Slack launches Huddles, Ameyo and Exotel join forces and more

Exotel, Ameyo join forces: Form the largest customer engagement cloud platform

Exotel, a cloud communication platform, and Ameyo, a contact center platform, announced a merger on June 29, 2021. With a presence in 60 countries and an ARR of $40 million USD, this partnership establishes the largest customer interaction cloud platform in emerging markets.

Shivakumar, CEO & Co-founder of Exotel, added, "The pandemic has accelerated the market's need for a customer engagement cloud platform that can handle the changing work environment. Enterprises want a single platform that will be able to handle their customer interactions and effectively so. Joining hands with Ameyo helps us meet the demands of the emerging markets much faster." 

Sachin Bhatia, CEO of Ameyo said, "The customer engagement cloud platform is a really large market opportunity. The combination of Exotel and Ameyo creates the largest player in emerging markets. Customers would soon be able to unify their customer data and move towards AI to improve customer experience and personalisation."

Amsterdam-based VC Peak officially enters the German market

This week, the leading Amsterdam based VC Peak launched their first office in the German market. Unlike other investor brands in Germany, they are getting involved early on with SaaS or Tech startups, making first-round investments and fueling digital ideas from the start.

“We have been around for 14 years, built an international team, and invested across Europe, but this is our first office outside of Amsterdam. We deliberately chose Berlin over Paris or London. Being from Amsterdam, it is natural for us to grow in Europe by taking our next step in Germany – here lies the European economic powerhouse and there is enormous innovative momentum. This is exactly what we are looking for in the companies and teams we invest in and which we want to take to a new level together,” said Johan van Mil, Co-Founder and Managing Partner

Slack launches new feature Huddles, discord-like calls for impromptu meetings

Team communication platform- Slack, introduces a lightweight audio tool for easy hop-in and hop-out of calls. 

The company hopes that by making this audio-first functionality available, users will be able to brainstorm, speak, and discuss ideas in the same way they did before Pandemic. Huddles may be accessed by clicking on the left taskbar and entering the open meeting room for anybody in the creator's channel. 

WATCH: Daniel Stewart Butterfield, CEO at Slack on the remote work future in different sectors

Device 42 introduces new product with migration analysis and recommendation capabilities 

Device42, a hybrid cloud discovery & dependency mapping platform, announced a new tool with powerful capabilities. People at Device42 informed that tools will help businesses in analyzing their cloud architecture and recommending the most cost-effective path to cloud migration.

The tool, according to Raj Jalan, CEO and co-founder, employs machine learning to help find the optimum configuration and supports four cloud suppliers, including AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle, as well as VMware on AWS. He further informs- 

“The [new tool] that’s coming out is a multi-cloud migration and recommendation [engine]. Basically, with machine learning what we have done is in addition to our discovery tool […] is we can constantly update based on your existing utilization of your resources, what it is going to cost you to run these resources across each of these multiple clouds”