Cloud-based customer service system provider Freshdesk has acquired Pipemonk, a small data integration vendor. This should help clients integrate Freshdesk with data from other systems, including Freshdesk’s own half-dozen acquisitions in the past 16 months. My hidden message: integration among cloud systems is possible but still not trivial, so most companies will need specialized systems like CDPs to help.

Looking even further into the future, we have a personal virtual reality camera being announced at the CES show in Las Vegas. Personal virtual reality is exactly where things seem to be headed. Just to be clear, though, this particular product does is use six cameras to create a 360-degree streaming video of your own actual reality to share with others. So it’s still disappointingly tethered to the real world. It does help to clarify the importance of streaming video.

Martech keeps taking larger bites out of marketing budgets: 17.3% last year, 19.9% this year, 23.5% next year, and 30.9% five years from now, according to the latest CMO Survey. This despite barely more than half (56.4%) of current tools being used and nearly half (48.8%) of the survey respondents reporting worse-than-expected results. Oddly enough, marketers rate selecting marketing technologies as the thing they do best.