Boss Equity Advises Optimal Systems Sale to Kyocera
Berlin - April 2020 - Boss Equity is delighted to announce that it was advisor to Optimal Systems during its sale, for €125 Million, to Japanese firm, Kyocera Document Solutions Inc. Optimal Systems is a leading German, owner-managed provider of enterprise content management software (ECM) with more than 450 employees in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Serbia, who support the installations and ECM solutions of several thousand customers, some of which are operated worldwide. 
https://www.bossequity.com/news/boss-equity-advises-optimal-systems-%E2%82%AC125-million-sale-kyocera

Terminal Acquires ROIKOI – Adds AI Talent Sourcing Technology
San Francisco – 23rd April 2020 - Terminal, a company that builds world-class remote engineering teams for high-growth tech companies, has announced it has acquired talent-mapping software company, ROIKOI. The acquisition combines Terminal's global reach, recruiting expertise and expansive engineering base with ROIKOI's AI-powered sourcing technology to identify and automatically engage with top talent. ROIKOI's talent acquisition platform will be available to all clients immediately. CEO of Terminal, Clay Kellogg, said: "Fast-growing start-ups turn to Terminal to quickly hire elite engineers that fit their precise needs, and with ROIKOI we continue to add new technology and services that do that better than anyone else. Given the economic pressures around COVID-19, companies are being extra selective to hire engineers who best fit their business needs. Terminal already accelerates the traditional hiring process by 40%; ROIKOI's AI technology adds rocket fuel to swiftly match startups with the ideal engineers to help achieve breakout velocity."
https://terminal.io/blog/roikoi-acquisition

Medopad Acquires AI & Wearable Tech Start Ups and Rebrands as Huma
London, UK – 16th April 2020 - HealthTech company, Medopad has acquired two UK AI and wearable technology businesses, BioBeats and TLT, and announced its rebrand to Huma. The acquisitions are part of the company’s goal to use insights gathered by remote monitoring to help healthcare, life sciences and innovation partners understand, treat poor health proactively. The comapny has offices in New York and Shanghai. It has raised more than $50m from Bayer, NWS Holdings and more. Dan Vahdat, founder & CEO of Huma, said: “Every day our bodies generate millions of unrecorded data points, masses of information previously unseen. We believe that this data can open up new insights on people’s health, just as mapping and visualising the genome has done. This previously unseen data represents a category called digital biomarkers, the unique signatures created as we walk, talk and move. Digital biomarkers may help tell us what causes disease, how they progress, and potentially how we can prevent disease. BioBeats and TLT enable our partners to have a more holistic sense of people’s health and wellbeing through better data.”
https://huma.com/files/HumaRebrandPressRelease_20200416.pdf

How the Software Sector is Wading in to Help During Lockdown

TCS iON™ Offers Free Access to Virtual Classrooms Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
New York & Mumbai – 23rd April 2020: TCS iON™, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has announced that in the wake of COVID-19 and closure of schools and colleges, it is offering access to the TCS iON Digital Glass Room, a virtual learning platform, free of cost to educational institutions in the US, until 31st March 2021. The platform, already available in Europe and India, enables educators and students to connect in a secure virtual environment, moving lessons from classrooms to interactive digital glass rooms. The TCS iON Digital Glass Room is a web-based digital education platform for schools and universities, empowering educators to engage with students in real-time by uploading and sharing their own school lessons, videos, worksheets, assignments and assessments, and using interactive methods like polls, debates, quizzes, surveys, and more. TCS will provide the initial digital training and support to help institutions get up and running in a matter of hours.
https://www.tcs.com/tcs-ion-offers-free-access-to-virtual-classrooms-educators-across-the-us

COVID-19 Hunger Relief: WhyHunger Launches Largest Crowd Sourced Map to Connect Food Insecure Individuals to Free Meal Sites
New York – 22nd April 2020 - In response to the growing hunger crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, WhyHunger - a leader in the movement to end hunger and advance the human right to nutritious food in the US and around the world - has partnered with 10x Management and their mapping gurus and software engineers, Greg Sadetsky and Colin Wren, to create the first-ever comprehensive, crowd sourced and open sourced interactive map of free meal sites in the US. “Food insecurity has become one of the most immediate challenges of the COVID-19 economic fallout. With unprecedented unemployment sweeping the nation, hunger is on the rise and we are heading for a real crisis. Access to healthy and nutritious foods is a basic human right, and one that we need to fight to protect even in the most challenging of times,” said Noreen Springstead, Executive Director, WhyHunger. “Having already built the most comprehensive database of food organizations in the U.S., and to expand upon our recent work with Waze, we were eager to jump in and collaborate on this new critical partnership to help increase access to food within communities, while engaging volunteers nationwide.”
https://whyhunger.org/category/whyhunger-press-releases/covid-19-hunger-relief-whyhunger-launches-largest-crowd-sourced-map-to-connect-food-insecure-individuals-to-free-meal-sites-2/

Gates Foundation Funding Research into a Vaccine for Coronavirus
The Foundations’ Response to Covid-19
From day one, the foundation has embraced a data-led, evidence-based approach to improving health, reducing poverty, and expanding opportunity. We rely on scientific and technical expertise. Together, these building blocks mean that in addition to our financial resources, we have the capacity and capability to play a significant role in the COVID-19 response. This is a unique situation; we are in a unique position to help. And today, we are announcing additional funding of $150 million that brings our total commitment so far to more than $250 million.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/TheOptimist/Articles/coronavirus-mark-suzman-funding-announcement-2

Verizon Supports Customers & the WHO During COVID-19 crisis
Basking Ridge, NJ - 23rd April 2020 - During this unprecedented period challenging the world’s health and economy, Verizon has announced it stands ready to support its employees and serve its customers and public safety. Verizon recently donated $3 million to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (WHO), in addition to a previous $2 million donation, as part of a partnership with Global Citizen’s “One World: Together At Home” global broadcast special to help aid healthcare workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Verizon’s total COVID-19 crisis commitment now stands at over $50 million in contributions and donations to nonprofits around the globe. Verizon continues to support customers who may find themselves needing additional data in order to learn, work or keep connected during this challenging time.
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/update-verizon-serve-customers-covid-19

Cisco Offers No-Cost Wireless Networking Equipment for Healthcare’s Pandemic Response
San Jose, CA - 20th April 2020 - Thousands of hospitals around the world are setting up temporary COVID-19 treatment and testing facilities. Each of these new facilities needs networking equipment to keep physicians and staff productive and informed, and to enable patients to communicate. But these organizations are struggling to get the equipment they need quickly, due to high demand and short supply. Cisco has set up two programs to help healthcare organizations rapidly obtain networking equipment at no cost: The Cisco Pandemic Equipment Brokerage, and the Cisco Healthcare Rapid Response Network Bundle. Cisco is also supporting our healthcare customers with expertise: We have networking engineers on call to provide design and configuration support for technology practitioners as they work to keep their communities safe.
https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/cisco-offers-no-cost-wireless-networking-equipment-for-healthcare

Tableau Responds to the Covid Crisis with Multi-Pronged Support
14th April – Tableau is offering assistance to local communities, small businesses, customers and students. In a statement, Tableau President & CEO, Adam Selipsky, said: “As a global community, we need a clear understanding of the data relevant to this illness as well as a community that works together—these are crucial requirements for us to make it through this crisis. We are committed to doing whatever it takes to support all of our employees, customers, partners, and communities. We’re all in this together.”
https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2020/4/update-our-covid-19-response

Telenor Provides Mobility Data on Population Movement to Norwegian Health Authorities to Assist War on Coronavirus
Kenth Engø-Monsen, Senior Researcher at Telenor Research, said: “Since the Norwegian government announced its lockdown measures on 12 March, we have seen exceptional changes in mobility. In some places, the inter-municipality movement has dropped by 65 percent. We know this because the data outlines a detailed view of the population’s overall travel patterns, based on mobile signals to base stations. The statistics are fascinating, but more importantly, this information can help health authorities in their work to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Knowledge about a population’s travel pattern is vital to understanding how an epidemic spreads throughout a country and thus the population.”
https://www.telenor.com/how-our-mobility-data-can-help-predict-and-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19/

Optimal Systems
Berlin - April 2020 - Boss Equity is delighted to announce that it was advisor to Optimal Systems during its sale, for €125 Million, to Japanese firm, Kyocera Document Solutions Inc. Optimal Systems is a leading German, owner-managed provider of enterprise content management software (ECM) with more than 450 employees in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Serbia, who support the installations and ECM solutions of several thousand customers, some of which are operated worldwide. 
https://www.bossequity.com/news/boss-equity-advises-optimal-systems-%E2%82%AC125-million-sale-kyocera

Medopad Acquires AI & Wearable Tech Start Ups and Rebrands as Huma
London, UK – 16th April 2020 - HealthTech company, Medopad has acquired two UK AI and wearable technology businesses, BioBeats and TLT, and announced its rebrand to Huma. The acquisitions are part of the company’s goal to use insights gathered by remote monitoring to help healthcare, life sciences and innovation partners understand, treat poor health proactively. The comapny has offices in New York and Shanghai. It has raised more than $50m from Bayer, NWS Holdings and more. Dan Vahdat, founder & CEO of Huma, said: “Every day our bodies generate millions of unrecorded data points, masses of information previously unseen. We believe that this data can open up new insights on people’s health, just as mapping and visualising the genome has done. This previously unseen data represents a category called digital biomarkers, the unique signatures created as we walk, talk and move. Digital biomarkers may help tell us what causes disease, how they progress, and potentially how we can prevent disease. BioBeats and TLT enable our partners to have a more holistic sense of people’s health and wellbeing through better data.”
https://huma.com/files/HumaRebrandPressRelease_20200416.pdf

How the Software Sector is Wading in to Help During Lockdown

TCS iON™ Offers Free Access to Virtual Classrooms Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
New York & Mumbai – 23rd April 2020: TCS iON™, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and global IT services, consulting and business solutions organization, has announced that in the wake of COVID-19 and closure of schools and colleges, it is offering access to the TCS iON Digital Glass Room, a virtual learning platform, free of cost to educational institutions in the US, until 31st March 2021. The platform, already available in Europe and India, enables educators and students to connect in a secure virtual environment, moving lessons from classrooms to interactive digital glass rooms. The TCS iON Digital Glass Room is a web-based digital education platform for schools and universities, empowering educators to engage with students in real-time by uploading and sharing their own school lessons, videos, worksheets, assignments and assessments, and using interactive methods like polls, debates, quizzes, surveys, and more. TCS will provide the initial digital training and support to help institutions get up and running in a matter of hours.
https://www.tcs.com/tcs-ion-offers-free-access-to-virtual-classrooms-educators-across-the-us

COVID-19 Hunger Relief: WhyHunger Launches Largest Crowd Sourced Map to Connect Food Insecure Individuals to Free Meal Sites
New York – 22nd April 2020 - In response to the growing hunger crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic, WhyHunger - a leader in the movement to end hunger and advance the human right to nutritious food in the US and around the world - has partnered with 10x Management and their mapping gurus and software engineers, Greg Sadetsky and Colin Wren, to create the first-ever comprehensive, crowd sourced and open sourced interactive map of free meal sites in the US. “Food insecurity has become one of the most immediate challenges of the COVID-19 economic fallout. With unprecedented unemployment sweeping the nation, hunger is on the rise and we are heading for a real crisis. Access to healthy and nutritious foods is a basic human right, and one that we need to fight to protect even in the most challenging of times,” said Noreen Springstead, Executive Director, WhyHunger. “Having already built the most comprehensive database of food organizations in the U.S., and to expand upon our recent work with Waze, we were eager to jump in and collaborate on this new critical partnership to help increase access to food within communities, while engaging volunteers nationwide.”
https://whyhunger.org/category/whyhunger-press-releases/covid-19-hunger-relief-whyhunger-launches-largest-crowd-sourced-map-to-connect-food-insecure-individuals-to-free-meal-sites-2/

Gates Foundation Funding Research into a Vaccine for Coronavirus
The Foundations’ Response to Covid-19
From day one, the foundation has embraced a data-led, evidence-based approach to improving health, reducing poverty, and expanding opportunity. We rely on scientific and technical expertise. Together, these building blocks mean that in addition to our financial resources, we have the capacity and capability to play a significant role in the COVID-19 response. This is a unique situation; we are in a unique position to help. And today, we are announcing additional funding of $150 million that brings our total commitment so far to more than $250 million.
https://www.gatesfoundation.org/TheOptimist/Articles/coronavirus-mark-suzman-funding-announcement-2

Verizon Supports Customers & the WHO During COVID-19 crisis
Basking Ridge, NJ - 23rd April 2020 - During this unprecedented period challenging the world’s health and economy, Verizon has announced it stands ready to support its employees and serve its customers and public safety. Verizon recently donated $3 million to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (WHO), in addition to a previous $2 million donation, as part of a partnership with Global Citizen’s “One World: Together At Home” global broadcast special to help aid healthcare workers in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Verizon’s total COVID-19 crisis commitment now stands at over $50 million in contributions and donations to nonprofits around the globe. Verizon continues to support customers who may find themselves needing additional data in order to learn, work or keep connected during this challenging time.
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/update-verizon-serve-customers-covid-19

Cisco Offers No-Cost Wireless Networking Equipment for Healthcare’s Pandemic Response
San Jose, CA - 20th April 2020 - Thousands of hospitals around the world are setting up temporary COVID-19 treatment and testing facilities. Each of these new facilities needs networking equipment to keep physicians and staff productive and informed, and to enable patients to communicate. But these organizations are struggling to get the equipment they need quickly, due to high demand and short supply. Cisco has set up two programs to help healthcare organizations rapidly obtain networking equipment at no cost: The Cisco Pandemic Equipment Brokerage, and the Cisco Healthcare Rapid Response Network Bundle. Cisco is also supporting our healthcare customers with expertise: We have networking engineers on call to provide design and configuration support for technology practitioners as they work to keep their communities safe.
https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/cisco-offers-no-cost-wireless-networking-equipment-for-healthcare

Tableau Responds to the Covid Crisis with Multi-Pronged Support
14th April – Tableau is offering assistance to local communities, small businesses, customers and students. In a statement, Tableau President & CEO, Adam Selipsky, said: “As a global community, we need a clear understanding of the data relevant to this illness as well as a community that works together—these are crucial requirements for us to make it through this crisis. We are committed to doing whatever it takes to support all of our employees, customers, partners, and communities. We’re all in this together.”
https://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2020/4/update-our-covid-19-response

Telenor Provides Mobility Data on Population Movement to Norwegian Health Authorities to Assist War on Coronavirus
Kenth Engø-Monsen, Senior Researcher at Telenor Research, said: “Since the Norwegian government announced its lockdown measures on 12 March, we have seen exceptional changes in mobility. In some places, the inter-municipality movement has dropped by 65 percent. We know this because the data outlines a detailed view of the population’s overall travel patterns, based on mobile signals to base stations. The statistics are fascinating, but more importantly, this information can help health authorities in their work to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Knowledge about a population’s travel pattern is vital to understanding how an epidemic spreads throughout a country and thus the population.”
https://www.telenor.com/how-our-mobility-data-can-help-predict-and-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19/