Home > Companies > Thought Leaders > Q&A with Olivia (Ross) Taylor, Director of CRO at Directive Consulting

Q&A with Olivia (Ross) Taylor, Director of CRO at Directive Consulting

Olivia Taylor, Director of CRO at Directive Consulting has 10 years of working experience in graphic designing and has expert knowledge in CRO/UX in landing pages and websites designing.

Olivia was recently nominated for the Orange County Business Journal's Top 25 Women in Business Awards.

MEDIA 7: What’s your superpower?
OLIVIA TAYLOR: I would like to think my superpower is empathy. That’s part of what CRO is: figuring out and understanding what’s going on through people’s minds and finding out what people need and want.

M7: Does it point to user intent, a term generally used in Account Based Marketing?
OT: Yes, exactly that. Because I’m able to basically understand where the consumer and the buyer is coming from, I can better optimize my clients’ websites, change that language in the headline and the subhead to relate to the customers’ pain points and better describe the benefits of what my client can provide to them.

M7: Your career spans an impressive 8 years from a Graphic Designer to being a Director of CRO at Directive Consulting. What attracted you to this industry, and how does Directive Consulting fit into your story?
OT: I became a designer because all other subjects in school were boring. 2+2 will always be 4, but with design, there are so many possibilities - so many different solutions to a problem. Plus, I always loved drawing and creating.
While going to school, I worked as a designer at a few different places. Then upon graduating, I worked at a tech company in-house but it just wasn’t for me. I moved on to an agency that was full-service, but that also was not the right fit. After that job, I ended up at a PPC agency where I learned about CRO. I started there as just a designer and left there as the Director of CRO.

Using the skills I learned there, I was able to join the upstanding company that is Directive where I’m learning so much more, and doing so many more awesome things than I did at any other job and it has been amazing. It’s so wonderful to work at a place that is professional and that takes the work so seriously, only striving to be the best at being different. 


"The best way we can convince the customers is that we need to address what our client does, that no other competitor can do."

M7: Could you tell us about your best practices for creating an ideal customer experience?
OT: A functioning website that loads quickly
Easy navigation and user experience
Clear offerings and clear unique value propositions (what is it that you do that no competitor does?)
Great social proof (testimonials and case studies from current clients, awards, etc)

Great customer service: prompt support, regular email check-ins to see how your customer is doing, offer deals and promotions - all of these things keep a customer coming back for more.

M7: While creating a unique value proposition, how do you drive in the utility? In other words, how do you convince the customer about the uniqueness of your service?
OT: We definitely have to utilize this through the headline and anywhere in the hero section of the landing page or the homepage because that’s where people are landing first and you need to be able to grab their attention in the first five seconds. So, the best way we can convince the customers, is that we need to address what our client does, that no other competitor can do.

If you can say we’re the only platform that does x, y, and z, that is a great unique selling point. Another thing to consider is backing up your clients with data. If you are offering some sort of platform that will save me time on the implementation of a process, then tell me how much time I’m going to save. If you say, “Cut down your execution time by 90% with our platform” that’s a unique value proposition. That shows the benefit to the user there, and that will entice users to click through and complete the form. So, gaining conversions is usually based around giving real data that explains exactly what value the visitors are going to see or how much money is going to be made or saved, and how much time is going to be saved to solve a problem with this solution. The other side of the coin is “we are the only ones that do x y z” and that will basically set a business apart from their competitors.

M7: How does collaboration and communication come into play in your role?
OT: It’s the entire job. I oversee a design team and I need to make sure my team is not only communicating with me but communicating with other departments. PPC, SEO, and CRO must all work together to get the job done and we’re stronger together than apart. I have daily follow-ups on different accounts, weekly meetings, client sync ups - whatever it takes to make sure that I and the rest of the team have complete transparency into what is happening with these accounts so that we can assist in whatever way we can. We want our specialists and account managers to own their strategy, but the directors are responsible for approving the strategy and improving it if needed.


"As designers, we need to remember that form follows function, so we must be sure that this information is easily accessible, that the message is clear."

M7: What are the biggest mistakes you see businesses making when attempting to optimize their site to increase conversions?
OT: These companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on a rebrand which will be done by a branding agency that has no knowledge of designing a site for increased conversions. Too many times we’ve had clients come in that just had a rebrand done and their conversions plummeted. So we will go in and audit the site to find out what is causing the problem. Too often, design takes over function but we must always remember that form follows function. As an example, the white space in the new site may be beautiful, but none of your visitors can even see what you’re offering until they get halfway down the page. Things like this are the biggest issues we see.

Also, with too many changes implemented at once, it makes it harder to pinpoint what caused the drop in conversions. It’s often times all of the things combined together that caused the problem. If a company is going to focus on increasing conversions, the changes need to be based on data and not on whims or best practices. Data doesn’t lie.

M7: What is the most challenging part of doing a conversion optimization project? What type of resource commitment do you require from your team?
OT: The most challenging part is that the results cannot be guaranteed. Our tests are based on data but they’re just that: a test, a hypothesis. Nothing is written in stone. 9 out of 10 times I will be right in my hypothesis, but there will always be a test that fails. We still celebrate the failure because we still learn from it. We can find out why the test didn’t work and use it to narrow down on what will work.

As far as resources are concerned, we want to make sure that we’re testing at least a few things each week per client. We use Hotjar for qualitative research as well as Google Optimize for on-page testing, and Instapage/Unbounce for landing page testing. Reporting is a big part of our deliverable so a good amount of our time is spent gathering the data and providing insights to the client.

M7: According to you, what prompts a visitor to scroll down to the bottom of a webpage?
OT: Usually you would have to have a message that entices them in the hero section of the landing page. Just like we discussed about the UVPs, we need to show the customer right when they land on the page, that this is the solution for your problem. That will entice them to scroll down. You can sometimes kind of coax people to scroll down: I like to use false CTAs to get more information and if they click that CTA, it will scroll down to the benefit section on the page and that will get people to start scrolling. And from that benefit section you could have a CTA linking to the case studies on the landing page and get them to scroll down even further on the page.

The main issue is people think of redesigning their page to look better and they see horrible conversions because it may be beautiful but it’s not functional. The messaging is vague and does not relate to what it is they do as a company that’s better than anybody else. They don’t adjust the benefits, and they’re too stuck on this flowery and technical language that a lot of SaaS companies like to use. So, the biggest thing is being very upfront with what you do in layman’s terms, making it as clear as possible to the lowest common denominator, so that you have a potentially larger pool of leads versus only having that technical jargon that only a few may understand. This usually relates a lot to B2B and SaaS clients. They get really hung up on their own language that’s very technical but the common man that needs their service doesn’t understand that...just tell them what the benefit is.

So, to summarize that long rant: basically, make sure that the messaging is clear about the benefits right away, then use CTAs on your page to entice people to keep scrolling so they continue to learn more. Keep people engaged and reading, section by section.


"Gaining conversions is based around giving real data that explains what value the visitors are going to see or how much money is going to be made or saved, and how much time is going to be saved."

M7: In a world where anyone can start a web-based business, generating trust is more important than ever before. Considering this, what impact does design have on revenue?
OT: It has a huge impact. If you land on a site that is poorly designed - it’s ugly, it’s confusing, you have no idea what they sell - do you think you would stay on that site for long? No, you’d go to a site that has a clear hero image showing the product and how it works, and a headline that explains what sets it apart from any other competitor product. The way information is presented is just as important as what information is being said.




One-size-doesn’t-fit-all and I’ve seen pages that - funny enough - looked horrible but converted better than the redesign we did, just because the form was more readily available. All the information was above the fold and it looked really scrunched. However, the customers got whatever they needed right away and that was what was important. So even when you’re seeing this image of bad vs good, we could argue that maybe the option on the right still won’t convert because it’s not quite explaining any unique value composition. It has a lot of beautiful imagery but it’s not getting to the point. Although these full-width websites with huge images is the trend, I think it needs to be taken with a grain of salt and used sparingly; and it needs to be dialed back a bit when it comes to conversions. You have these big beautiful images and people have to scroll very far just to get down to the first paragraph which is not good for conversions even though it’s trendy. As designers, we need to remember that form follows function, so we must be sure that this information is easily accessible, that the message is clear and if it is, then great! The beauty comes after that, but messaging has to be clear, concise, and easily understood.

M7: Directive Consulting ranks #1 on Google for “SEO Agency”. What SEO strategies and tools does the company leverage to channelize its sales campaigns?
OT: On page SEO and targeted guest posting with keyword driven anchor text. Then we continually write content around SEO and internally link back to our core SEO page.

M7: As a child what did you want to be when you grew up?
OT: I wanted to be a speleologist (a cave scientist) for years. I was obsessed with caves, stalactites, and stalagmites. I’ve always been interested in maths and sciences, but there are dangers tied to being a cave scientist so I gave up on that. I still sometimes wonder what would have been if I had gone into the sciences instead of design. Maybe I’ll try it out in a few years!

M7: That sounds interesting! Have you visited caves in your earlier days?
OT: Yes, I did visit just a few caves, nothing big like the Man of the cave or Carlsbad cavern but as a child I was very interested in science – Biology, Zoology, Geology just the world around me and caves are interesting because they��re the dark places that not many people go to. I love history, I love biology so I think caves are kind of that interesting combination of both cause they’re ancient and they have these creatures that are so bizarre you know, like these blind salamanders which is like a different world there. I got very fixated on that for a few years as a child, reading all the books I could about it. I had my mind set, this is what I was going to do and I didn’t take into account the dangers of being a cave scientist. You’ll have to get into tight little spaces and there could be cavemen, you could get lost and stuck. Me being a homebody and kind of a bookworm, I decided, you know, maybe this is not the path for me, but I was also an artistic child. I was drawing all the time and that’s how I ended up in design school instead. So a very different path, but I still love science and history so I might dabble in it later in my life but for now it’s been design.

ABOUT DIRECTIVE CONSULTING

Directive does beautiful search marketing for B2B and enterprise companies that share our values. We redefine the global standard for how marketers work, live, and grow. We are a group of SEO, PPC, and content experts who are passionate about working with the best B2B brands in the world. When we are not executing ROI driven campaigns, you can find us drinking cold brew, volunteering in our community, or playing an intense game of ping-pong.

More THOUGHT LEADERS

L&T Technology Services' Sarita Bahety explains why adopting cloud is an opportunity to make existing processes more agile for organizations

Media 7 | July 28, 2022

L&T Technology Services' Sarita Bahety, Head of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships for Europe, explains how various strategic alliances contribute to the expansion of businesses.  Read on to know more about her thoughts on strategic management, cloud adoption, and leveraging alliances. ...

Read More

Oracle's Lisa Marcyes says, 'People trust people more than they trust brands'

Media 7 | May 13, 2022

The key to good social media marketing is knowing everything about the audience, shares Lisa Marcyes Director, Global Social Media at Oracle, in this interview with Media 7. Read on to find out more about the best go-to approach for audience gap analysis, top social media marketing trends to look out for this year and the best ways to generate leads on social media....

Read More

Q&A with Ariel Munafo, Founder and Board Member of MarkeTech Group

Media 7 | October 13, 2021

Ariel Munafo, Founder and Board Member of MarkeTech Group, EuropeClouds and CloudEdge. He is also an Ambassador at CNCF and a Vice President at IASA ISRAEL. Munafo is an investor and cloud computing evangelist and a personal advisor to CIOs & CTOs....

Read More

L&T Technology Services' Sarita Bahety explains why adopting cloud is an opportunity to make existing processes more agile for organizations

Media 7 | July 28, 2022

L&T Technology Services' Sarita Bahety, Head of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships for Europe, explains how various strategic alliances contribute to the expansion of businesses.  Read on to know more about her thoughts on strategic management, cloud adoption, and leveraging alliances. ...

Read More

Oracle's Lisa Marcyes says, 'People trust people more than they trust brands'

Media 7 | May 13, 2022

The key to good social media marketing is knowing everything about the audience, shares Lisa Marcyes Director, Global Social Media at Oracle, in this interview with Media 7. Read on to find out more about the best go-to approach for audience gap analysis, top social media marketing trends to look out for this year and the best ways to generate leads on social media....

Read More

Q&A with Ariel Munafo, Founder and Board Member of MarkeTech Group

Media 7 | October 13, 2021

Ariel Munafo, Founder and Board Member of MarkeTech Group, EuropeClouds and CloudEdge. He is also an Ambassador at CNCF and a Vice President at IASA ISRAEL. Munafo is an investor and cloud computing evangelist and a personal advisor to CIOs & CTOs....

Read More

Related News

Cloud Security

IBM Redesigns Cloud-Native SIEM to Level-up Security

IBM | November 08, 2023

The cloud-native SIEM enhances scalability, speed, and flexibility while leveraging AI for improved alert prioritization and response. Cloud-native QRadar SIEM is built on an open foundation, supporting interoperability with multi-vendor tools and cloud platforms. IBM plans to introduce generative AI capabilities in early 2024. IBM introduced a significant transformation to its flagship IBM QRadar SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) product. The new QRadar SIEM is redesigned on a cloud-native architecture tailored for hybrid cloud environments, with a strong focus on scale, speed, and flexibility. This update aims to empower security teams by enabling AI and security analysts to work together efficiently. In fact, SOC professionals get to less than half (49%) of the alerts that they're supposed to review within a typical workday, according to a recent global survey. [Source- Cision PR Newswire] The cloud-native QRadar SIEM builds upon the strong foundation of its predecessor, offering efficient data ingestion, rapid search capabilities, and analytics at scale. It is based on an open foundation and is part of the QRadar Suite, IBM's integrated threat detection and response software portfolio. As hybrid cloud environments expand and evolve rapidly, the security challenges become increasingly complex. The growing attack surface makes it difficult for security professionals to identify true threats amid the noise, leading to delayed threat responses. The new cloud-native QRadar SIEM addresses these challenges by leveraging AI to manage repetitive tasks and streamline the detection and response process for high-priority security incidents. Built on Red Hat OpenShift, QRadar SIEM is designed to be open at its core, allowing for deep interoperability with multi-vendor tools and cloud platforms. It supports common detection rules (SIGMA) to quickly integrate crowdsourced threat detections from the security community. Additionally, it offers federated search and threat-hunting capabilities across various data sources, enhancing threat investigation across cloud and on-premises environments. IBM's cloud-native SIEM includes AI capabilities that automatically prioritize alerts, reduce noise, and provide context for high-priority alerts. It streamlines threat investigations by running federated searches, creating visual attack timelines, and suggesting recommended actions. It plans to introduce generative AI (GAI) capabilities for QRadar Suite in early 2024. These AI capabilities will automate tasks like report creation, threat detection, log data interpretation, and threat intelligence curation. GAI is expected to enhance the productivity of security analysts, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks. The investment in cloud-native SIEM and AI integration reflects its commitment to delivering next-generation security operations technology. These advancements are designed to simplify security operations, reduce complexity, and provide security teams with the tools to effectively address today's complex threat landscape. The new cloud-native QRadar SIEM will be available as SaaS in Q4 2023. IBM is actively working on its AI and data platform, watsonx, to enable generative AI to support security teams in automating routine tasks, accelerating threat response, and simplifying threat investigations. This represents a significant step toward more efficient and effective security operations.

Read More

Cloud App Management

Spectro Cloud Releases its ‘State of Production Kubernetes’ Report

Spectro Cloud | November 07, 2023

Spectro Cloud has unveiled its third annual ‘State of Production Kubernetes’ report, providing unique insights into the highly dynamic Kubernetes industry. The report, based on a comprehensive survey of 333 Kubernetes practitioners and decision-makers, reveals key trends and challenges facing the industry. The research highlights that operations teams are grappling with increasing complexity as their Kubernetes environments expand. A significant 56% of businesses have more than 10 Kubernetes clusters, and 69% run Kubernetes in multiple clouds or other environments. Furthermore, 75% report issues affecting the running of their clusters, an increase from 66% in 2022. The report also underscores the need for greater support for application developers. Despite the rise of platform engineering, 82% of operations teams struggle to provide developers with access to tailored clusters. Additionally, 37% report inconsistencies between development, staging, and production environments. The study also points to application modernization as a pressing issue for cloud-native organizations. While all interviewees reported a ‘container first’ approach, they agreed that virtual machines (VMs) are here to stay. A significant 85% are migrating existing VM workloads to Kubernetes, and 86% aim to unify containerized and VM workloads on a single infrastructure platform. The Spectro Cloud's report reveals challenges in Kubernetes, with 75% of operations teams facing issues with cluster management and 82% struggling to provide developers with tailored clusters. The report also highlights the persistence of VMs and security, compliance, and cost issues in edge computing. However, it also shows a growing trend towards Kubernetes, with a majority of businesses operating multiple clusters across various environments. The rise of platform engineering, migration of VM workloads to Kubernetes, and increasing adoption of Kubernetes in edge computing environments suggest a shift towards modernization and promising advancements. Finally, the report indicates that edge computing is gaining momentum, with 49% actively piloting or using Kubernetes in edge computing environments. AI is a key driver for edge adoption, with investment expected to improve business processes and enable new connected solutions. However, significant challenges remain, particularly around security, compliance, and the costs of field engineering. Spectro Cloud's third annual ‘State of Kubernetes’ report highlights these trends and challenges. The report aims to inspire new dialogue in the industry, particularly at events like KubeCon. The report is available for download and will be discussed in a webinar on November 30. About Spectro Cloud Spectro Cloud is a leading provider of Kubernetes management solutions. Its comprehensive platform allows organizations to manage the full lifecycle of diverse Kubernetes environments, whether small or large, new or existing, simple or complex, in data centers or the cloud. The company's unique approach offers IT teams complete control and visibility, enabling them to provide developers with flexible Kubernetes stacks and tools tailored to their specific needs, all while ensuring granular governance and enterprise-grade security.

Read More

Cloud App Development

Box and Google Cloud Expand Strategic Partnership Across Generative AI and Go-to-Market

Business Wire | November 02, 2023

Box, Inc. (NYSE: BOX), the leading Content Cloud, and Google Cloud today announced an expanded partnership to transform work in the enterprise with generative AI. Box will integrate with Vertex AI to build new gen AI features that help customers more efficiently process and analyze data stored in the Box Content Cloud, which is also now available to customers directly through Google Cloud Marketplace. Enterprises today want to work with strategic technology platforms that can help them work smarter and more productively, said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. Google Cloud is an incredibly important partner that helps us serve our customers globally. This deepened partnership underscores our joint commitment to delivering solutions that leverage cutting edge technology to power entirely new ways for users to intelligently interact with their content and revolutionize the way businesses operate in the AI-first era. “Generative AI can streamline some of the most time-consuming processes facing enterprises today, such as manual data entry and analysis,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Our expanded partnership with Box will provide customers with new tools that help them quickly process and create insights from documents stored within Box Content Cloud, saving time that users can reallocate towards more impactful work.” New Box AI Capabilities, Powered by Vertex AI Box has chosen to integrate with Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s unified AI platform, to help customers process and analyze data faster, create more personalized user experiences, intelligent search, and more. Building on the earlier announcement that Box will integrate Google Cloud’s advanced large-language models (LLMs) into Box AI, Box will now use Vertex AI to help power its new metadata extraction feature. The new feature, coming first as an API, will save customers’ time inputting and maintaining data by automatically identifying and tagging key context from their documents, including matching metadata fields to attributes within a file. Soon, customers will be able to: Automatically classify and label documents at scale to surface key insights, such as contracts nearing their expiration and invoices requiring payment within the current month. Define metadata templates to extract information for custom use cases, such as automatically recognizing and tagging products in images or categorizing PII in specific types. Populate defined metadata templates and integrate with ERP and CRM systems to automate workflows such as invoicing, executing contracts, client and employee onboarding, and more. Identify and preserve critical information, such as timestamps, authorship, and document versions history, to maintain compliance protocols. Recognize and extract metadata in different languages to ensure consistent term recognition while operating in different countries and regions. Box is Now Available on Google Cloud Marketplace As part of the expanded partnership, Box is now also available on Google Cloud Marketplace, making it even easier for customers using Google Cloud infrastructure to purchase Box’s content management platform. With the Box app available on Google Cloud Marketplace, eligible customers can realize key benefits including: Reduced procurement cycles allowing for faster, smoother, and simpler buying process. Consolidated Google Cloud billing. Cost savings against existing Google Cloud commitments when purchased through Google Cloud Marketplace. Box Expands Its Use of Google Cloud Box already leverages Google Cloud as a key infrastructure provider for data storage and compute globally. Now, Box will expand its usage of Google Cloud by adopting several new services across networking, data analytics, and machine learning to deliver faster performance and higher-reliability to its customers. For example, Box is now applying: Google Cloud as a storage option for Box KeySafe, which enables Box customers to use their own encryption key within Box. This provides customers with more choice over where they maintain their encryption keys. Google Cloud’s global networking infrastructure to power Box network communication with customers, resulting in faster content transfers and increased productivity for customers around the world. Cloud Bigtable for improved performance and uptime for the core data systems that power Box. This enables Box to deliver its customers with a more reliable service to secure and manage all of their content needs. Google Cloud BigQuery to power Box's data application, analytics, and insights. With BigQuery, Box can now deliver more comprehensive data-driven insights to customers faster. Google Workspace Integrations The expanded partnership builds on existing integrations with Google Workspace, which lets Box customers create, collaborate, and save content in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides from the secure Box Content Cloud platform. Additionally, the Box for Google Workspace add-on enables smooth and secure productivity and collaboration across Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. With these integrations, customers can: Create, open, and edit content using Google Workspace’s collaboration tools directly within Box. Add Box files directly to emails and save email attachments to Box without leaving Gmail. Include Box files and link Box Notes directly to your Google Calendar events. Save files in Google Drive to Box. Apply Box’s enterprise-grade security, compliance, and governance capabilities to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. About Box Box (NYSE:BOX) is the leading Content Cloud, a single platform that empowers organizations to manage the entire content lifecycle, work securely from anywhere, and integrate across best-of-breed apps. Founded in 2005, Box simplifies work for leading global organizations, including AstraZeneca, JLL, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Visit box.com to learn more. And visit box.org to learn more about how Box empowers nonprofits to fulfill their missions. About Google Cloud Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Read More

Cloud Security

IBM Redesigns Cloud-Native SIEM to Level-up Security

IBM | November 08, 2023

The cloud-native SIEM enhances scalability, speed, and flexibility while leveraging AI for improved alert prioritization and response. Cloud-native QRadar SIEM is built on an open foundation, supporting interoperability with multi-vendor tools and cloud platforms. IBM plans to introduce generative AI capabilities in early 2024. IBM introduced a significant transformation to its flagship IBM QRadar SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) product. The new QRadar SIEM is redesigned on a cloud-native architecture tailored for hybrid cloud environments, with a strong focus on scale, speed, and flexibility. This update aims to empower security teams by enabling AI and security analysts to work together efficiently. In fact, SOC professionals get to less than half (49%) of the alerts that they're supposed to review within a typical workday, according to a recent global survey. [Source- Cision PR Newswire] The cloud-native QRadar SIEM builds upon the strong foundation of its predecessor, offering efficient data ingestion, rapid search capabilities, and analytics at scale. It is based on an open foundation and is part of the QRadar Suite, IBM's integrated threat detection and response software portfolio. As hybrid cloud environments expand and evolve rapidly, the security challenges become increasingly complex. The growing attack surface makes it difficult for security professionals to identify true threats amid the noise, leading to delayed threat responses. The new cloud-native QRadar SIEM addresses these challenges by leveraging AI to manage repetitive tasks and streamline the detection and response process for high-priority security incidents. Built on Red Hat OpenShift, QRadar SIEM is designed to be open at its core, allowing for deep interoperability with multi-vendor tools and cloud platforms. It supports common detection rules (SIGMA) to quickly integrate crowdsourced threat detections from the security community. Additionally, it offers federated search and threat-hunting capabilities across various data sources, enhancing threat investigation across cloud and on-premises environments. IBM's cloud-native SIEM includes AI capabilities that automatically prioritize alerts, reduce noise, and provide context for high-priority alerts. It streamlines threat investigations by running federated searches, creating visual attack timelines, and suggesting recommended actions. It plans to introduce generative AI (GAI) capabilities for QRadar Suite in early 2024. These AI capabilities will automate tasks like report creation, threat detection, log data interpretation, and threat intelligence curation. GAI is expected to enhance the productivity of security analysts, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks. The investment in cloud-native SIEM and AI integration reflects its commitment to delivering next-generation security operations technology. These advancements are designed to simplify security operations, reduce complexity, and provide security teams with the tools to effectively address today's complex threat landscape. The new cloud-native QRadar SIEM will be available as SaaS in Q4 2023. IBM is actively working on its AI and data platform, watsonx, to enable generative AI to support security teams in automating routine tasks, accelerating threat response, and simplifying threat investigations. This represents a significant step toward more efficient and effective security operations.

Read More

Cloud App Management

Spectro Cloud Releases its ‘State of Production Kubernetes’ Report

Spectro Cloud | November 07, 2023

Spectro Cloud has unveiled its third annual ‘State of Production Kubernetes’ report, providing unique insights into the highly dynamic Kubernetes industry. The report, based on a comprehensive survey of 333 Kubernetes practitioners and decision-makers, reveals key trends and challenges facing the industry. The research highlights that operations teams are grappling with increasing complexity as their Kubernetes environments expand. A significant 56% of businesses have more than 10 Kubernetes clusters, and 69% run Kubernetes in multiple clouds or other environments. Furthermore, 75% report issues affecting the running of their clusters, an increase from 66% in 2022. The report also underscores the need for greater support for application developers. Despite the rise of platform engineering, 82% of operations teams struggle to provide developers with access to tailored clusters. Additionally, 37% report inconsistencies between development, staging, and production environments. The study also points to application modernization as a pressing issue for cloud-native organizations. While all interviewees reported a ‘container first’ approach, they agreed that virtual machines (VMs) are here to stay. A significant 85% are migrating existing VM workloads to Kubernetes, and 86% aim to unify containerized and VM workloads on a single infrastructure platform. The Spectro Cloud's report reveals challenges in Kubernetes, with 75% of operations teams facing issues with cluster management and 82% struggling to provide developers with tailored clusters. The report also highlights the persistence of VMs and security, compliance, and cost issues in edge computing. However, it also shows a growing trend towards Kubernetes, with a majority of businesses operating multiple clusters across various environments. The rise of platform engineering, migration of VM workloads to Kubernetes, and increasing adoption of Kubernetes in edge computing environments suggest a shift towards modernization and promising advancements. Finally, the report indicates that edge computing is gaining momentum, with 49% actively piloting or using Kubernetes in edge computing environments. AI is a key driver for edge adoption, with investment expected to improve business processes and enable new connected solutions. However, significant challenges remain, particularly around security, compliance, and the costs of field engineering. Spectro Cloud's third annual ‘State of Kubernetes’ report highlights these trends and challenges. The report aims to inspire new dialogue in the industry, particularly at events like KubeCon. The report is available for download and will be discussed in a webinar on November 30. About Spectro Cloud Spectro Cloud is a leading provider of Kubernetes management solutions. Its comprehensive platform allows organizations to manage the full lifecycle of diverse Kubernetes environments, whether small or large, new or existing, simple or complex, in data centers or the cloud. The company's unique approach offers IT teams complete control and visibility, enabling them to provide developers with flexible Kubernetes stacks and tools tailored to their specific needs, all while ensuring granular governance and enterprise-grade security.

Read More

Cloud App Development

Box and Google Cloud Expand Strategic Partnership Across Generative AI and Go-to-Market

Business Wire | November 02, 2023

Box, Inc. (NYSE: BOX), the leading Content Cloud, and Google Cloud today announced an expanded partnership to transform work in the enterprise with generative AI. Box will integrate with Vertex AI to build new gen AI features that help customers more efficiently process and analyze data stored in the Box Content Cloud, which is also now available to customers directly through Google Cloud Marketplace. Enterprises today want to work with strategic technology platforms that can help them work smarter and more productively, said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. Google Cloud is an incredibly important partner that helps us serve our customers globally. This deepened partnership underscores our joint commitment to delivering solutions that leverage cutting edge technology to power entirely new ways for users to intelligently interact with their content and revolutionize the way businesses operate in the AI-first era. “Generative AI can streamline some of the most time-consuming processes facing enterprises today, such as manual data entry and analysis,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud. “Our expanded partnership with Box will provide customers with new tools that help them quickly process and create insights from documents stored within Box Content Cloud, saving time that users can reallocate towards more impactful work.” New Box AI Capabilities, Powered by Vertex AI Box has chosen to integrate with Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s unified AI platform, to help customers process and analyze data faster, create more personalized user experiences, intelligent search, and more. Building on the earlier announcement that Box will integrate Google Cloud’s advanced large-language models (LLMs) into Box AI, Box will now use Vertex AI to help power its new metadata extraction feature. The new feature, coming first as an API, will save customers’ time inputting and maintaining data by automatically identifying and tagging key context from their documents, including matching metadata fields to attributes within a file. Soon, customers will be able to: Automatically classify and label documents at scale to surface key insights, such as contracts nearing their expiration and invoices requiring payment within the current month. Define metadata templates to extract information for custom use cases, such as automatically recognizing and tagging products in images or categorizing PII in specific types. Populate defined metadata templates and integrate with ERP and CRM systems to automate workflows such as invoicing, executing contracts, client and employee onboarding, and more. Identify and preserve critical information, such as timestamps, authorship, and document versions history, to maintain compliance protocols. Recognize and extract metadata in different languages to ensure consistent term recognition while operating in different countries and regions. Box is Now Available on Google Cloud Marketplace As part of the expanded partnership, Box is now also available on Google Cloud Marketplace, making it even easier for customers using Google Cloud infrastructure to purchase Box’s content management platform. With the Box app available on Google Cloud Marketplace, eligible customers can realize key benefits including: Reduced procurement cycles allowing for faster, smoother, and simpler buying process. Consolidated Google Cloud billing. Cost savings against existing Google Cloud commitments when purchased through Google Cloud Marketplace. Box Expands Its Use of Google Cloud Box already leverages Google Cloud as a key infrastructure provider for data storage and compute globally. Now, Box will expand its usage of Google Cloud by adopting several new services across networking, data analytics, and machine learning to deliver faster performance and higher-reliability to its customers. For example, Box is now applying: Google Cloud as a storage option for Box KeySafe, which enables Box customers to use their own encryption key within Box. This provides customers with more choice over where they maintain their encryption keys. Google Cloud’s global networking infrastructure to power Box network communication with customers, resulting in faster content transfers and increased productivity for customers around the world. Cloud Bigtable for improved performance and uptime for the core data systems that power Box. This enables Box to deliver its customers with a more reliable service to secure and manage all of their content needs. Google Cloud BigQuery to power Box's data application, analytics, and insights. With BigQuery, Box can now deliver more comprehensive data-driven insights to customers faster. Google Workspace Integrations The expanded partnership builds on existing integrations with Google Workspace, which lets Box customers create, collaborate, and save content in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides from the secure Box Content Cloud platform. Additionally, the Box for Google Workspace add-on enables smooth and secure productivity and collaboration across Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar. With these integrations, customers can: Create, open, and edit content using Google Workspace’s collaboration tools directly within Box. Add Box files directly to emails and save email attachments to Box without leaving Gmail. Include Box files and link Box Notes directly to your Google Calendar events. Save files in Google Drive to Box. Apply Box’s enterprise-grade security, compliance, and governance capabilities to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. About Box Box (NYSE:BOX) is the leading Content Cloud, a single platform that empowers organizations to manage the entire content lifecycle, work securely from anywhere, and integrate across best-of-breed apps. Founded in 2005, Box simplifies work for leading global organizations, including AstraZeneca, JLL, Morgan Stanley, and Nationwide. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Visit box.com to learn more. And visit box.org to learn more about how Box empowers nonprofits to fulfill their missions. About Google Cloud Google Cloud accelerates every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business and industry. We deliver enterprise-grade solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology, and tools that help developers build more sustainably. Customers in more than 200 countries and territories turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to enable growth and solve their most critical business problems.

Read More

Spotlight

Directive Consulting

Directive does beautiful search marketing for B2B and enterprise companies that share our values. We redefine the global standard for how marketers work, live, and grow. We are a group of SEO, PPC and content experts who are passionate about working with the best B2B brands in the world. When we are...

Events

Resources

resource image

Biggest B2B Marketing Challenges That We See Everyday as an Agency

Video

resource image

Could the Breadcrumb Technique Help Boost Your Landing Page Conversions?

Article

resource image

DIRECTIVE CONSULTING PORTFOLIO

Whitepaper

Events