The latest version of Tasktop Hub is now available. Tasktop Hub 20.2 is designed to make toolchain integration easier by enabling large-scale organizations to accelerate the flow of work and business value across their software portfolio. 

Key highlights include more control over operational processes using Conditional Field Flow, conflict resolution at the field-level, enhanced support for Micro Focus ALM Octane, PTC Integrity, SmartBear QAComplete, and Intland Codebeamer. 

Additional details are available here. 

Google announces new Spanner features
The new features include the general availability of managed backup-restore, which can help users achieve high business continuity and to add data protection without much management overhead. 

Additional features include a Cloud Spanner Emulator that can be used for correctness testing, an optimizer that uses a combination of well-established heuristics and cost-based optimization to produce efficient plans for low-latency queries with optimal CPU utilization, and more. 

“It’s become an important capability for teams that need a globally distributed, strongly consistent database service,” Google wrote in a blog post.

Confluent raises $250 million
Confluent announced that it raised $250 million in a Series E round and plans to use the funding to further its event-streaming solution. 

“In every industry, companies are moving to real time as they digitally transform their businesses. This has made event streaming a critical platform for enterprise IT,” said Kevin Wang a partner at Altimeter Capital — one of the investors in the latest round. 

Confluent’s Project Metamorphosis aims to solve the pressing issues that surround the adoption of event streaming and to provide a fully hosted platform in Confluent Cloud. 

GitLab global partner program
GitLab announced the launch of a new Global Partner Program aimed at building high-quality professional, advisory and managed DevOps services to unlock customer value.

The program is offered in three tracks: 

  • Open for resellers and integrators, 
  • Select focused on building strategic relationships with partners, 
  • And technology, a track for independent software vendors that are focused on complementary solutions through product integrations with GitLab.

“As we expand our partner program, we’re building on our current strategic relationships with the largest cloud and Kubernetes providers,” said Brandon Jung, the vice president of alliances at GitLab. “Our customers are looking for the right people, process and platforms to enable them on their digital transformations. Bringing this together as we build these partnerships is critical to meeting customer demands and enabling their achievements.”