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IRIS announces management team changes for 2025

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–  After nearly a decade at the business, Elona Mortimer-Zhika will transition from CEO role in New Year.
–  Executive search is underway for a US-based global CEO who will bring IRIS into a new chapter of global growth.
–  Executive Chairman, Gus Malezis appointed interim CEO.

LONDON, Dec. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — IRIS Software Group (IRIS), a leading global provider of accountancy, education management, HR and payroll solutions, today announced that, in a planned transition, Elona Mortimer-Zhika has made the decision to move on from her CEO role to focus on her family, philanthropic priorities and expanding board responsibilities in the UK. This move comes a year after she led the sale of the business to Hg, Leonard Green & Partners, L.P. (LGP) and Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) – in a transaction valuing the business at around $4 billion – and weeks after the acquisition of Dext. This represented the largest acquisition in IRIS’ history and brought significant growth globally, adding c.20% to group revenues.

An executive search is underway for a global CEO based in the USA, who will drive continued growth as the company doubles down on global expansion, product innovation and customer success. The Board has appointed Gus Malezis, the company’s current executive chairman, to the expanded role of interim CEO.

Ms. Mortimer-Zhika, CEO of IRIS, said: “I have had the incredible opportunity and privilege of leading a business I truly love, and it has been the best job in the world. IRIS is an amazing company with all the ingredients many dream of having: loyal customers, fantastic mission critical cloud solutions, amazing investors and, most importantly, a tremendously hard-working and brilliant team, committed to our customers’ success. My heartfelt thanks to all our amazing employees and customers who make IRIS what it is.”

“As we align our business for further global expansion, I am ready to focus on new priorities, including my family, joining other boards in a NED capacity, as well as my philanthropic work, including with The Hg Foundation. I am delighted that several key milestones were achieved in my last 12 months as CEO, and I am proud of what we have built together. I leave behind a business entering a new phase of growth, supported by a fantastically talented team. I want to give huge thanks to Hg, LGP and ICG for their backing and support, both personally and professionally; I couldn’t have asked for better partners.”

During Ms. Mortimer-Zhika’s tenure IRIS has tripled in size, transitioned to a cloud SaaS platform business, expanded into the Americas, significantly improved its customer NPS (Net Promoter Score), acquired more than 30 new businesses and became a Great Place to Work® for five consecutive years in the UK, and more recently, across all major geographies including the USA, Canada, India, Ireland, and Romania. Women now represent 49% of IRIS’ employee base.

Gus Malezis, Executive Chairman and interim CEO, commented: “For almost a decade, Elona’s leadership has helped to create a very bright future for an amazing business, leaving us in an excellent position for continued success. I highly value Elona’s capacity to drive the business success, while steadfastly keeping the employees and the IRIS culture at the core. Hers are certainly big shoes to fill, but Elona has prepared us all well for the future.”

This foundational success will catapult IRIS into a new phase of global excellence. An executive search is underway for a CEO who will bring IRIS into a new global chapter, with an ever-increasing impact in a broader range of key sectors, all of which will be critical to the business.  This will look to conclude through 2025.

Nic Humphries, Board Member for IRIS and Senior Partner at Hg, the majority owner of IRIS for most of the last 20-years, commented: “IRIS and Hg share a long history, having grown together over the past 20 years. Elona initially joined IRIS as a transformative CFO before succeeding to COO and then CEO over five years ago. She is a natural leader, business builder and brand ambassador. Under her incredible tenure, IRIS has more than tripled in size and transformed into a modern, cloud business leading its sector in both the UK and USA.”

“We are very grateful for everything Elona has accomplished for IRIS and Hg. We look forward to continuing to work with her as a trustee of The Hg Foundation and as she pursues non-executive and similar board roles. On a personal note, it has been a privilege to work with someone of such high capability and integrity and I would like to commend Elona for the great position she leaves IRIS in.”

Media contact:  
IRIS Software Group  
news@irisglobal.com

About IRIS Software Group

Founded in 1978, IRIS Software Group is a global provider of mission critical, cloud-hosted software solutions and services to more than 100,000 customers across 135 countries. IRIS is a trusted partner to businesses, finance, HR and payroll teams, educational organisations, and accountancy firms of all sizes, providing innovative operational solutions that streamline complex processes, maintain compliance, and unlock growth. Through simplifying, automating and providing insights on everyday mission critical tasks for organisations of all shapes and sizes, IRIS ensures customers can look forward with certainty and confidence. IRIS is certified as a 2024 Great Place to Work® in the UK, Ireland, India, Romania, Canada and the USA. Follow IRIS on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. More information on its award-winning software solutions can be found here.

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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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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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