the details.
B2B martech vendor Demandbase has raised $65 million in new financing, bringing its total to over $150 million. Demandbase has focused its business Account Based Marketing data and services, a strategy that resulted in quadrupled revenue over the past three years.
DataSift also assembles data about people, in its case taking feeds from social media sites. Some is anonymized and some is linked to individuals, depending on what the site owner allows. DataSift just set up a feed of anonymized LinkedIn data to crystal.io, an artificial intelligence-powered “virtual advisor” promises insightful answers to marketers’ questions. To be clear (get it?), crystal.io works only with aggregated data, so it can’t tell you what Dad wants for Father’s Day.
I can’t bring myself to lead with yet another generative AI story, so we’ll start instead with this Forrester report for Airtable, which found that organizations have lots of software applications. The average is 367 in use at large organizations, with teams using an average of 45 daily and individuals using an average of 52 weekly. No surprise here but a good reminder of why data integration is so important.