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Pye-Barker Fire & Safety Acquires Pennsylvania-Based Protect Alarms to Expand Complete Protection Services in the Northeast

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ATLANTA, Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Pye-Barker Fire & Safety – the largest fully integrated and full-service fire protection, life safety and security services provider in the United States – has acquired Protect Alarms Security Systems, a specialist in security systems, fire detection, alarms and monitoring based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Pye-Barker has continued to invest in the Northeast and offers full fire code compliance and complete life safety services to commercial customers in eastern Pennsylvania.

“We’re honored the Taylor family is choosing to entrust their customers, team and legacy to Pye-Barker.”

Protect Alarms – family-run since its founding in 1963 by Albert Taylor, Jr. – is committed to providing superior service and customized systems that protect businesses and neighbors throughout the Lehigh Valley region. Protect Alarm services, tests and designs systems for intrusion detection, CCTV, access control, fire detection and alarms, remote site management and other environmental threats. The team also operates a 24-hour local central monitoring station to quickly alert personnel and emergency services as needed.

“At Protect Alarms, we’ve always prioritized the safety and security of our customers, and we take that role of protection seriously,” said Albert Taylor, III, Protect Alarm Owner. “As part of Pye-Barker, we can offer our loyal customers additional fire protection services and enhance opportunities for our team members to grow and thrive.”

“Through purposeful acquisitions, Pye-Barker brings together experienced, highly skilled and values-aligned teams like Protect Alarms to enhance our services, grow our geographic footprint and create new opportunities for our collective teams,” said Bart Proctor, Pye-Barker CEO. “We’re honored the Taylor family is choosing to entrust their customers, team and legacy to Pye-Barker.”

The highly skilled team at Protect Alarms will continue to serve customers in Pennsylvania, leveraging sister teams within the Pye-Barker family of companies to support additional customers and expand its offerings.

On Pye-Barker’s team, Philip Gardner, VP of Business Development, coordinated the transaction. Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP represented Pye-Barker.

About Pye-Barker Fire & Safety

The U.S. leader in fully integrated life safety systems, Pye-Barker Fire & Safety provides complete fire protection and security systems nationwide. With over 230 locations and 7,000 team members nationwide, Pye-Barker ranks No. 849 on the Inc. 5000 and No. 8 on the SDM 100.

Pye-Barker continues to explore strategic acquisition opportunities. Visit pyebarkerfs.com/acquisitions to see why we’re the industry’s acquirer of choice.

Contact:

Eric Garner
Chief Business Development Officer
801.395.8738
eric.garner@pyebarkerfs.com

Media:
Alycia Volpe
media@pyebarkerfs.com

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SOURCE Pye-Barker Fire & Safety

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Simply announces compatibility with AI glasses from Meta

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NEW YORK, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Simply, the creative hobbies leader behind the market leading apps Simply Piano, Simply Guitar, Simply Sing, and Simply Draw, today announced compatibility with AI glasses from Meta.

 

The launch signals Simply’s next leap – from mobile and augmented reality into AI glasses – as part of its long–term vision to build a fully multimodal AI platform that connects physical creativity, digital experiences, and wearable interfaces.

After pioneering music learning through augmented reality with Simply Piano for Apple Vision Pro and Simply Piano for Android XR, Simply is now expanding its creative hobbies ecosystem into AI–powered wearables. The new integration with Simply Draw and AI glasses from Meta lets learners capture their drawing process in real time, generating AI–enhanced timelapses and shareable creative assets that showcase their creation. 

“This is an exciting step toward a new era for creativity,” said Yuval Kaminka, CEO and Co–Founder of Simply. “We believe that the way we experience the arts, learning, playing and creative expression at home will become fully contextual. AI glasses allow us to move closer to a true AI creative companion – a multimodal AI, one that understands what you’re doing and supports you in the moment.”

“AI glasses are becoming a natural extension of how we learn and create,” added Eliran Douenias, Head of Product Innovation at Simply. “Our products already enable immersive and virtual experiences with XR and spatial computing, now we’re adding AI glasses from Meta as the next interface – and it’s just the first of an exciting roadmap ahead.”

“Simply’s early move into the AI glasses space puts us ahead of the curve and positions us to lead in how wearables – specifically AI glasses – become part of everyday creative life,” said Douenias.

With this launch, Simply is expanding its platform for the AI era. The new compatibility with AI glasses from Meta enhances how learners see, capture, and share their creative process, with many more experiences to follow.

About Simply

Simply is the world’s leading AI creativity platform redefining how people learn and express themselves through music, arts, crafts, and more. Its award–winning apps – Simply Piano, Simply Guitar, Simply Sing, and Simply Draw – have empowered millions globally to pick up and develop fulfilling creative hobbies that last.

Contact info: eliran@hellosimply.com

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SOURCE Simply

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Levine Leichtman Capital Partners Hires James Smith as Managing Director

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LONDON, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Levine Leichtman Capital Partners (“LLCP”) announced today that James Smith has joined the Firm as a Managing Director in the Investment Management group. James will be based in LLCP’s London office.

Josh Kaufman, Head of Europe at LLCP, said, “We are thrilled to welcome James to LLCP. James adds valuable experience to the team within our core Business Services sector vertical. We look forward to the impact he will have as our European business and team continues to grow.”

James joins LLCP from Advent International where he was a senior member of the European Business & Financial Services team and participated in numerous successful transactions over his 12-year tenure. Prior to Advent, James worked at Bain & Company. James’ full biography can be found at https://www.llcp.com/team

About Levine Leichtman Capital Partners

Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, LLC is a middle-market private equity firm with a 42-year track record of investing across various targeted sectors, including Business Services, Franchising & Multi-unit, Education & Training and Engineered Products & Manufacturing. LLCP utilizes a differentiated Structured Private Equity investment strategy, combining debt and equity capital investments in portfolio companies. LLCP believes that by investing in a combination of debt and equity securities, it offers management teams growth capital in a highly tailored, flexible investment structure that can be a more attractive alternative than traditional private equity.

LLCP’s global team of dedicated investment professionals is led by 9 partners who have worked at LLCP for an average of 20 years. Since inception, LLCP and its affiliates have managed approximately $18.5 billion of capital across nearly 20 investment funds and has invested in approximately 120 portfolio companies. LLCP currently manages $12.6 billion of assets and has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Media Contact: Isabel Moon, imoon@llcp.com

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Appian Advances AI in Process to Deliver Enterprise Outcomes at Scale

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New capabilities in agentic automation and AI-assisted spec-driven development transform complex work.

ORLANDO, Fla., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Appian [Nasdaq: APPN] today announced enhancements to the Appian Platform, including AI-assisted spec-driven development and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration for agents. By anchoring AI within processes, Appian eliminates the primary hurdles to AI value: fragmented data, and a lack of reliability and control. Process models provide the structure needed to deliver results safely, and at scale.

Advancements in AI agents enable more intelligent, coordinated work

AI agents in Appian are smarter, safer and more effective because they have better structure, context and guardrails. Appian is enhancing interoperability across its AI ecosystem. By adopting powerful standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP), Appian agents will be able to interface securely with external enterprise systems. Third party AI agents will have access to powerful Appian tools like data fabric which uniquely provides unified read-write access to enterprise data.

Appian is also advancing agent learning by providing users the ability to track agent performance, and then apply an agent’s memory across processes to improve decision making. Users will soon be able to expand on this by giving AI guidance on what objectives to optimize against and recommend improvements that can be applied safely.

Customer value

Global Excel Management, a worldwide healthcare risk management provider, uses Appian to transform claims processes with AI.

“As part of our digital transformation we are evolving our claims processes by transitioning from fragmented workflows to an enhanced level of operations using technological advancements enabled with AI features,” said Pascal Tanguay, SVP, Global Technology Services, Global Excel Management. “With Appian, our processes will be unified. From initial intake to adjudication, our advanced technology will reduce redundant tasks and lessen complexity for our team members. This ensures that our claims processes are consistent and completed more efficiently and accurately.”

Context gives agents a common vocabulary for business data

To support advanced agent capabilities, Appian is augmenting its industry-leading data fabric. Appian’s data fabric has been enhanced to provide a unified metadata model that gives agents clearer context about how information is structured and connected across systems.

Furthering its commitment to supporting industry-leading data platforms, Appian is launching a technology partnership with Snowflake. This unites Appian as the AI orchestration layer with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, combining data aggregation, model training, and process orchestration to enable immediate business value. Direct MCP-enabled integration between Appian data fabric and Snowflake equips agents with deep enterprise context, and allows them to interact directly with Snowflake Cortex AI to drive intelligent, data-backed decisions.

“Enterprises don’t need more AI experiments, they need AI that delivers real business outcomes on governed data,” said Baris Gultekin, Vice President of AI, Snowflake. “By combining Appian’s process orchestration and data fabric with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, we’re bringing intelligence directly into the flow of work. Together, we enable secure, enterprise-grade AI where agents can access trusted data through Cortex AI, act with context, and drive measurable impact across the business.”

AI-assisted spec-driven development

AI-assisted development has revolutionized coding, but mission-critical work needs more than fast, cheap code. Appian puts structure around AI-assisted development. Without that structure, AI-generated code can introduce compliance issues and technical debt instead of business value.

Appian is introducing AI-assisted spec-driven development. AI extracts rich specifications from legacy applications to create a clear visual plan. This plan helps visualize the UI, data models and process flows for rapid and iterative operational improvements. AI developer agents, operating under human supervision, complete tasks according to specifications, accelerating delivery and reducing rework.

New developer MCP servers will allow organizations to use their choice of AI development tools, such as Claude Code or Kiro to build and update Appian applications. Appian will support a wide range of AI models, enabling teams to work in the environments they prefer.

Together, these enhancements will deliver the speed and developer productivity of AI-assisted development, with enterprise-grade control.

“Appian Composer, Agents and Appian MCP servers enable trusted agentic process orchestration and application modernization,” said Mike Beckley, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Appian. “Composer complements Appian’s agentic orchestration and data fabric with new spec-driven development tools that are both conversational and iterative. Beneath the covers, Appian Composer is built on Appian’s new open MCP – a model-driven representation of your complete application estate—requirements, apps, data entities, logic, workflows, security/governance rules, integrations, and multi-object dependencies—now exposed as context for developers and agents to safely evolve and optimize.”

The advancements announced today were unveiled at Appian World 2026 and will be available in coming releases. Learn more at www.appian.com

About Appian

Appian provides process automation technology. We automate complex processes in large enterprises and governments. Our platform is known for its unique reliability and scale. We’ve been automating processes for 25 years and understand enterprise operations like no one else. For more information, visit appian.com. [Nasdaq: APPN]

Follow Appian: LinkedIn, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.

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