MAM
Madhouse launches SmartMAD on it first anniversary
MUMBAI: Mobile communications company Madhouse celebrated its first anniversary on 14 February. Madhouse is a full service mobile communications company that has brought together agencies, publishers and technology partners to deliver robust mobile marketing solutions to advertisers across categories.
The agency has furthered its endeavour to take the mobile medium to greater heights with the launch of SmartMAD – an intelligent mobile advertising network in India that opens a plethora of opportunities for advertisers and publishers. SmartMAD provides targeted serving capabilities on premium and long tail publisher properties and enables interactive HTML 5 rich media ad formats, advanced features like frequency capping and near real time reporting.
During its first year of operations, Madhouse has achieved milestones like becoming a true end-to-end mobile communications company with all services like technology, strategy, creative, media, analytics and execution carried out in-house. The company also achieved the feat of being the only company with over 25 mobile marketing certified professionals apart from being the exclusive partner to Mindshare Global in the Mobile Center of Excellence initiative. Apart from this, Madhouse secured exclusive content partnerships on mobile and rolled out content led apps, carried out third party serving and tracking enabled for advertisers and agencies and enabled partner agencies and client campaigns win over 40 awards both nationally and internationally. It also got representation on the board of Mobile Marketing Association India chapter in its launch year and is now set to launch a mobile DSP platform in this year.
Ford VP marketing Anurag Mehrotra said, “Mobile is one of the key focus areas. In Madhouse we have a partner that understands our business & brings solutions that help meet our business objectives. In partnership with Madhouse, Ford has delivered many innovations – big & small – positioning us successfully to our audience via the medium.”
Maxus managing partner Kartik Sharma said, “Madhouse has a scientific approach to mobile media planning which is fantastic. Madhouse truly has the expertise of an end-to-end mobile solutions company and not just another media agency. Madhouse is a real welcome change lead by a set of passionate people.”
Madhouse India chief operating officer Vinod Thadani said, “Advertisers realize the potential of the medium but only need direction. 2013 is more the year of mobile maturity rather than the beginning of the era. Having said that there are clients at different stage of readiness & that‘s what makes the market interesting. Some have templatized mobile as a part of their marketing campaigns some are constantly experimenting with various technology innovations or ideas and others realize the medium potential & want to exploit. All they need is direction. Madhouse in 2013 is boisterously driven to discharge our expertise to charge advertisers growth and rise.”
Brands
Google completes $32 billion Wiz deal to boost AI and cloud security
Wiz joins Google Cloud but keeps multi-cloud support across rival platforms
NEW YORK: Google has completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security company Wiz, marking the biggest deal in the tech giant’s history and signalling a major push to strengthen security in the era of artificial intelligence and multi-cloud computing.
The New York-headquartered cybersecurity firm will join Google Cloud while continuing to operate under the Wiz brand. Crucially, the company will maintain support for multiple cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, reflecting the reality that most large organisations run their systems across several cloud providers.
Google said the acquisition is designed to help organisations build and scale applications more securely as businesses and governments increasingly move critical systems and data to the cloud. At the same time, the rapid adoption of generative AI has introduced new cybersecurity risks, with attackers also using AI to launch faster and more sophisticated attacks.
Wiz has built a reputation for simplifying cloud security. Its platform maps entire cloud environments, identifying vulnerabilities, potential attack paths and misconfigurations before they can be exploited. By connecting insights from code, cloud infrastructure and runtime environments, it allows security and engineering teams to detect and fix risks early in the development cycle.
Bringing Wiz into Google Cloud will create what the company describes as a unified security platform capable of detecting, preventing and responding to threats across cloud and AI environments. The combined offering will also integrate Google’s own security capabilities, including threat intelligence tools, security operations platforms and the cybersecurity expertise of Mandiant.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the move reflects the growing importance of security as more organisations rely on AI and cloud technologies. “Keeping people safe online has always been part of Google’s mission,” he said, adding that the partnership will help organisations innovate with greater confidence.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, said the goal is to make security an enabler rather than a roadblock for businesses building modern applications. He noted that the combined technologies will simplify the complex task of protecting hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
For Wiz, the acquisition opens the door to global scale while keeping its core philosophy intact. Co-founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company remains committed to an open, multi-cloud approach and will continue supporting customers regardless of where their workloads run.
Over the past year, Wiz has expanded its platform to address emerging risks tied to AI applications, including tools that help organisations monitor AI usage, detect AI-specific vulnerabilities and secure AI workloads during runtime.
With Google’s infrastructure, artificial intelligence capabilities and security ecosystem now behind it, Wiz plans to accelerate development of its platform while continuing to serve enterprises, governments and start-ups operating across different cloud environments.
For Google Cloud, the acquisition adds a powerful piece to its security puzzle as competition intensifies among global cloud providers. For customers, it promises a future where building fast in the cloud does not have to come at the expense of staying secure.
