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Based on a sample of data from ~1,000 agencies and 14,000 clients, we estimate that agencies lose about 38% of their clients every year. Based on my 1,000s of conversations with agencies over the years, I think I know one of the big reasons why. Most agencies have been stuck in the same pattern for years: Do good work, report on it, wait for feedback, hope for renewal. They start strong—engaged with the client’s leadership, aligned on strategy and goals, excited to build.

Peanut butter has jam. Wine has cheese. Great Britain has pubs. The world is filled with things that are great alone, but that together, create an even greater – dare I say, legendary – combination. Now it comes to the world of data platform management. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, a few months back I predicted 2025 was going to be a big year for data platforms. One such solution being Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One (VSP One).

We're excited to announce the release of the next generation of Control Center for Confluent Platform, which delivers higher partition limits, faster spin-up time, metrics freshness, and simpler operational overhead. Confluent introduced Confluent Control Center in 2016 as part of Confluent Platform, simplifying Apache Kafka operations and delivering end-to-end visibility into data pipelines.

We’re excited to announce the General Availability (GA) of the Confluent fully managed V2 connector for Apache Kafka for Azure Cosmos DB! This release marks a major milestone in our mission to simplify real-time data streaming from and to Azure Cosmos DB using Apache Kafka. The V2 connector is now production-ready and available directly from the Confluent Cloud connector catalog.

Your teams want the immediate insights of stream processing with the scale and historical context of batch processing—but traditional data infrastructure forces you to resort to disparate tooling or manual workarounds to bridge that gap. This quarter’s release, coming to you live from Current London, brings new features in Confluent Cloud that fundamentally change this dynamic by seamlessly unifying stream and batch processing.

In 2025, companies are taking a cautious approach toward technology investments. That’s not surprising, given the uncertainty of the current global economic climate. For finance teams hoping to upgrade their systems this year, delayed ERP projects might sound like bad news, but if replacing your current system is not in the cards for 2025, there are still ways to enhance the overall value of your ERP software right now. ERP systems typically have a useful life of software between five and 15 years.

This article first appeared on VentureBeat. Businesses know they can’t ignore artificial intelligence (AI)—but when it comes to building with it, the real questions aren’t What can AI do? It’s What can it do reliably? And more importantly, Where do we start? This post introduces the VISTA Framework, a structured approach to prioritizing AI opportunities.