Valence Announces Lindsay Cox Appointment to Executive Team as Vice President of Sales

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BELLEVUE, Washington – January 10, 2022 – Valence, a business working at the leading edge of transformational technologies with strong consulting, user-centered design, and engineering capabilities, today announced that Lindsay Cox has been named as Vice President of Sales, bringing her experience and expertise to the company’s executive leadership team.

Lindsay Cox has approximately twenty years of senior management, sales, and business development experience, working in the Pacific Northwest technology market, including ten years of strategic client development and market leadership for technology brands, most recently as Technology Sales Director at Accenture. Prior to that, Cox served as Client Leader & Executive at IBM. Cox has established her market reputation thanks to her experience building high-performing sales teams and being instrumental in driving revenue for her clients.

“Lindsay is the right leader for Valence,” said Jim Darrin, Valence CEO, “Lindsay bridges a deep understanding of enterprise technology with a commitment to client outcomes and successful solutions. She will help Valence to strengthen customer and partner connections while developing strategic alliances that expand our company’s market presence.”

“I’m very excited to be part of the Valence team at this critical time in the company’s growth,” said Cox, “I believe Valance and MajorKey have a compelling business model and a talented management team that uniquely positions us to capitalize on the rapidly accelerating digital transformation environment. Valence can provide unrivaled technology solutions to help businesses achieve their full potential. I am delighted to be a part of this team.”

About Valence

A MajorKey company, Valence is a digital transformation solutions provider focused on helping enterprise customers understand and apply next-generation technologies in a smart and innovative way to advance their business goals. From cloud enablement to cutting-edge, Valence operates across all stages of the digital transformation journey with integrated creative, consulting, and engineering services. Its team takes pride in its ability to provide new perspectives and build solutions that result in operational efficiencies and improved user experiences. For more information, visit https://kopiustech.com/.

Two Companies in Harmony: MajorKey Technologies and Valence Group have Joined Forces

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by Jim Darrin

Last week we announced that Valence Group has been acquired by MajorKey Technologies, and we are very excited about our future.

MajorKey and Valence are on a mission to bring harmony to our clients’ technologies. The connection between our businesses is very real – we share a commitment to our people, our clients, and to using innovation to unlock potential.

When Valence was founded four years ago, we knew we wanted to grow a business that put people first. We wanted Valence to provide technology solutions for other business leaders. We wanted our employees to experience the best job and company culture of their careers. And we wanted to give back to the people in our community.

We also wanted to be an engineering-first company, using transformative technology to solve business problems for Enterprise customers. We quickly learned that this hit home with our customers. The world of digital transformation is more than buzz words – it involves helping our customers demystify the confusion and complexity of where to start. It involves helping our customers understand their business challenges and create a technology strategy that solves their business problems.

Becoming a part of MajorKey expands our ability to do exactly that.

MajorKey offers world-class cloud-based technology solutions, as well as near-shore and off-shore talent resources that our clients can benefit from immediately. We are managed by The Acacia Group, a private equity firm that defies stereotypes thanks to its commitment to growing businesses and cultivating leaders. We were drawn to Acacia and MajorKey because of our shared vision of people and culture.

Our first focus is on connecting with clients and partners to explore the opportunities that this relationship opens up. And of course, we’re popping champagne to celebrate. These are the top three reasons why this announcement is making us smile:

Our clients will have access to an expanded bench of talent that has shown to be at the top of their game, ready to deliver on our promise of innovation. This includes nearshore and offshore engineering capabilities.
Acacia and MajorKey are people-first organizations, just like ours. Whether those people are our employees, our clients, or our neighbors, we all are committed to being a human-centric organization. The cultural fit is everything I’ve hoped for.
Our reach and influence in the digital transformation space has taken a massive leap forward, creating new opportunities for our talented team, and revealing new opportunities for our clients.

Thanks for celebrating this news with us – we’ve got plenty to talk about in 2022 and beyond!

Want to learn more?

About MajorKey: MajorKey Technologies is a leading technology strategy, design, and enterprise operations partner to public and private sector clients focused on cloud-enabled digital transformation. MajorKey delivers better experiences through harmonized technologies that power its customer’s digital transformation. Its services include Digital Strategic Consulting, Enterprise Service Management, Identity Access Management, DevSecOps and Software Development, Cloud Adoption, and Managed Services. MajorKey is online at www.majorkeytech.com.
About The Acacia Group: The Acacia Group is a specialist investment firm that invests to build businesses that benefit from and deliver digital transformation. They do it by empowering skillful leaders, shaping collaborative cultures, nurturing exceptional talent, developing differentiated IP, and building distinctive brands. Find them online at www.acaciagroup.com.

Have questions? We’re happy to share more information about this exciting news!

MajorKey Technologies and Valence Group Join Forces to Create Full-Service Digital Transformation Partner to Commercial and Public Sector Clients

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Acquisition of Valence strengthens MajorKey’s ability to design and deliver transformational solutions throughout the tech stack with enhanced strategic consulting capabilities and expanded design and technology offerings

Chicago, December 9, 2021 – MajorKey Technologies, the company bringing harmony to its clients’ digital operations, backed by The Acacia Group, today announced the acquisition Valence Group, Inc., a business working at the leading edge of transformational technologies with strong consulting, user-centered design, and engineering capabilities. This move enhances MajorKey’s long-term value to clients by strengthening its current strategic consulting firepower and augmenting its technical expertise across the tech stack.

Seattle-based Valence was launched in 2017 and has since grown to a team of 90 consultants and engineers working with commercial and public sector clients across the U.S. This brings the MajorKey team to over 650 people and adds new technical capabilities in areas of high customer demand including Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, data integration, and user-centered design.

“Growing our long-term value to clients is at the heart of our strategy at MajorKey. That means helping them shape their digital strategies and deploy the right combination of technologies that liberate people to do their best work,” said Rami Cassis, CEO of MajorKey Technologies. “The Valence team accelerates that strategy, given its strengths in consulting, user experience and emerging technologies, which complement MajorKey’s capabilities in Enterprise Service Management, information security, DevSecOps, custom app development and managed services. Together with our global delivery capability, we’re well positioned to help clients plan effectively for the future and achieve new value from their technology investments. We are thrilled to welcome Valence to the MajorKey team.”

“Like many fast-growing companies, our biggest challenge is how to scale and meet intense client demand. Joining MajorKey answers that challenge, bolstered by its outstanding sales team and client base, as well as its ability to field blended teams of exceptional on- and near-shore technical talent—all of which will benefit our clients,” said Valence CEO Jim Darrin. “The MajorKey and Acacia teams stood out because of our shared values and commitment to creating new opportunities for our people. We each believe that our people are our superpower. Once we connected over this shared philosophy, joining MajorKey was a no-brainer for us. We’re excited by the potential of what we can achieve together.”

MajorKey and Valence are united in their focus on delivering great business outcomes for clients through an end-to-end service model focused on strategy, design, engineering and managed services. As their teams come together, they will be dedicated to releasing client teams from mundane tasks, strengthening collaboration between lines of business, designing new solutions to critical problems, securing infrastructure, and above all, creating exceptional experiences for their people and their customers.

Acacia Group partner Craig Dawson said: “MajorKey and Valence are a fantastic fit. They are businesses built on people-centric cultures where values really matter. They have expert teams working with skill and dexterity to advance their clients’ digital transformation. Together they create a one-stop-shop for clients looking to combine foresight, creativity and pragmatism in how they use technology as an enabler for building better customer experiences and stronger businesses. We are really ambitious for the future of MajorKey. With the Valence team coming on board, the company continues to go from strength-to-strength.”

MajorKey Technologies rebranded from Highmetric in May 2021 following the acquisition of the company’s highly successful ServiceNow division. MajorKey is backed by The Acacia Group, a team of specialist technology investors who acquired the company in May 2019.

Cascadia Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Valence.

About MajorKey Technologies
MajorKey Technologies is a leading global technology strategy, design and enterprise operations partner to public and private sector clients focused on cloud-enabled digital transformation. With more than twenty years’ experience, the Company guides clients through complex technology landscapes to arrive at simple, smart choices that are implemented to the very highest standards. MajorKey delivers better experiences through harmonized technologies that power its customer’s digital transformation. Its services include Digital Strategic Consulting, Enterprise Service Management, Identity Access Management, DevSecOps and Software Development, Cloud Adoption and Managed Services—delivered through its highly-skilled teams of on-shore, near-shore and off-shore resources. The Company holds top tier partnerships with some of the world’s leading innovators, including AWS, SailPoint, AppDynamics, Okta and Atlassian, to name a few. For more information, go to majorkeytech.com.

About Valence

Valence is a digital transformation solutions provider focused on helping enterprise customers understand and apply next-generation technologies in a smart and innovative way to advance their business goals. From cloud enablement to cutting-edge, Valence operates across all stages of the digital transformation journey with integrated creative, consulting, and engineering services. Its team takes pride in its ability to provide new perspectives and build solutions that result in operational efficiencies and improved user experiences. For more information, go to kopiustech.com/.

About The Acacia Group

The Acacia Group is a specialist investment firm. Acacia invests to build businesses that benefit from and deliver digital transformation, creating the conditions for strong and sustainable growth. We do it by empowering skilful leaders, shaping collaborative cultures, nurturing exceptional talent, developing differentiated IP and building distinctive brands. As independent sponsors we can focus on creating great businesses, and commit to hands-on support to our management teams. This way, we enable the companies in our portfolio to reach new heights of achievement. For more information, please visit The Acacia Group or follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Sarah Broome

Inspire Agency (Formerly B Squared) on behalf of MajorKey Technologies

Tel: +714-469-9237

Email: sbroome@inspire-agency.com

The Future of Virtual Reality — Key Takeaways from the Oculus Connect Conference (OC6)

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Last month, Oculus and Nestle Purina showcased our work at the Oculus Connect 6 Conference (aka: OC6) which we attended in San Jose CA. The conference looks at the future of virtual reality, and we want to share what we learned.

OC6 opened with a Keynote by Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. In this opening, Mark shared why he believes Virtual Reality is the universal computing platform everyone will use in the future. Here are some important takeaways we noted from our time at OC6.

Empathy Training Using VR

Through the research and understanding of what makes a great connected human experience, Oculus is finding ways to apply the three dimensions on closeness in human relationships (Frequency of interaction, Diversity of Interactions, and Impact of the Experience) to Virtual Reality (VR). This leading research will enhance and improve not just social VR experiences but also business interactions. The enterprise world requires trust as a critical component of any business relationship.

Nothing showed this better than the prototype Oculus Labs displayed where they were able to reconstruct and demonstrate facial expressions in real-time. Of course, it will be a while before the hardware that makes this possible is available in a consumer-friendly form factor and price point, but it’s coming.

Empathy training is a natural use case for VR, especially in the hospitality industry. Hilton used VR to train their employees and help them understand what the guests are feeling under certain conditions. In their experience, the employee actually became the guest and was able to gain a lasting empathetic state for their guests.

Facebook, along with other major companies, is making a huge bet on the future of AR/VR

There’s no doubt that the AR/VR space is continuing to grow. It was apparent at OC6 that major technology companies like Facebook are making a large investment in the development and expansion of that industry, for both consumer and enterprise users. The result will be the sustained growth in adoption, accelerated innovation, and the creation of new types of solutions, hardware, and paradigms to support AR and VR.

AR/VR is about the world around you

A point made repeatedly at OC6 was that the long-term vision of AR is, in fact, to make us more present and aware of the non-digital world around us. Imagine a day where an AR system is accessible through a standard pair of glasses, or even a pair of contacts. At that point, we will work less with devices, and more with subtle, non-intrusive AR systems that allow us to keep more of our attention on our real surroundings. By doing so, AR can actually bring people closer together.

We’re still in the good old days

No one at OC6 was shy about the fact that we’re still in the early days of AR and VR. That means for consumers, developers, and anyone else in this space we are in an exciting time to be working on this technology. Foundational solutions and patterns are still being developed, and the space for innovation will continue to allow for new game changes to enter the arena of AR/VR.

Quest is a game changer

With that said, the Oculus Quest really is a game changer in terms of the VR experience offered, as well as ease of development on that platform. The Oculus is the best in class hardware solutionfor enterprise customers looking to use VR in their daily operations. Oculus announced that the Quest will also soon have hand tracking and therefore, controllers will become optional or only required for certain applications.

Augmented reality won’t just be about headsets

Eventually, augmented reality will be about far more than just VR headsets. With Facebook’s acquisition of CTRL-Labs, it is clear that while the Oculus Quest is the cutting edge for AR/VR today, future iterations of AR will be about how we fully augment our digital experience with the physical. While the idea of truly connecting our brains to a digital system is still far in the future, we’re fast approaching the time when these types of technologies are major parts of the AR/VR roadmap.

Valence Takes Part in Seattle Interactive Conference 2018

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Valence Takes Part in Seattle Interactive Conference

#SIC2018 Exhibitor’s Hall

Visionary thinkers seeking disruptive technologies and innovative business models were brought together at the Seattle Interactive Conference(SIC) hosted in downtown Seattle on October 17th and 18th. During the course of two days, thousands of entrepreneurs, online business professionals, executives, and students attended SIC to share inspiration and learn about what is happening at the intersection of technology, creativity, and commerce. Valence was excited to participate in this annual event, and we had many great conversations with people across sectors wanting to learn more about the emerging technologies — and that’s what we do at Valence!

In Valence’s booth, we shared our visions and exhibited how we continuously innovate and help enterprise drive digital transformation through applying modern technologies including AR/VR, artificial intelligence, IoT, voice and chat, blockchain and more.

Valence was especially proud to showcase the fully immersive Space Needle Virtual Reality Tour that many SIC attendees raved about! Valence built this VR tour as part of Seattle’s Space Needle renovation marketing campaign rolled out in spring this year, which allowed local and national journalists to virtually see and feel what visitors would experience when the huge makeover to the Space Needle completed later in summer.

Putting on a VR headset (Samsung Odyessy: Windows Mixed Reality) and stepping onto a custom built haptic stage, within a minute the user would experience the elevator ride up to Space Needle’s observation deck and be looking down at the 500 feet between them and the ground, through a rotating glass floor.

During this virtual tour, those who have a fear of heights were often hesitant to put their foot forward onto the “glass floor” initially, as it felt too real to them, but in the end, they were very amazed by the experience of walking on a rotating glass floor and sitting back on a glass bench floating over the Seattle skyline.

We also brought in a pair of Magic Leap mixed reality glasses to demonstrate how users can interact with not only the 3D digital objects created in a virtual environment mapped to the current room they are in, but also the room and the physical objects inside it. For example, they can add a virtual animal on the coffee table that’s physically in the room; they can walk around and see the animal at different angles. The exhibition area immediately becomes the user’s playground once they put these glasses on, and people are excited about where the mixed reality technology will take them beyond gaming.

Among the visionaries at the conference was Valence’s very own Hannah Mintek, Head of Design, who was on a panel of XR (Mixed Reality) insiders, along with Vinay Narayan from HTC Vive, Andrew Mitrak from HaptX, and Theresa Moore from Pixability to share their insight about how we can make sure the future of XR tech is based on reality.

We had an epic time learning and networking at Seattle Interactive Conference and hope to see you next year!

Augmented World Expo 2018— a recap through the eyes of Valence

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Augmented World Expo 2018— a recap through the eyes of Valence

Matthew Carlisle — Director of Technology

Several of us engineers and developers from Valence spent the last few days of May at the 9th Annual Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California. Since not everyone could attend, I thought I’d share some insights and impressions, since it was a pretty amazing (um, should I say awe-inspiring?) experience!

Valence was one of the few service providers there, possibly because AR hasn’t reached mass adoption yet. There’s been a ton of interest (remember Pokémon Go?) and some cool demo projects, but it hasn’t fully caught fire. At least not for the mass consumer market. Yet. (More on that below… keep reading!)

Here’s what I DID notice at the Augmented World Expo, though. It looks like wearable AR glasses are making a come-back. For a while, there was mainly just Microsoft’s HoloLens. Of course, that was after the Google Glass experiment, which turned out not to be such a great success. Perhaps it was simply before its time, or perhaps too consumer focused given the $1,500 price tag, or perhaps not focused enough on privacy. Whatever the reason, things went south for a time.

But it definitely looks like the technology is on the rise again, this time more aligned with enterprise and industrial uses. At AWE, there must have been over 30 manufacturers of various grades of mixed reality glasses, screens, etc. Companies like ODG are innovating and creating devices kind of like chunky sunglasses with a phenomenal amount of power and a visual experience that’s top of the line.

There’s a huge variety, too, with multiple kinds of products entering the marketplace. You have full-immersion 3D AR, like HoloLens and the ODG offerings (some of ODG’s products are made for gaming and offer theater-quality visuals).

Then there are industrial or enterprise options for the factory and warehouse. One company that caught our eye was RealWear, which manufactures tough, helmet-mounted AR goggles with voice activation for workers and technicians. These are not 3D or immersive, but they are a way to add data, value, and functionality to the experience — think tutorials on how to make a repair on-site, like while you’re looking at a broken carburetor or wind turbine.

They’re all great for a hands-free, heads-up work experience, say in hazardous environments. Or for adding to 3D development projects, like in real estate or city planning. There’s a lot of interest in the health care field and other commercial uses, as well.

Costs are coming down, but the devices are still expensive. That’s why there is a lot of experimentation all around, and we have yet to see mass adoption or any wide-scale use of this technology, especially in consumer markets. That’s actually a normal pattern for technology adoption, especially when it comes to hardware.

For now, the main energy in AR for consumers seems to be coming from the mobile handset universe. It has started to become widely adopted at this point, with movie premiers using AR to engage fans and grow audiences, IKEA and Home Depot joining the fray to help consumers visualize their purchases, and cosmetics retailer Sephora enabling consumers to try virtual makeup without leaving the house.

Surprisingly, there were very few mobile AR vendors or developers at AWE. I’m not sure why that it is. Maybe because mobile AR has moved from being cool to just being something everyone can do — especially with new tools like Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore. Or perhaps it’s not considered “real” AR, but simply a mobile experience.

At the Augmented World Expo, Tony Parisi, Head of AR/VR ads for Unity and an AWE speaker had a really interesting take on this duality, contrasting the high-end AR headset market for industrial use and the consumer market’s more entertainment-oriented approach to the technology.

At Kopius, we design digital experiences for our industrial and enterprise clients, so they can access the best of both worlds at once: the real world in front of them plus the virtual world of critical information, data, and context.

We were awestruck by our time at AWE, and we’re back home imagining the possibilities. Interested in hearing more? Contact us, and we’ll start you off with a demo, to show how remarkable this technology can be!