Originally published by PRWeb
The SAFe 4.6 role-based curriculum is designed to increase success rates for global enterprises and government agencies using Lean, Agile, and DevOps
BOULDER, Colo. (PRWEB) November 09, 2018
Scaled Agile, Inc., provider of the leading framework for enterprise agility, today announced the availability of training and certification for the 4.6 version of SAFe®. The new and enhanced courses are designed to help enterprises accelerate their competitive advantage in the marketplace through the practice of Lean, Agile, and DevOps.
The unifying theme throughout Scaled Agile’s role-based curriculum is the Five Core Competencies of the Lean Enterprise, a SAFe 4.6 initiative that focuses on creating a culture of continuous improvement and value creation for the end customer with minimal waste and processes.
The SAFe 4.6 training program includes 10 courses and professional certifications designed to meet the needs of Lean-Agile professionals from the beginning of their learning journey through their veteran years as they practice, consult, or train others in SAFe:
Core courses updated to SAFe 4.6:
- Leading SAFe® with SAFe® Agilist (SA) certification—Developing the Five Core Competencies of the Lean Enterprise
- SAFe® Scrum Master with SAFe® Scrum Master (SSM) certification—Applying the Scrum Master role within a SAFe® enterprise
- SAFe® for Teams with SAFe® Practitioner (SP) certification—Establishing team agility for Agile Release Trains
- SAFe® Product Owner/Product Manager with SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) certification—Delivering value through effective Program Increment execution
- SAFe® DevOps with SAFe® DevOps Practitioner (SDP) certification—Enabling Release on Demand for the Lean enterprise
Advanced courses updated to SAFe 4.6:
- Implementing SAFe® with SAFe® Program Consultant (SPC) certification—Implementing the Scaled Agile Framework® for Lean Enterprises
- SAFe® Advanced Scrum Master with SAFe® Advanced Scrum Master (SASM) certification—Advancing Scrum Master servant leadership with SAFe®
- SAFe® Release Train Engineer with SAFe® Release Train Engineer (RTE) certification—Facilitating Lean-Agile program execution
New SAFe 4.6 core courses:
- SAFe® Agile Software Engineering with SAFe® Agile Software Engineer (ASE) certification—Enabling technical agility for the Lean enterprise
- SAFe® for Government with SAFe® Government Practitioner (SGP) certification—Applying Lean-Agile practices in the public sector with SAFe®
Scaled Agile’s role-based curriculum leverages the latest in learning science to create learner-centric experiences that propel success for the individual and the business. “The design and development of our curriculum is informed by learning theories and practices from the fields of cognitive psychology, education, and neuroscience,” said Jennifer Fawcett, Director of Learning and Certification, Scaled Agile. “Classroom experiences combined with valuable resources in the SAFe Community Platform provide each student with an active, engaging, and collaborative learning environment.”
Chris James, Scaled Agile’s President and Chief Operating Officer, noted, “As the practice of SAFe continues to expand globally, the demand for SAFe training and certification is accelerating. This new offering of courses represents the next, most important step in meeting that demand and building out Scaled Agile’s role-based curriculum. We remain laser-focused on providing world-class courseware that is standardized to produce the most consistent results, even in the most complex and diverse environments.”
Descriptions of each course and registration information for public SAFe classes can be found at scaledagile.com/which-course.
About Scaled Agile, Inc.:
Scaled Agile, Inc., is the provider of SAFe®, the world’s leading framework for enterprise agility. Through learning and certification, a global partner network, and a growing community of over 300,000 trained professionals, Scaled Agile helps enterprises build better systems, increase employee engagement, and improve business outcomes. Scaled Agile is a contributing member of the Pledge 1% corporate philanthropy and community service movement. Learn about Scaled Agile and SAFe at scaledagile.com and scaledagileframework.com.
Originally published by SmartCompany
Social impact and philanthropic gestures have long gone hand-in-hand with the world of startups, as billion-dollar companies and investors strive to put their wealth to good use.
Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation has all but eradicated polio, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne have donated millions to healthcare organisations, and Warren Buffett has donated over $40 billion dollars since the turn of the century.
And while this may seem to many like the exclusive realm of the mega-rich and mega-successful, the founders of Aussie startup success story Atlassian say they want every company, big or small, to do their bit for charity.
This is in part because Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar have been doing their bit for charity since the early days of the company, creating the basis for what’s known today as the Atlassian Foundation just a few years after the company’s founding in 2002.
Speaking to StartupSmart, head of the Atlassian Foundation Mark Reading says the two’s philanthropic efforts date back to the SaaS company’s formative years, with the two founders pledging from early on to follow Marc Benioff’s 1-1-1 model of giving back.
This model sees a company pledge 1% of its resources, equity, profit and employee time towards philanthropy and giving back, and to date, the Atlassian Foundation has donated over $23 million to charities and over 37,000 hours of employee time.
Reading says the founders decided “the most impactful” thing they could do was change the lives of disadvantaged youths, choosing to donate to education-focused charities.
However, four years ago, the company decided to kick it up a notch, and partnered with Salesforce and Rally to create a new movement to get other companies involved with the 1-1-1 model.
“We began the Pledge 1% movement to make giving back a core part of more organisations,” Reading says.
“If every single founder embedded giving 1% back into their business model, we could mobilise some serious global resources for social good.”
Reading says the push is based on the founders’ belief business has a huge opportunity to contribute positively to society, and them wanting as many businesses as possible to make a 1% contribution to make it the “new normal”.
“Just the same way you save a portion of equity in a new business for future employees, we want every business to commit just 1% of their equity for good,” he says.
“I couldn’t imagine starting a new business today without investing at least 1% of your resources for good.”
And while 1% may not sound a lot for a small startup in its early days, Reading says as long as its embedded in the company from the beginning, the amount given will scale as the company does.
Due to Atlassian’s long-standing commitment to philanthropy, Reading claims the Atlassian Foundation is the second-largest foundation of its type in the country.
“The earlier you get on board, the easier it is,” he says.
Reading even says the pledge has been a “great business decision” for Atlassian too, though an unintended one, as the company has found it easier to attract great talent due to its prominent dedication to giving back.
Social enterprise sector still lagging
As part of the efforts, Farquhar will be participating in the ‘Fastest Executive Race’ for education charity Room to Read in Sydney this week. Though he admits he hasn’t seen Farquhar run, Reading says the word in the Atlassian corridors is the executive has “Buckley’s chance” of coming out on top.
Looking broadly at the social enterprise space in Australia, Reading says there’s definitely “room for improvement” locally compared to efforts being made in the US and the UK.
“We’re probably not as advanced as some other countries, but we’re definitely doing great things. I think it comes down to the whole ecosystem doing its part,” he says.
“It has always been said the not-for-profit sector achieves so much with so little, and the for-profit sector achieves so little with so much, so we’re hoping to do our part to flip that on its head.”
Originally published by Webwire
Northern California IT Startup Joins Growing List of US Companies Devoting Resources to Philanthropic Causes
Cloud Pathfinder Consulting (CPC), an emerging IT startup enabling business clients to fully harness the capabilities of Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) software tools, today proudly announced it has joined the Pledge 1% movement. Founded in 2014 as a joint philanthropy project of Salesforce, Atlassian and Rally, Pledge 1% encourages progressive companies of any size to formally devote one percent of resources—equity, time, product or profit—to nonprofit organizations serving their local community and beyond.
In keeping with the goals of the Pledge 1% movement, CPC will formally commit at least one percent of employee time and net profits to directly aid Merivis Foundation. A Texas-based nonprofit, Merivis shares CPC’s core mission of rewarding America’s military veterans and their families with valuable Salesforce skills training, certifications and job placement as a starting point for prosperous civilian careers.
“We recognize Pledge 1% as a terrific pipeline for companies to ’give back’ to their communities,” said CPC founder and CEO Jesse Grothaus, an Army Reserve veteran who served several overseas deployments. “Merivis Foundation is a perfect match for us to lend our specific Salesforce expertise—and share our success with a larger group of fellow veterans.”
“We’ve already achieved great success stories in training and mentoring veterans with the in-depth Salesforce skills so many employers are struggling to find,” said Hector Perez Jr., president of Merivis Foundation Board of Directors. “We couldn’t find a better partner than CPC, and we gladly accept their assistance toward helping give veterans a leg up in today’s competitive job market”
About Cloud Pathfinder Consulting
Founded in 2017, Cloud Pathfinder Consulting (CPC) enables business clients to reap maximum advantages from the Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) platform, from navigating front-end setup (consulting, planning, training and migration) through back-end support, including full data integration management, reporting and advanced analytics, with a range of service tiers tailored to meet the needs of companies of every size. CPC is also among select recipients of the Salesforce Impact Fund, Salesforce Ventures’ $50 million commitment to accelerate promising new companies which utilize Salesforce tools to benefit society. A veteran-owned small business based in Northern California. For more information, visit www.cloudpathfinderconsulting.com .
About Merivis Foundation
Merivis Foundation supports veterans preparing for their next missions through training, mentorship and job readiness for Salesforce cloud technology positions. With a growing need for Salesforce certified professionals and an increasing numbers of underemployed veterans in the country, they bridge the gap to help veterans transition to civilian life and find great careers. Learn more at www.merivisfoundation.org .
About Pledge 1%
Pledge 1% is an effort spearheaded by Atlassian, Rally, Salesforce and Tides to accelerate their shared vision around integrating philanthropy into businesses around the world. Pledge 1% encourages and challenges individuals and companies to pledge 1% of equity, profit, product and/or employee time for their communities, because pledging a small portion of future success can have a huge impact on tomorrow. Pledge 1% offers companies turnkey tools and best practices, making it accessible for any company to incorporate philanthropy into their business model. To learn more or to take the pledge, please visit www.pledge1percent.org .
There’s open source and there’s open source.
There’s genuine free and open source software (FOSS) and then there’s largely locked down proprietary non-dynamic library open source that is generally supplied as a commercially supported version of an open source kernel base that doesn’t see whole lot of real world code commits — and, no, there’s no acronym for that.
Then, there’s other ways of evidencing real open openness such as non-technical contributions (could be language translation/localisation etc.) and then there’s plain old contributions.
Scale-out Postgres database technologies Citus Data is donating 1 percent of its equity to non-profit PostgreSQL organisations in the US and Europe.
The United States PostgreSQL Association says it has received the stock grant and will work with the PostgreSQL Europe organisation to support the growth, education, and future innovation of the open source Postgres database in both the US and in Europe.
To coincide with Citus Data’s equity donation, the company is joining the Pledge 1% movement, alongside technology organisations such as Atlassian, Twilio, Box etc..
“When people think about contributing to open source and building sustainable open source communities, there are different approaches,” said Citus Data CEO Umur Cubukcu. “You can open source software you’ve created, you can maintain certain features and projects, and you can contribute to events with speakers and sponsorships — all of which our team spends a lot of time on.”
Founded in 2011, the founders of Citus Data set out to bring the performance and economics of scale-out systems to the field of relational databases.
To give applications the memory, compute, and disk resources of a distributed database cluster, the team at Citus Data created an extension to Postgres that transforms PostgreSQL into a distributed database — something that was previously not possible with any other relational database, whether proprietary or open source.
Originally published by PRNEWSWIRE
Fastest Growing Top 5 Enterprise Software Company to Significantly Expand Regional Headquarters in Atlanta
Salesforce , the global leader in CRM, announced Salesforce Tower Atlanta, significantly expanding the company’s regional headquarters in Atlanta. As part of the expansion, Salesforce plans to add 600 new jobs locally, over the next five years, helping fuel the city’s economic development. The company will grow its footprint in The Atlanta Plaza in Buckhead, which will now be known as Salesforce Tower Atlanta.
Salesforce Tower Atlanta joins the ranks of other Salesforce regional headquarters, including Salesforce Tower New York, Salesforce Tower Indianapolis, Salesforce Tower London, and the company’s worldwide headquarters, Salesforce Tower San Francisco.
Salesforce employees will start moving into the newly renovated floors beginning in 2019. Plans for the building include a renovated immersive lobby experience and top “Ohana Floor” – an open hospitality space for Salesforce employees, customers and partners, which is also available for nonprofits and local education groups on weeknights and weekends at no cost.
“Salesforce continues to reach new heights and we’re thrilled to further our commitment to the city of Atlanta,” said Elizabeth Pinkham, EVP, Real Estate, Salesforce. “Salesforce Tower Atlanta provides a one-of-a-kind workspace where all of our employees can do the best work of their lives while supporting the community by giving back.”
“Atlanta is a fantastic market for world-class talent and we’re thrilled to grow our presence in the region,” said Warren Wick, EVP, Commercial Sales, Salesforce. “Many of our top customers call the city home and we’re excited to support these trailblazers in connecting with their customers in whole new ways.”
“Salesforce joins other market-leading global brands that have recently announced plans to grow their operations in Atlanta,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. “We are proud to be a top choice for companies looking for a talented workforce, quality-of-life, and a welcoming and inclusive business community. The Salesforce cloud will be an exciting addition to our ever-evolving skyline.”
New Tower Supports Salesforce’s Continued Growth in Atlanta
Salesforce has been named one of Fortune’s Best Places to Work for the past 10 years and was recently ranked one of Atlanta’s Best Places to Work by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Salesforce Tower Atlanta will be a hub for world-class, diverse talent, enabling the company to deliver new innovations to its more than 150,000 customers around the world. Salesforce has nearly 600 employees in the Atlanta area and more than 32,000 employees worldwide. Atlanta is home to many Salesforce customers including Coca-Cola, InterContinental Hotels Group, SunTrust and Kabbage.
Giving Back—Committing to 25,000 Volunteer Hours Next Year
Today, Salesforce employees in Atlanta are committing to deliver 25,000 total employee volunteer hours to local nonprofits in 2019. To date, Salesforce technology has powered more than 37,000 nonprofit and higher education institutions; Salesforce.org has provided more than $230 million in grants; and Salesforce employees have logged more than 3.2 million volunteer hours throughout the world. Employees in Atlanta have supported a variety of organizations including Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta, Camp Sunshine, Open Hand Atlanta and Junior Achievement of Georgia.
In addition, more than 6,000 companies from 100 countries have committed to Pledge 1%, an initiative spearheaded by Salesforce that encourages and challenges individuals and companies to pledge 1% equity, product and employee time for their communities. Local Atlanta companies that have joined Pledge 1% include accessnow USA, Chaplain&co, Medric Networks and QASymphony.
Salesforce—Fastest-Growing Top 5 Software Company
Salesforce is the global leader in customer relationship management (CRM), helping companies connect with their customers in a whole new way. Founded in 1999, Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies—cloud, mobile, social, internet of things, and artificial intelligence—to get closer to their customers. The Salesforce Customer Success Platform includes industry-leading services spanning sales, service, marketing, commerce, communities, collaboration and industries, all on a single trusted cloud platform.
Originally published by BizWest.
FORT COLLINS — Innosphere, the incubator for startup and scaleup science and tech-based companies, is partnering with the Community Foundation of Northern Colorado and Pledge 1% to help Innosphere companies participate in long-term giving.
Pledge 1% has a philanthropic model that allows companies to pledge 1 percent of equity, annual profit, employee time or company product to nonprofits of their own choosing.
“We’ve seen a rise in the number of companies that want to make the community a stakeholder in their companies,” said Scott Sampl, Innosphere operations director, in a prepared statement. “It’s an easy way for entrepreneurs to give and it starts with an easy pledge form on the Pledge 1% Colorado website.”
The Community Foundation will help startups consider their community impact and decide how best to provide their philanthropy.
Innosphere does not take equity in the companies it supports. But companies that decide to pledge 1 percent of equity can choose to direct a portion of their funds to Innosphere’s 501(c)(3) to help the incubator launch new initiatives. The Community Foundation of Northern Colorado will work with all companies on their philanthropic goals, regardless of location. Innosphere companies not based in Northern Colorado could select to give back to other Colorado foundations such as the Community Foundation of Boulder County, the Rose Community Foundation or the Denver Foundation.
“We’re excited to offer every Innosphere company the opportunity to invest in philanthropy when there’s an exit,” Sampl said.
Founding partners for Pledge 1% include Salesforce, Altassian and Rally Software.
Originally published on Looker Blog
Looker has been embedded in its community since the very beginning. That’s actually why we’re headquartered in Santa Cruz, CA. Our founder and CTO, Lloyd Tabb, was a long-time Santa Cruz resident who’d raised his family there and taught middle school in the community. So when he was starting his own company, he didn’t want to start it “over the hill” in Silicon Valley, but right in his own community.
And as Looker has expanded to offices in New York, Dublin, London, San Francisco and beyond, Lookers have found ways to give back to the communities they live and work in. From packing backpacks for school children who are living in homeless shelters in NY to cleaning up the river in Santa Cruz and learning CPR in Dublin, Lookers are passionate about contributing back to their communities.
But as the company has grown, we’ve been thinking about how we can give back in a more formal way. And we’ve asked ourselves ‘what we can uniquely give back’? Not surprisingly, what we realized is that Looker is uniquely qualified to provide reliable, self-service access to data. And while not every nonprofit needs that, plenty of charitable organizations are struggling with the same data chaos that their for-profit peers are.
That’s why we’re so excited to announce Looker for Good, our way of giving back to our communities and the groups that enrich them.
Looker Pledges 1%
The first component of Looker for Good is that Looker is joining Pledge 1%. We’re pledging 1% of our product to charity, as well as the employee time needed to help the charities we give Looker to be successful.
We’re thrilled to announce that the first recipient, Accion, is already standing up their Looker deployment and getting value from it. Accion is an amazing organization that’s been providing microfinance loans to small businesses all across America since 1991, and we’re so excited to help them get more value from their data with Looker.
And we are already looking for the next nonprofits to give Looker to, so if you work for a nonprofit or know of one that could benefit from free Looker, we’d love for you to nominate them here.
Nonprofit Discounts
The next component of Looker for Good is focused on making Looker accessible to all nonprofits. We’ve announced significant discounts off Looker’s list price for every nonprofit, whether they need a small deployment or a huge one. You can see all the details here.
Training Future Analysts
The final part of Looker for Good is that we’re offering free Looker deployments to educators who are interested in using Looker to train the next generation of analysts. If you’re an educator who’s interested, please don’t hesitate to reach out so we can discuss your use case.
We’re so proud of the work that Lookers are already doing to care for their communities. And we can’t wait to build out Looker for Good as a new channel for using our unique abilities to power the greater good with better data.
https://www.apnews.com/87fecbe6ed194f7a9c311bd0a20ad205
Originally published by NewVoiceMedia
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct 11, 2018–NewVoiceMedia, a leading global provider of cloud contact center and inside sales solutions, has been named in the inaugural FT Future 100, an annual list compiled by The Financial Times which celebrates fast growing UK businesses that are positively contributing to the future of their sector, business, and society.
The accolade builds on the FT 1000, a recent ranking of Europe’s fastest growing companies published by the Financial Times and Statista, in which NewVoiceMedia was featured.
Serving more than 700 customers, NVM is outperforming the rapidly expanding cloud contact center market twofold and continues to attract new customers through exciting technological developments. It recently unveiled key capabilities that will enable businesses to drive digital transformation and create unified, consistent and integrated experiences irrespective of the channel chosen by the customer.
NewVoiceMedia launched its Foundation in 2010 as part of its commitment to offer skills-based volunteering to local community projects, organize fundraising activities and match the funding raised by employees’ charitable initiatives. In 2016, the company was also among the first to join Pledge 1%, a corporate philanthropy movement which empowers businesses to donate 1% of product, 1% of equity, 1% of profit or 1% of employee time to improve communities around the world.
“It’s a real privilege to be named as part of the FT Future 100,” commented Ashley Unitt, Co-Founder of NewVoiceMedia. “We operate in a multi-billion-dollar market that is accelerating its transition to the cloud and have seen rapid growth, owing to our commitment to helping our customers deliver a better, more emotive customer experience. We’re proud to be able to share this success by contributing to the efforts of creating social impact on a global scale, while enabling our employees to support the causes that are important to them.”
For further information about NewVoiceMedia, visit www.newvoicemedia.com
– ENDS –
About NewVoiceMedia
NewVoiceMedia is a leading global provider of cloud contact center and inside sales technology that enables businesses to create exceptional, emotive customer experiences to serve better and sell more.
Its award-winning platform joins up all communications channels without expensive, disruptive hardware changes and plugs straight into your CRM for full access to hard-won data. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability.
NewVoiceMedia’s 700+ customers include Canadian Cancer Society, Ebury, FCR Media, FlixBus, JustGiving, Kingston University, Lumesse, Paysafe and Vax. For more information, visit www.newvoicemedia.com or follow NewVoiceMedia on Twitter @NewVoiceMedia.
In September 2018, NewVoiceMedia entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Vonage (NYSE), a business cloud communications leader. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2018.
View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181011005062/en/
CONTACT: NewVoiceMedia
Nicola Brookes
Tel: +44 (0)7500 006 458
Email:Nicola.brookes@newvoicemedia.com
Originally published by Cloud Co-Op
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Cloud Co-Op, an innovative product development consultancy and Salesforce systems integrator, started working with ICS+ as a free business coach addressing cash flow, accounts receivable and technology management issues, an ongoing challenge for many businesses. As a formal consultant, Cloud Co-Op improved operational efficiency and working capital by streamlining project management into one integrated Salesforce platform for all client-focused data and collaboration. The turnaround earned ICS+ recognition with a 2018 Tech ROI Award for innovative technology deployment in the industry and had returns on investment of 942% in just 6 weeks.
“We consulted with ICS+ at a pivotal time. Business was good, the product proven, and yet it was hard to scale due to inefficient internal systems. Cloud Co-Op developed an integrated Salesforce platform greatly improving project management, visibility, and gross margins. For many at this stage, it’s the difference between thriving or stagnating,” said David Franklin, CEO, and Founder of Cloud Co-Op.
To date, Cloud Co-Op’s new platform has yielded ICS+ an average annual benefit of more than $180,000. Download the full report from Nucleus Research to see how these benefits ‘extend across the entire business. Franklin is a speaker at Dreamforce 2018 where he will discuss becoming a Pledge 1% company during the keynote, as well as other topics.
“Cloud Co-Op has been great because they work with us as much or as little as we need, depending on our next objective. Better still, we don’t have to be coders. They are keen on teaching us to fish so we can be more independent in the future. Their strategic guidance has been truly instrumental to our success,” said CEO of ICS+, Bernard Morgan.
Cloud Co-Op designed a platform for ICS+ using Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud, Quip, and Inbox, to provide one integrated platform for all client-focused data and collaboration. Moving from NetSuite, e-mail, and a variety of spreadsheets to Salesforce, enabled the company to streamline project management, increase data capture and collaboration, increase employee productivity, and accelerate collections by one-third while increasing client satisfaction.
Salesforce, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud, Quip and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.
About Cloud Co-Op
Cloud Co-Op, a Registered Salesforce Consulting Technology Partner, was founded by U.S. Navy veteran and 12-year Salesforce guru, David Franklinwho had the vision to create a team of certified Salesforce veterans to execute custom development and implementations for businesses getting started in Salesforce or scaling up their operations. Cloud Co-Op helps Salesforce customers reduce implementation and development cost, establish governance controls, increase user adoption, and develop growth strategies.
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
g+
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cloud-co-op-coaches-ics-to-big-returns-with-salesforce-and-tech-roi-award-300719452.html
SOURCE Cloud Co-Op