By Laurie Krisman

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Athletes, influencers, and celebrity endorsements increase brand engagement, extend reach, and drive sales. But if Beyoncé still hasn’t returned your call, don’t throw in the towel just yet. There are lots of demand-generation strategies that will engage your audience. It’s all about creating the right mix of content that breaks through the clutter, meets ROI, and gives back the KPIs you need. 

First, consider what drives your customer experience and work backward. (Wait, didn’t Steve Jobs say that? Apple was clearly on to something.) To create truly relevant content for your B2B marketing funnel, consider the real pain points, needs, and interests your target audience faces and then build your funnel strategy around it. As a refresher, the marketing funnel is made up of three distinct stages: TOFU (top of funnel), MOFU (middle of funnel), and BOFU (bottom of funnel). What your audience looks for evolves as they move down the funnel, so determining the type of demand-generation content that’s most effective for each stage is critical. 

Before we dig into each stage, there’s one more content best practice we should mention: a messaging and positioning framework (MPF).  An MPF will illustrate the key points you want your audience to take away when reading any asset. And by starting with an MPF, each piece of content you create will present the same points through different lenses. This way, your audience will hear you loud and clear—hopefully a few times. 

TOFU: Awareness and discovery 

From the top of the funnel, the audience is wide and so are the options. With customers not yet ready to convert, the goal is to engage them with your brand/solution and introduce them into the funnel. According to a report from Marketing Charts, B2B tech marketers and demand gen decision-makers say that blogs, infographics, and videos work best at this stage of the funnel. For cloud companies aiming to drive awareness, 2A would add social GIFs and email kits as great assets, too. And, additional research shows close to half (48%) of sales and marketing professionals believe that ROI from B2B videos is growing.  

• Blogs: Pique interest in a short post from a reputable author 
• Infographics: Turn your complex data into a well-crafted visual story 
• Videos and animations: Entice and educate with core benefits and branding 
• Social GIFs: Capture attention online with a quick moving showcase 

MOFU: Consideration and evaluation 

Once your audience moves through the initial engagement phase and into the middle of the funnel, they’ll want to see meatier assets to guide them through their buying journey. Case studies are a particularly effective way to bring tech use cases to life. Gated ebooks, whitepapers, and presentations are other assets favored by B2B marketers.  

• Case studies: Bring technical use cases to life with stories that drive positive change 
• Gated ebooks and whitepapers: Educate prospects with deeper content and collect leads 
• Pitch decks: Start persuasive solution-based conversations with prospects 

BOFU: Decision and conversion 

Finally, once your audience moves into the decision phase they’ll want to see more—and more specific—information. In this area, meatier customer references for niche use cases, product demos, email follow-ups, personalized reports, and solution-specific videos are highly rated and help the audience take that final step.  

• Product demos: Animate UI product screens to educate prospects about core benefits 
• Email kit: Nurture leads with enticing copy, intentional, layout and a clear call to action
• Solution-specific videos: Highlight specific product/solution use cases with video and animation  

Once you map out the three phases of the B2B marketing funnel and how your customer’s buying journey fits into it, content creation can begin in earnest. That’s where 2A comes in! As a cloud marketing agency focused on storytelling for business, we’re here to help when you’re ready to get started.  

Check out our new sizzle video for a taste of our demand-generation content! Then, give us a shout— [email protected]. I’d love to learn more about your marketing goals and how 2A might help.  

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Accounting tech firm Sage, which serves SMBs, has partnered with AWS to build a domain-specific large language model using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Lex. What I really want is a collaboration with Sage that has them making things with SageMaker so we can say Sage is a maker of SageMaker stuff. And then Sage can turn around and do a big deal with McCormick spices, specifically in their sage-making department, so Sage can sell SageMaker to the world’s No. 1 sage maker. 
• AWS, Accenture, and Anthropic have formed a partnership to help businesses in regulated sectors, such as finance and healthcare, access advanced AI models using Bedrock from AWS and Claude 3 from Anthropic. Accenture will train its engineers to use these tools so they can offer implementation support.  
• This is part of the AWS plan to run the world’s “biggest AI playground,” starting with Bedrock. 
• There’s a leadership shakeup at Microsoft, starting with its hire of Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection, who is now EVP and CEO of Microsoft AI. The company has also hired Karén Simonyan, another Inflection co-founder, as chief scientist. Pavan Davuluri is the new head of Windows and Surface. And it’s unclear if Mikhail Parakhin, who was the head of advertising and web, is staying with Microsoft or not. Microsoft also promoted Azure VP Girish Bablani to president. 
• After peeling off Inflection’s top two people, Microsoft agreed to pay the company $650M in cash to bring its AI models to Azure—and use most of its staff. So, basically this is what Mustafa’s new browsing history looks like.
• Inflection and OpenAI have to share the spotlight with others. Microsoft invested $16M in Mistral, a French AI company, to bring Mistral’s newest AI model to Azure. Geez, Azure is getting more models than NYC Fashion Week (I get one dad joke per newsletter). 
• This is part of Microsoft’s strategy to partner with many different AI companies. Microsoft will rely on these partners to enhance AI offerings while it focuses on building AI-essential infrastructure. 
• ALSO having entered a partnership with Microsoft, Mistral AI is providing AWS with its foundation models for tasks like code completion and text summarization. 
• And it’s wasting no time! Microsoft and OpenAI have plans to launch a $100B data center by 2028, which will include an AI supercomputer dubbed “Stargate.” Microsoft is largely footing the bill, which is about 100 times more than some of the biggest data centers, or about the same as my new health insurance deductible.  
• After entering a major partnership with Microsoft, NVIDIA is now partnered with AWS to bring its Blackwell GPU platform to the cloud provider, which will offer it with EC2 instances. The goal is to accelerate generative AI capabilities. Chuckin’ chips to all the big clouds…NVIDIA has major rizz and serious player energy and I am here for it. 
• E tu, Granicus? The “government experience” software and services provider is partnering with AWS to offer “engagement solutions” to the public sector. This will help the public sector do things like “customize citizen interactions.” In other words, it will help the government capture and correlate billions of our digital interactions. Should be fantastic, can’t wait. 

World domination 

• Kries from the Kremlin? In step with Amazon and Google, Microsoft has limited or removed access to more than 50 of its cloud products in Russia. Many Russian companies will find their keys for Dynamics 365, Azure, and other major platforms invalid. (However, this doesn’t address the Russian companies that had used foreign accounts to bypass any future restrictions.) While it seems like the private sector’s version of sanctions, these tech companies may be doing the Russian government a favor—the dictator, I mean president, wants to steer Russian businesses toward domestic solutions. I dunno, though…have you ever been on a Russian elevator? 
• Meanwhile, Chinese officials are telling government departments to stop using Intel, AMD, and Microsoft; they also want to drive domestic software and hardware production. They should make a TikTok about it… 
• AWS will launch an Infrastructure Region in Saudi Arabia by 2026. As part of its long-term commitment to the Kingdom, AWS will invest $5.3B there—a measly one-third of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s net worth. “Why don’t you take me to dinner first before you insult me,” I imagine Talal saying to Jeff Bezos. “Take me out on your quaint little sailboat Jeff and tell me about this cheap infrastructure plan, it amuses me,” he’d say.  
• More in our neck of the woods, AWS plunked down $650M to buy Talen Energy’s 1,200-acre data center campus in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Um, more interesting than that are the local news stories, forever my favorite. What’s going on in Luzerne County, you ask? A few things, like the installation of a toilet drop box for your ballots, an unruly hospital patient pulling the fire alarm, a drunken man kicking a state trooper, and a talent show!!! The data center will fit right in.  
• AWS will also open a new Direct Connect location in Hawaii, allowing businesses to establish a private, physical network connection between AWS and their data centers or offices. 
• Government agencies in the U.S. West region can use AWS Wickr, an encrypted communications service, following its FedRAMP authorization. Is there, like, a reason why the U.S. East can’t use it? Or will it just be approved in three hours because of the time difference? 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• AWS laid off hundreds of people, primarily in sales, marketing, and store technology teams. This is sad news for us over at 2A, and we hope to see those people we’ve enjoyed working with do big things wherever they go. 
• Microsoft will have to change how it markets its Teams and Office products following antitrust pressure from the European Union. The company has agreed to unbundle the two solutions, which makes Slack very happy. In the last decade, Microsoft has paid more than $2B in EU antitrust fines.  

New stuff  

• There is now an AWS Generative AI competency that businesses can earn, and the cloud giant claims it is the first to offer such a competency to partners.  
• Generative AI data company DataStax has achieved the new, totally hot and totally coveted Generative AI Competency. Crayon, an IT services company, has also colored itself competent. And so did Loka, a full-stack consultancy.  
• Microsoft designed a new safety feature that can better detect when AI is hallucinating and block malicious prompts. Prompts Shield will (try to) protect against indirect and direct attacks, in which users manipulate the AI to do something or use it to carry out a malicious attack, respectively. Here are some other safety tools. 
• This didn’t stop a self-described whistleblower at Microsoft from sounding the alarm on the harmful imagery Microsoft’s Copilot Designer can, and does, produce—even from benign requests.  
• Teams update: Microsoft has improved the AI features in Teams to offer message generation and smarter meeting summaries.  
• Businesses can move their data to other cloud providers for free, says AWS—and don’t think it’s out of the goodness of AWS’ heart. The company had to do this to comply with the European Data Act. 
• New capabilities are out for Amazon Connect, including a self-service, drag-and-drop tool to create Live Chats, along with some new plug-ins.  
• Copilot Pro is now available worldwide. Customers can use it to build their own copilots and embed them in Office apps.  
• Copilot is also ready for cybersecurity prime time, says the company that’s always getting hacked.  
• And Microsoft is developing a specialized strategy for bringing Copilot to finance teams, but its success depends on how customers use their data sources to generate results. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• To get even less work done, congressional staff are no longer allowed to use the Microsoft Copilot chatbot because of security concerns. This comes after limitations on ChatGPT usage.  
• YOINK! AWS has won Gee Rittenhouse away from his position of CEO at Skyhigh Security, after only two years there. Rittenhouse will join AWS as VP of enterprise security.  

Best Friends Forever 

• Box has integrated Azure OpenAI Service with its selection of AI tools, but remains committed to its terrible user experience.  
• Veeam, a data backup and restore software company, is adding Microsoft Copilot and AI services to offerings. 
• Cognizant is going to work more closely with Azure by creating a special platform for Azure.  
• Tidal, a SaaS platform that helps with cloud migration and application management, is now part of Microsoft’s Azure Landing Zone Accelerator program.   
• Philips and AWS are collaborating to bring better diagnostic capabilities, including improved digital pathology, to healthcare companies.  
• Leidos, a company that—and I quote—“addresses the world’s most vexing challenges,” has entered a multi-year strategic agreement with AWS to solve famine…oh wait, no, to accelerate innovation in the commercial market. My bad. The world is pretty short on innovation, though… 
• Danske Bank, which is Danish but not like the kind you have for breakfast, I mean like the country, is migrating all its stuff to AWS.  
• Cybersecurity firm Arctic Wolf has made its entire portfolio available in AWS Marketplace. 
• Keeper Security, a cloud-based zero-trust software provider, has joined the AWS Partner Network. 

By Mollie Hawkins

Image by Brandon Conboy

2A Embedded Consultants (ECs) are highly skilled, experienced professionals who function as contracted members of our clients’ teams. For the past two years, 2A EC Matt deWolf has been using his graphic designer talents at Microsoft Research (MSR). In this Q&A, Matt shares how he got here, what he’s doing, and why he loves it so dang much. 

Mollie: What do you do at Microsoft Research? 

Matt: So, the classic designer joke is that I “make things pretty,” right? Well, it’s more than just making things look nice, especially at MSR. Because of the global inflection point we’re at in technology, design is also about ensuring our visual language clearly communicates the message that we’re explicitly trying to send. An example of this is making sure our communications around AI visually align with our intentions. When we discuss AI, it’s important to ensure that our audience doesn’t get brought into a scene that inaccurately depicts what we want to say. The words in any asset tell one part of the story, but the imagery, color, and composition play a key role in reinforcing that textual direction. 

Mollie: That’s a fun challenge! What’s the most interesting part of working at MSR? 

Matt: It’s great getting to work with cutting-edge researchers who are wholly devoted to our mission statement: “Advancing science and technology to benefit humanity.” Something special about MSR is the non-product-related approach; not every development or mission immediately ties into something commercialized. I get to see new developments in AI research that range from determining the accuracy of image generation against a description to applications in healthcare. The breadth of work is truly impressive. 

Mollie: Can you tell me about a cool project you’ve been working on? 

Matt: MSR is piloting an episodic approach to our previous annual Research Summit called Microsoft Research Forum. This forum shares the latest findings with the global research community in real time. The event is considered a “tier 1” event for Microsoft, and it allows us to work with many vendors to develop the visual identity, web platform, and production for it. Not only is it the inaugural forum, but also we’re working collaboratively to build something great together. 

Mollie: How have you grown in your role over the past two years? 

Matt: The Research Forum project gave me opportunities to act as an art director, coordinating between design vendors, animators, developers, and internal production teams. This was a much more direct opportunity to explore these skillsets compared to some of my previous roles. I have definitely grown personally, learning to deliver constructive feedback and communicate clearly to multiple stakeholders, getting us closer to the outcomes we want. I hope to continue developing design leadership skills that support my team’s ability to do their jobs. 

Mollie: Where were you before Microsoft, and what about Microsoft makes your heart sing? 

Matt: Before MSR, I worked as a package designer at Hasbro. Yes, the Hasbro that makes Star Wars figures, Nerf Blasters, and Monopoly! But at MSR, I feel much more interested in the work. I enjoy technical things—bridging the gap between abstract concepts and visuals. Perhaps some of this comes from an adjacent design interest, web development. Let’s just say that when I write a JavaScript function and it doesn’t throw any errors, I basically feel like an MSR computer scientist. (LOL) 

Mollie: So, what else do you bring to the table? 

Matt: I think of myself as the Swiss Army knife of designers because of the different ways I’ve applied my knowledge. I have designed for print the old school way, on presses, and have designed for digital mediums. I know how to design and animate motion, as well as develop for the web, and I’m always growing and refining my leadership skills. 

Mollie: Now that we’ve talked business, let’s get down to the fun stuff. What do you do when you’re not designing? 

Matt: Outside of work, I’m an avid consumer of music and coffee. To me, music is something sacred and goes beyond listening to the radio. I love understanding the period from which the music originated, learning more about the artists, and seeing where it takes me. Layering this on top of my foundational understanding of music theory gives me a profound sense of pride when I uncover something new or view a piece of music from a new angle. And, of course, without overthinking it or applying any of that background, as humans, we all know when we like something. 

The coffee part is perhaps two-sided—not only do I appreciate coffee itself, but also I love the exploration and adventure in finding new cafes where I can enjoy music. 

Interested in becoming an EC? Check out our open roles or submit a general job inquiry if you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for.  

Want to hire an Embedded Consultant? Learn more here. 

By Rachel Adams

Image by Rachel Adams

Dear 2A, 

Thank you for making my maternity leave a wonderful experience! I felt supported through the whole process—from planning my leave to spending time away and returning to work. 

I appreciate the flexibility the 2A parental leave policy offers as everyone’s needs are different. I was thrilled to have the baseline 12 weeks of paid time off and to be able to take 8 weeks of unpaid time on top of that. This allowed me to recover after labor and figure out how to take care of my newborn son. As a first-time mom, there was a lot of learning! Additionally, leading up to my leave I felt a lot of love from the team, celebrating with a virtual baby shower and gifts for the baby. From the beginning, you made me feel like I was being set up for success. 

My time away from work is something I will cherish for the rest of time. Thank you for giving me the space (real space!) to bond with my baby without interruption. While there were a lot of necessary duties like doctors’ appointments, there were also a lot of meaningful moments like meeting grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It seems uncommon for a company to respect these boundaries given how connected we are to our work in this digital age. 

Returning to work after taking time off can be very stressful, but you’ve let me ease back into my role. You recognize the humanness of transitioning back into work mode and adjusting to a new schedule and routine. Not to mention dusting off the cobwebs that had weaved their way into my brain! The team welcomed me back enthusiastically and that made me excited to be back with my coworkers. I was also delighted to connect with everyone in person at the summer retreat shortly after I returned to work. Making those in-person connections was the cherry on top of returning from my leave. 

Being a new parent is scary and stressful, but being a new parent at 2A takes unnecessary stress out of the picture. Thanks again! 

With love, 

Rachel 

By Ren Iris

Image by Julianne Medenblik

Copyediting requires constant decision-making. To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? Comma, semi-colon, colon, en dash, em dash, or ellipsis? Sentence case or title case? The answer usually is: It depends. 

Beyond syntax, semantics, and grammatical mechanics, there exists a more delicate space. Enter intersectionality, which can be quiet but is omnipresent. Copyediting is often the last hurdle before publishing or locking content, and conscientious copyediting means cultivating an awareness of reader multiplicity. It means constantly thinking, assessing, and reassessing. Recognizing and remembering that your intended audience contains multitudes unbeknownst to you, but ones you nonetheless must respect and address, overtly or covertly. Autopilot copyediting (as my mentor used to joke, “comma in, comma out?”) isn’t enough. Who is the intended audience, and am I revising to acknowledge their humanity? Am I editing out ableist, cisheteronormative, exploitative, and monocultural language? Because we are people, and people have several identities, evolving ideas and knowledge bases, and many, many opinions. People: We’re complicated. 

Let’s pause and review a key term—intersectionality. While the concept has been important throughout time, one could argue that we owe the earliest credit to Sojourner Truth in 1851. Members of the Combahee River Collective (formed in 1974) continued Truth’s work, but civil rights activist and scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw is known for coining the term. I’m using Crenshaw’s 2020 TIME interview to define intersectionality. 

“It’s basically a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other…. some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.” 

These explanations and historical references provide necessary contexts. Because copyediting isn’t vacuum bound. Like linguistics, it evolves, hopefully in flow with ever-improving best practices. 

In the time of activist-scholar Pauli Murray, we didn’t have expansive language for disabilities, trans people, gender-nonconforming people, or pronouns (let alone rolling pronouns or neopronouns). Now we do. We didn’t have publication-based standards for capitalizing Black, Latine or Latinx, and Indigenous. But now we do. 

What’s my point? We as copyeditors need to edit with a learning-centered mindset, with the intersectional prism in mind, remembering that each edit can recognize or alienate a reader. Words matter because people and their experiences matter. 

Our editorial choices have ripple effects across, within, and between (insert preposition I’m forgetting here) for accessibility, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. This is what my pinned mental note reminds me each time I turn on track changes or use the comment function. Every inclusion and exclusion matters. 

Happy intersectional editing, y’all. 

Ren (they/them) 

P.S.: If you’re more of a visual-audio learner, I recommend Crenshaw’s 2016 TED Talk, “The urgency of intersectionality.” 

By Katy Nally

Image by Brian Dionisi

There’s a reason why salsa is so popular. (And it’s not just because people love to say salsa. 😉) All those chopped up pieces combine to deliver spicy, tangy harmony in every bite. 

Did you know there’s a video equivalent of salsa? And, just like your favorite snack, it brings together lots of amazing bits in a bite-sized package with a little kick. It’s called a sizzle reel. And the one Brian just created for 2A is so yummy, you gotta have a taste. 

Let’s hear how this video chef created such a scrumptious sizzle reel. 

Katy: I love the opening imagery with the sun and eyeball. What was your inspiration for that scene? 

Brian: I wanted to really explore what I could do with the 2A color palette while using illustration and bold, dynamic transitions. The eyeball was an homage to 2A’s first sizzle reel, which was the first time it appeared in our work, and including it was a way to maintain continuity. The eyeball later made an appearance on our 2A hoodies. 

Katy: There are so many different clips in this sizzle reel, and you wove them together seamlessly. How did you balance such a wide variety of footage? 

Brian: I wanted to highlight some of the flashiest moments while still giving the reel spaces to breathe. Too much visual density can be overwhelming! It was also important to represent the different kinds of work we do—fully animated videos with characters, hybrid video and animations, UI explainers, and so forth. 

Katy: Many of our 2A animations are 2-ish minutes long. How did you choose just a few seconds from those longer examples? 

Brian: Because we could only choose a few seconds, a lot of it came down to finding ones with those stand-out moments. I also gave priority to animations with bold transitions (such as a rapid zoom in or out, or a left-to-right movement) that could be matched up with a complementary transition from another animation. 

Katy: Which 2A animations didn’t make the cut, and how did you make that decision? 

Brian: There was a clip from a Microsoft Viva animation featuring a paper plane that unfortunately didn’t make the cut. The animation itself was worth showcasing, but between the paper folding up into a plane, winding up, and then releasing, it was too many beats to cover in a short time. It would have slowed the overall pace too much. 

Katy: What’s your favorite part of the sizzle reel? 

Brian: The first few seconds right after the intro are paced very well, with bold, seamless transitions that also showcase a diverse sample of our work. The transitions around 0:13–0:15 also flow really well, in my opinion! 

Katy: This sizzle reel includes so many of our best animations that we created for clients. What is it about animations that make them great marketing tools? 

Brian: Marketing is largely about storytelling: Animated explainers remain incredibly popular because they grab and hold people’s attention, making them much more receptive to the stories we want to tell. Plus, when we see a well-crafted animation, the positive emotional response we get from it inevitably transfers, in some part, to the subject of the animation. 

Katy: How would 2A’s clients use a sizzle reel? 

Brian: When clients have several animations that showcase the same topic, we can create a sizzle reel for them by compiling the best moments into one short segment—like this one we created for Microsoft Viva. Our clients often use sizzle reels to generate hype before their keynote or meeting. They’re perfect for building anticipation and getting the audience excited about what comes next. 

Want to create your own animation that sizzles? 2A is here to help! 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

World domination 

• Spain is getting a 2B Euro investment from Microsoft, in a collaboration with the country’s government, to beef up cybersecurity and inteligencia artificial, if you will. Also, Germany is getting a 3B Euro AI investment that will focus on expanding datacenters to accommodate the technology. 
• What better way for AWS to celebrate Q4 earnings than upgrading datacenters, which it will, for Local Zone locations in Chicago and Houston. It’s also opening a new Local Zone in Atlanta. 
• Mexico is getting $5B in AWS investments, which will include a new AWS Region and three Availability Zones. 
• Türkiye is the next international Amazon CloudFront edge location. I’m visiting Türkiye in three weeks, and since I have anxiety, I read all about how it’s due for another major earthquake and then created five different action plans. (One of which involves hiding in caves! AWS, I’m willing to sell you these plans for undisclosed amounts of money, so hit me up.) 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• You know what will really help in an earthquake? Enhanced connectivity whilst traveling abroad, and wouldn’t you know it—Samsung, TELUS, and AWS are gonna make that happen. (But not in three weeks, so, time for ANOTHER plan!) 
• More telecom stuff: Vonage, Ericsson, and AWS are collaborating on new solutions to improve the customer experience and help businesses use 5G, network APIs, and generative AI. (What I want know: Do caves get service? I mean, good enough service to stream 90 Day Fiancé in a cave?) 
• New intel on Intel: The chip producer will manufacture semiconductors for Microsoft in a deal valued at $15B. This will, at least, help Microsoft expand its datacenters, and marks NVIDIA’s first AI foundry service. 
• It’s existential-threat-to-humanity time! The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is doing things that are sure to end well, such as engineering cyborg insects and launching nuclear-powered spaceships, has renewed its funding for Microsoft Azure Quantum. Unironically for Microsoft, quantum computing poses some cybersecurity threats. (My only hope: That I live to see the day where a quantum-computing hive of bees fights a robotic infantry mule to the death while I pound five Red Bulls and scream my lungs out.) 
• DeepScribe, an AI-powered medical scribe (I’m imagining a Renaissance-era guy with a quill scribbling doctor’s notes), is working with AWS to accelerate applications of large language models (LLMs) in medicine—starting with processing de-identified clinical conversations. (Also, that guy has pointy felt shoes. And a cape. But a small one.) 
• AWS has joined forces with Mistral AI, and will lean on the machine learning startup to make two AI models. 
• Financial services powerhouse BNY Mellon is migrating all its crap to Microsoft Azure. It’s also working with the Azure team to unite the cloud with BNY’s industry-specific data and analytics capabilities. 
• Microsoft is partnering with media platform Semafor to help the two harried journalists remaining in any newsroom work with generative AI. Additionally, Meltwater, a media intelligence solution, is collaborating with Microsoft to…do exactly what Microsoft loves to do, which is jam everything so full of jargon you can’t understand what’s happening. Happy deciphering. 
• Persistent has launched an AI-powered population health solution with Microsoft to determine patient needs and predict the cost of care. 
• CrowdStrike and AWS have created a startup accelerator in the EMEA region (aka half the world) and have selected 22 companies for the first cohort. 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• Let’s go from the fruitful valleys of Europe to the barren wastelands of Becker, Minnesota, where Microsoft will build a datacenter. Whichever Microsoft person is assigned to oversee that second-rate Siberian prison probably did something wrong, like opening one of the many, many phishing emails hitting Outlook. 
• Thanks to its innovations in AI, Microsoft is growing faster than AWS. The most recent earnings call revealed that Azure revenue increased 30% in just the last quarter and 24% year on year. AWS is still in the lead for cloud market share—for now. 
• Meanwhile, AWS was like, IN YOUR FACE, ANALYSTS! after the company surpassed expectations on a Q4 earnings call. Interestingly, the cloud provider acknowledged that its generative AI earnings were “relatively small” but it expects that to change dramatically over the next several years. Anyway, pour one out for that $24 billion in revenue, a 12% jump from Q3. 
• Cloud computing company Akamai has been fighting the good fight to become a cloud contender, and its geographical expansion is getting attention. For one, if Akamai’s broader availability wins it more market share from the big three, the giants might have to start cutting their pricing. Jk, this is late-stage capitalism—they have no chance. 
• The VP of AWS Infrastructure Hardware, Ahmed Shihab—who is credited for building out all AWS storage and compute systems—has jumped ship for Microsoft to become the VP of Azure Storage. So, I guess we’re just straight-up ignoring non-competes at this point. CORPORATE ANARCHY. Burn it all down, Ahmed!!!!  

New stuff  

• Let’s return to the little joys: Microsoft Teams. Coming soon to an endlessly pinging account near you is an AI-powered planner. It brings Microsoft To Do, Planner, Project, Copilot, and Microsoft 365 into one solution. 
• This is from Fox News, so who knows if it’s true, but AWS has launched a program to help SMBs get smart on AI and other technologies. 
• AWS is making serverless tech faster after launching an open-source project, LLRT. The company says it reduces runtimes and costs. 
• Windows Copilot is getting a makeover with the trial release of a Power Automate plug-in (Kelly lives for this stuff), which promises to “banish boring tasks.” One example Microsoft gives is using this tool to “Write an email to my team wishing everyone a happy weekend.” What a nice idea…except for the part where you outsourced a two-sentence email to AI. 
• Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose is now just Amazon Data Firehose. And AWS Glue can now integrate with Amazon Q, which can generate ETL script. 
• The Copilot icon will start animating, like a Clippy 2.0, when it recognizes you could use its help. But it won’t come CLOSE to what our motion designer Brian could have done with it. 

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• Hackers are using Amazon Simple Notification Service to pose as USPS, but really, it’s a smishing campaign. You can tell that it’s fake because the messages don’t inexplicably ship to Malaysia when they’re addressed to Ohio, then to Virginia, and finally to Ohio five weeks later. 
• As Microsoft boasts that thousands of customers are using its AI tools, it’s good to remember that some of them are nation-state hackers. Malicious actors from Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China are employing generative AI for harmful cyber operations such as researching foreign think tanks, learning how to evade detection, and generating phishing content that “[attempts] to lure prominent feminists.” Oooooooh, so they wanna f*ck around and find out, I see. Greta Gerwig, they’re coming for you! Catch these hands, North Korea. (But for funsies, which campaign that sounds like a nail polish is your favorite?) 
• In the last Cloud cover, I joked about that Microsoft breach targeting executives. Well, turns out, it was kind of a big deal. Like, the biggest breach in Azure history-level big deal. I’m just gonna say it: Microsoft needs to start shifting left. I’m talking about whatever the developer equivalent of Karl Marx left is. It needs to happen. 
  • Cybersecurity firm Proofpoint found new campaigns targeting executives’ Microsoft Azure accounts. 
  • Microsoft pushed some updates this month and called urgent attention to “at least three” of 73 vulnerabilities in the Windows ecosystem—including Outlook—that hackers are exploiting. 
• All this is just in time for Microsoft to make Azure OpenAI available to our barely functioning government! I’m ready for a world where ChatGPT is speaker of the house. Azure OpenAI isn’t FedRAMP approved yet, but my guess is that approval will occur around NEVER O’CLOCK. 

Best Friends Forever 

Partner mischief this month was all AWS. 

• New to the AWS ISV Accelerate Program: Verusen, a supply chain intelligence platform, and SmartBear, a provider of observability and software testing solutions. 
• New to AWS Marketplace: Merge (what North Carolinians love to do at the last minute without signaling), a platform that lets businesses add product integrations. 
• Consulting firm Pariveda has achieved AWS Nonprofit Competency status and Blackline Safety achieved AWS Public Sector status. 
• API security company Salt Security has joined the AWS Lambda Ready Program. 
• Lightning AI has signed a strategic collaboration with AWS to offer its customers an enterprise-grade platform. (If you’re not doing that, what ARE you doing?) 
• Digital business services provider Teleperformance has achieved the AWS Well-Architected status…and announced it in an email with a typo in the first sentence. My heart bleeds for the PR intern or checked-out PR executive—either one is a candidate—who let it happen. RIP to you, friend. 

Miscellany 

• Microsoft is axing Azure IoT Central, a big part of the Azure developer platform. Developers at big companies like NVIDIA are allegedly “faced with uncertainty” about this, but given that it won’t die until 2027, they have several years to find certainty. And, bless Microsoft’s heart, it’s still soliciting new subscriptions for Azure IoT Central. 
• Microsoft’s AI Red Team is in charge of finding risk in its generative AI systems. They’re now employing a tool called PyRIT, which will…automate risk discovery because manual efforts are taking too long. ::Lets face fall into hands and weeps:: 

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Suzanne Calkins

You’re ready to embark on your next content marketing campaign and you’ve decided an ebook is the way to go. This may sound simple, but the truth is, there are so many types of ebook that it can feel like going into an ice cream parlor—everything looks good, but only one flavor will win you over. And you don’t want to choose an ebook that will have you gazing at your companion’s double scoop, wishing you’d gone with a different option. 

In this blog post, we offer five criteria that will help you narrow down the type of ebook that’s right for your campaign. 

1. Audience: If your audience is at the beginning of their buying journey, then your flavor is… 

Neapolitan 

This ebook targets readers who are new to your brand and focuses on creating awareness. It spotlights basic business value propositions and how those differ from competing solutions. These ebooks provide a high-level overview of ways the solution(s) can help solve readers’ problems. Keep the content between three and six pages, as you don’t want to bombard your audience with too much information. Remember: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry: Set the stage by showing you understand the challenge, explain how the product works, and support your claims with a customer success story. 

2. Depth: If you need to detail product use cases and solution architectures, then your flavor is… 

Dark chocolate 

Product-centric ebooks are like dark chocolate—some people love it, nay, need it, while others are a hard pass for the moment—which makes knowing your audience especially crucial when choosing this flavor. Your readers should be mid-funnel and want to learn specifics about your offering and how your product compares to other options. Because this flavor is a more overt sell, keep the content straightforward and informative. Follow it up with a call to action that moves them closer to conversion, such as watching a demo, signing up for a trial, or speaking with an agent. It’s rich in flavor, it stands out, and it’s key to getting your reader to buy what you’re selling. 

3. Breadth: If you’re trying to appeal to a broad audience, then your flavor is… 

Rocky road 

Sometimes you want to mix it up—but this only works if everything makes sense altogether. (In restaurants, this is called a “chaos menu.”) If you want an all-of-the-above mash-up—product and feature descriptions, tips and advice, case studies, a predictive analysis on what’s next, and partners’ capabilities—make sure you delineate sections and arrange information so that it flows organically. Make it easier for a discerning reader to find the parts they’re most interested in while supporting read-throughs with clear connections from one item to the next. For example, if you spend one chapter highlighting a product and its features, transition into a product-centered customer success story or include a graphic illustrating how the product works with customer systems. If your ebook covers multiple topics, think about topic progression. For example, if you offer migration and modernization services, start with migration and move into modernization, (not vice versa, nor jumping back and forth between the two). 

4. Positioning: If you offer a new concept or framework that makes you stand out among competitors, then your flavor is… 

Lavender honey 

This ebook flavor is ideal for demonstrating your brand’s thought leadership by sharing expertise-based, innovative ideas. This isn’t for ice cream newbies; the content should target mid-to-late funnel readers, including current customers you want to upsell. Your readers don’t need to learn about what your business does or its value. Your already-invested audience wants confirmation that you’re deeply familiar with their industry’s unique challenges so they can turn to you for an effective, experience-filled approach to problem solving—now and in the future. These ebooks tend to be longer and can be up to 12 pages. They can include forward-thinking concepts such as perceived future trends, case studies, research, guidance, and scenarios. 

5. Collaboration: If you want to showcase how your organization or solution works with a large cloud provider, then your flavor is… 

Berries and cream 

Some campaigns are based on joint solutions that explain how two offerings provide something better together for shared customers. Create this flavor by turning the collaborative benefit into a theme throughout the ebook. You don’t want berries on one side and cream on the other. Chances are that your reader is familiar with your brand or your partner’s, but they may not have tried the mélange. Briefly describe each of your flavors and make evident why they taste so good together—better than any competitor combo. Explain what your reader can accomplish with your integrations, demonstrate your capabilities through a customer story, and wrap up with a summary of sweet benefits. Or a napkin. Either one. 

We’ve spilled many secret ingredients of our successful ebooks with you, but those are only the cherries on top. To recruit our Michelin Star–worthy word chefs for your next ebook, contact us. 

By Jane Dornemann

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security 

• Once again, Washington officials and private sector executives are accusing Microsoft of dropping the ball following another hacking incident. Russian spies (Is this real life?) breached Microsoft’s systems to gain access to senior executives’ emails. They were full of sensitive information like, “Re: Chipotle for lunch??” and Teams messages such as, “I slowly feel my soul dying with every second of this quarterly meeting.” All parties (except Microsoft) say this was a fully avoidable incident, prompting U.S. officials to publicly state that the government needs to “reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft.” 

Wheelin’ and dealin’ 

• Hold the (Voda)phone, there’s a big new deal in town: The telecom company signed a $1.5B, 10-year agreement with Microsoft. (They stole the deal right out from under me because I didn’t have change for a $20.) The goals of this deal run the gamut, from targeting SMBs to improving financial inclusion in Africa. And of course, transforming the customer experience with generative AI. Can’t take a single breath without that these days. 
• Space Force (Again, real life?) is tapping Microsoft to build a cloud-based, simulated space environment. It will incorporate augmented reality via HoloLens headsets and serve as a training vehicle that allows participants to interact with digital copies in orbit. (Can you imagine tripping on LSD in that thing?! PLUTO LOOKED INTO MY SOUL and then he gave me a bucket of fried chicken.) 
• Walmart, everyone’s favorite spot to get really depressed about the state of humanity, is working with Microsoft on new AI solutions for Walmart customers. For example, using AI to answer a customer’s query and generate personalized responses. Naturally, the sample photo is of someone buying one bag of Doritos from Walmart online. Because we are Americans and that’s what we do. 
• The Walmart stuff arrives just as Microsoft announces its play to bring generative AI to retailers, particularly through Copilot. This includes Copilot templates that retailers can personalize across the buyer journey, AI to generate insights, and generative AI for marketing campaigns. SymphonyAI is working with Microsoft to bring predictive and generative AI to retail. 
• Choice Hotels International, a large hospitality chain that includes Comfort Inn and Econo Lodge, has fully migrated to AWS for all its operations. But what’s really important here are the (real life) online reviews for Choice Hotels, such as, “There were meth syringes by our truck in the morning and the room smelled like piss” and “I was given a king suite with blood on the covers and zero hangers.” ZERO HANGERS!!!! 

World domination 

• Nothing makes a $1.5B Microsoft-Vodafone deal look bad like moving the decimal mark over a whole place, which AWS has done with its $15B investment in Japan. Those dolla dolla bills are going toward expanding AWS Cloud infrastructure and supporting AI computing needs in the country. Google and Microsoft have also been going heavier on investments in Japan, and all three have deals with the country’s government, but this gives AWS the largest presence of them all. 
• AWS had some spare change left over after that, and decided to invest in…Mississippi? Uh, OK…I guess why not. The company is spending $10B to build a data center in the greater Jackson area. Well, that’s great because this project should bring some much-needed funds to the area…EXCEPT that it’s 100% corporate-tax exempt. During a “special session,” they decided that the state itself has to provide $44M in funds for tasks like workforce training. For AWS. Also, the state must loan a ton of money to the county to build a sewer system. For AWS. But hey, what a deal (for AWS), amiright! 
• As tensions rise between the U.S. and China (Americans are asked to “reconsider travel to China”)—along with an Executive Order limiting chipmakers in Chinese business dealings—Microsoft is uncertain about the fate of its Beijing-based AI lab. With China accounting for $212B in Microsoft sales, Microsoft doesn’t yet have an answer to the Biden administration’s request to pull the lab entirely. 
• Is it just me or is it Chile in here? AWS got the green light to build a $205M data center in Santiago. This will be the first AWS data center in the country. 
• AWS has won three contracts with the UK government—valued at about $1B dollars—a sign that the British government is deeply locked into AWS services. 
• Microsoft customers can now store all their personal data in the EU, a place with real privacy laws…a place where people don’t order Doritos online from retailers that take out “dead peasants” life insurance policies on their employees. ::Looks longingly toward the Atlantic:: 

Gossip (for nerds) 

• After beating Apple to briefly become the most valuable company in the world (and becoming the second company to ever reach a $3T market cap), Microsoft reported a 33% profit increase and an 18% jump in revenue. (Can’t wait for more layoff news. Oh, wait…) 
• AWS has hired a guy who makes shirt choices that are bold but still socially acceptable. “Damn it! Honey, the AWS folks need a new headshot, and I told them I’m still on vacation! Ugh, just snap me right here. How’s my hair?” “You look great, sweetie, and don’t worry, this will probably just go on some ID badge and not in globally available news.” The new CFO was formerly Amazon’s operations and logistics manager. Now that I know his name I’ll be calling him for answers on what happened to Prime’s 24-hour delivery promise. 
• Ashish Dhawan, who was the managing director of AWS enterprise workload sales, has moved to NetApp. 
• Google hired a former Okta and Microsoft exec to be its new AI leader, driving the company’s AI go-to-market strategy. 
• It’s official—the FTC is poking around the partnerships between Microsoft (and four other big tech companies, including AWS) and AI companies. Reading between the lines, this feels less about concern for society and more about the government fearing a loss of power to tech companies. I can’t WAIT for this hearing, where we’ll surely be entertained with questions from officials along the lines of, “Could the Google make me into an AI? This feels dangerous,” and, “It is my understanding that AI can connect to the internet, is that really necessary?” 

New stuff 

• Please find the most gossipy person you know and have them apply to AWS, because I NEED to know where this new AWS Secret Region is. It’s only for the U.S. Intelligence Community, which frankly I think I should be working for, because you wouldn’t believe what strangers have felt compelled to tell me on my travels. I basically already work for the Intelligence Community and should know where this is. 
• AWS has introduced a new SME partner competency: SMBs. 30 Partners (including Trellix) have already achieved the Small and Medium Business Competency and offer a range of services and solutions specific to SMBs, such as security, storage, migration, and AI. 
• To make OpenAI even more accessible, Microsoft is working on a smaller, cheaper version for those of us living in the gutter. It has compiled a team to develop a conversational AI that requires less computing power. In this case, they just have to “do less with less.” 
• You can now get Copilot Pro for $20 a month, meaning I can use that $20 from my failed Vodafone deal. For small businesses, there’s a Copilot virtual assistant that Microsoft 365 customers can purchase. 
• Microsoft has launched new partner benefits, which include access to Copilot, product licenses, and Azure credits. 
• Check out this announcement for Microsoft Mesh, featuring avatars that, for some reason, have no bottom half to their bodies. Mesh “powers 3D immersive experiences” for hybrid workers so interactions “feel more face-to-face” (except for dunno why, the bottom half of bodies). 
• Microsoft and Norwegian software company Cognite are collaborating to build data tools and copilots to help industrial companies improve operations using Microsoft Fabric. 
• Digital and cloud transformation company Mastek is strategically collaborating with Microsoft to build industry-specific solutions using Azure OpenAI. 
• Sony, Honda, and Microsoft are one big happy family that will make Afeela, an electric car. Here we go: Afeela a joke coming on. 
• Siemens, which does things like pay half my mortgage, has formed another strategic partnership with AWS that will boost AI usage in engineering and manufacturing markets, primarily through low-code offerings. This deal allows AWS to ride the coattails of Siemens’ credibility in these markets, and helps Siemens move more aggressively into the software field. 
• Panda is a new proposed framework from AWS that aims to provide a large language model–based debugger for databases. It will help people troubleshoot and debug databases for better performance—something AWS demonstrated when it threw Panda at ChatGPT to show how vague and incomplete the generative AI’s recommendations are. 

Best Friends Forever 

• Now on Microsoft Azure Marketplace: MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute’s open-source Terra platform, used for biomedical analysis; FintechOS, which allows banks and insurers to design, build, and deploy digital banking and insurance products and customer experiences; Cranium AI’s security platform; and Cognigy.AI, which I dunno what it does ‘cause the release was bad, which feels like a requirement these days. 
• New to AWS Marketplace: Rackspace Technology’s Cloud DBOps, a managed service for commercial and open-source databases running on various AWS services, and Harbr’s “last mile” data solution. 
• Sacré bleu! Starting at the end of 2024, Capgemini and Orange will have formed a joint venture, Bleu, to help French companies adopt Microsoft Azure and 365 through its “cloud de confiance” (trust) services. 
• BAE, which reads like I’m yelling across the house for my significant other but is actually an ISV, has earned its AWS Migration Competency. 
• Dragos, which sounds like a company Daenerys Targaryen established, has achieved the AWS Manufacturing and Industrial Competency. It provides cybersecurity for operational technology. 
• TierPoint has earned two new Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, Data & AI and Digital & App Innovation. 
• Dentsu, which sounds like a Japanese denture shop, is expanding its AI tool offerings using Amazon Bedrock. 
• SourceFuse, a digital transformation company that’s also apparently a braggart, has officially achieved 100 AWS Certifications. 
• Revenue lifecycle management solutions provider Conga earned the AWS Life Sciences Competency. 
• DevOps software provider JFrog has integrated its Artifactory platform with Amazon SageMaker to streamline the process of building, training, and deploying ML models. 

By Nora Bright

Image by Emily Zheng

In the fast-paced world of cloud technology, hiring managers often turn to contract talent to fill critical roles and execute projects with agility. This approach can bring fresh perspectives, specialized expertise, and flexibility to your team. However, integrating new contractors seamlessly can be challenging, especially for short-term projects or maternity leave coverage roles. 

Contract engagements often require a rapid ramp-up period, leaving less time for a traditional onboarding process. Additionally, contractors may not have the same context or institutional knowledge as full-time employees, making it crucial to provide them with the right information and support quickly. 

Below are four key steps to setting your contract talent up for success: 

1. Start with clarity: Establish clear expectations before the engagement starts by providing a detailed job description and scope. This will help the contractor understand the role and feel confident they can meet your expectations within the time frame of the position. Need help getting the role’s responsibilities down on paper? We often collaborate with our clients on the job description. Here’s how we approach writing job descriptions for openings here at 2A.  

2. Be ready for day one: Before the start date, make a plan for how you will provide a company orientation and introductions to key stakeholders. Send calendar holds for the people you want your contract hire to meet and include context on the purpose of the meeting and the roles of each meeting attendee. Gather all the necessary tools, software, and access to company resources before the role starts so they can get started on day one. 

3. Make communication a priority: Like full-time employees, contractors do their best work when they have consistent feedback and open lines of communication. We recommend having 20 to 30 minute 1:1 meetings at least every other week to facilitate great communication throughout the engagement. We also meet regularly with both our Embedded Consultants and clients so that we can flag potential issues and support the feedback process. 

4. Show your appreciation: Acknowledge the contributions of your contract talent and celebrate their work. We do our part to make our Embedded Consultants feel valued by surprising them with gifts and swag, inviting them to in-person and virtual events, and providing professional development opportunities. And feedback shows that the feeling is mutual! 

There’s no better way to get a contractor started on the right foot than by setting them up with the right agency. Our practice is built on the principle that treating people well helps them shine in their roles. We focus on providing a top-notch employee experience, comprehensive benefits, and a commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.  

Reach out today to learn more about how our Embedded Consulting practice can find the perfect contract hire for your next project and set them up for success.