Monthly Archives: June 2012

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BigDataExpo New York Speaker Profile: David Lucas – GCE

With BigDataExpo 2012 New York (www.BigDataExpo.net), co-located with 10th Cloud Expo, now less than a away, what better time to remind you in greater detail of the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference…?

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Big Data Are Made to Be Married

“I think there is opportunity for this market to go far beyond analytics,” observed Margaret Dawson, Symform’s Vice President of Marketing, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Again,” Dawson continued, “this goes back to how we can integrate these solutions with other related products/solutions to get a broader picture of what is happening across our business. I think an interesting intersection is Big Data and distributed compute processing.”
Cloud Computing Journal: Agree or disagree? – “While the IT savings aspect is compelling, the strongest benefit of cloud computing is how it enhances business agility.”
Margaret Dawson: I don’t think it’s one or the other or so black and white. For some companies, it is absolutely a budgetary impact issue; for others, it’s about being able to move to a new technology or increasing productivity quickly regardless of money saved or not. For others it’s about minimizing impact on the network. Depending on which cloud computing platform and solution the business is pursuing, the benefits can be wide ranging. That being said, I absolutely agree that business agility is a key benefit of cloud.

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Benchmark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Clarizen, Collaboration, DAG Ventures, Project management, Social, Venture Funding

Clarizen Gets $12 Million for Social Project Collabortion

Image representing Clarizen as depicted in Cru...

Clarizen today announced that it has completed a $12 million Series E financing round led by Vintage Partners. Existing Clarizen shareholders Benchmark Capital, Carmel Ventures, DAG Ventures and Opus Capital also participated. The funding will support continued expansion, strategic partnerships, and product development designed to enhance the end user experience.

Clarizen makes organizations more effective by combining the tools needed to plan and execute work within a collaborative cloud-based environment that puts data, structure, and communications all in one place. Simple to use, yet robust, Clarizen’s project management suite eliminates the need for multiple disconnected planning and communication tools. Clarizen’s unified, collaborative environment gives team members and organizations better visibility into their work and provides the tools to get projects executed more quickly.

“Clarizen’s vision for today’s social workforce reflects our understanding that successful organizations need much more than task management or another way to communicate,” said Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO and co-founder of Clarizen. “The workplace we enable is powerful, because Clarizen helps move information and communications out of silos, gives them structure, and makes this data actionable. This funding comes at an exciting point as we look to accelerate our investment in mobile access and global expansion.”

Clarizen recently introduced its native Android application to complement its existing iPhone app, providing users with real-time access to their tasks and projects from their mobile devices. In addition, the company introduced Clarizen Anywhere, a browser-application and Microsoft Outlook-based toolbar that provides users with immediate access to Clarizen without the need to login.


Alert Logic, Covera Ventures, DFJ Mercury, Updata Partners, Venture Funding

Alert Logic gets $12.2 Million for Cloud Security

Image representing Alert Logic as depicted in ...

Alert Logic (Security-as-a-Service for the cloud) today announced that it has closed a $12.2 million round of financing led by new investors Industry Ventures and DH Capital, and joined by all existing investment firms and several members of the company’s management team including Updata Partners, Covera Ventures, DFJ Mercury, OCA Ventures and Access Venture Partners. Alert Logic will use the funding to accelerate the growth of its new Web Security Manager product line, including deployment of Web Security Manager throughout Alert Logic’s channel of hosting and cloud service provider partners, and to accelerate the growth and adoption of the company’s new elastic cloud security solutions.

“After tripling the size of our company in less than three years and building a customer base of over 1,700 customers representing nearly $30 million in annual recurring revenue, we remain focused on delivering security and compliance solutions to customers of cloud providers,” said Gray Hall, president and CEO at Alert Logic. “Adding new product lines such as Web Security Manager, and new deployment models such as our elastic cloud solutions, is exactly what our customers and partners are asking us to do. This additional capital gives us the ability to move more aggressively in each of these strategic new directions.”

“We are excited about adding Alert Logic as a portfolio company,” said Justin Burden, partner at Industry Ventures. “Having previously invested in security industry leaders such as Fortinet, Sourcefire and Tripwire, we consider cloud security to be one of the strongest investment themes in the IT industry and we believe Alert Logic will prove to be a cloud security market leader.”

“DH Capital has been the leading provider of financial advisory services to hosting and cloud service providers since the inception of the industry segment,” said Peter Hopper, co-founder and CEO of DH Capital. “Alert Logic has the strongest and most-developed channel of service provider partners in the industry, and is setting the standard for delivering SaaS managed security service solutions.”

Alert Logic’s Security-as-a-Service solutions provide customers four distinct advantages: market-leading security tools, a fully outsourced and managed SaaS delivery model, integrated 24×7 Security Operations Center (SOC) services to monitor and provide expert guidance, and the ability to deploy wherever a customer has IT infrastructure – including the cloud.


App Store (iOS), Business Processes, Collaboration, iPad, Mobile

FileTrek Releases Management Tool on iPad

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

FileTrek, Inc. today released FileTrek for iPad, a management dashboard tool designed for workgroup managers and other team members to easily and transparently track the flow of projects, data and collaborative activity while on the go. FileTrek for iPad provides live activity updates of projects, displays how project files are related and how those files are being changed, with real-time data syncing and updates. The FileTrek iPad app is built for members of workgroups that require timely distribution of frequently updated files and the ability to track those files and data wherever it resides.

“The speed of the mobile work environment can make it very difficult for managers and team members alike to meet in-person to review and report on the status of shared projects,” said Carol Mason, Director of Product Management at FileTrek. “Managers want to view data and activity while on the go, and team members want to report the status of their work without having to write a report or make a phone call. FileTrek for iPad simultaneously presents three up-to-date feeds of information – people, projects and data, all on a single pane of glass. It will change everyone’s mindset as to how to get projects done with greater efficiency, and even have some fun while doing it.”

The dashboard app is an extension of the FileTrek solution launched on February 15, 2012. The application is the only combined cloud-based file sharing and tracking solution on the market. FileTrek is designed to allow secure file sharing, project collaboration, and the ability for managers to track content and data with enhanced compliance-friendly audit reporting. The solution is easy to use, transparent to users and can scale across thousands of desktops and mobile devices to maximize individual and workgroup productivity.

FileTrek for iPad features include:

With FileTrek for iPad, a worker in the field can access data through a tablet and have the same secure view of spreadsheets, presentations and memos as a manager in the company offices. Any existing FileTrek project or document that has been synced or shared can be added to the dashboard with a single click. There are no limits to the number of “favorite” projects, people and files that can be tracked.

FileTrek’s innovative data tracking feature allows users to obtain a comprehensive view of all activity within a workgroup or project, who has worked on it, and the various changes that have been made to it. The app provides reliable access to the most recent versions. A file map tracks project dependencies and illustrates how files are related.

Receive live activity updates of all your FileTrek projects, access and revisions. You can see up-to-date sharing activity within a project, who has been added, who has been removed, information on what files have been reviewed, changed or removed, An intuitive cover flow interface allows users can visually flip through snapshots of files to easily access and view all the documents and files related to the project(s) they are working on.

FileTrek for iPad is an innovative solution for people that manage multiple projects at any given time such as sales staff, real estate agents, creative services professionals, health care providers, etc. The dashboard is particularly useful for members of workgroups that require timely distribution of frequently updated files.

FileTrek for iPad is free and available now for existing Team and Enterprise accounts from the iOS App Store. Follow this link to download. For any company registering a new Team or Enterprise account with 20+ users on an annual purchase plan prior to July 31, 2012, they will receive a new iPad free.


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SoftLayer Delivers Rapid Scalability to Game Developers

Interruptions from outages, network lag and scalability issues caused by unpredictable usage patterns can mean “game over” in the competitive world of online game development. With a wide array of Internet-scale cloud infrastructure options – including dedicated, virtualized and managed servers – SoftLayer Technologies has become the go-to provider to some of today’s top game developers. Online gaming companies such as Broken Bulb Game Studios, East Side Games, KIXEYE, Hothead Games and Storm8 rely on SoftLayer to provide a platform where they can develop, test, launch and run their latest games.
“Working with SoftLayer gave us the right mix of dedicated and pure cloud-based resources,” said Robert Nelson, CEO of Broken Bulb Studios. “We have a robust platform that can support our massive bursts in user adoption when rolling out new games. This is because we’re able to easily provision any and all IT resources while overcoming network latency issues, giving our users a great online experience.”

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Arrowpath Venture Partners, Identity management, Venture Funding, Xceedium

Xceedium Gets $12 Million for Identity Management

Image representing ArrowPath Venture Partners ...

Xceedium, Inc., provider of Zero Trust privileged identity and access management solutions, today announced that is has closed a $12 million Series B financing extension led by existing investor ArrowPath Venture Partners. The new funds will be used to fuel continued growth and expansion of the company, with specific emphasis on Xceedium’s new cloud-based initiatives. As part of this aggressive growth strategy, the company also announced today the launch of Xsuite Cloud.

“The market for privileged identity and access management solutions is constantly growing and the push for enterprises to move to the cloud has only increased its potential,” said Morgan Rodd at ArrowPath Venture Partners. “Xceedium’s track record and strong management team were the key drivers for this extension. Xceedium has proven resources in place to capitalize on the growing demand for products that control and monitor privileged network access.”

Large enterprises and global government agencies have adopted Xsuite as a critical component of their security infrastructure to meet stringent security and compliance requirements – eliminating the risk of allowing employees and third parties unchecked privileged access to their networks. This financing round allows Xceedium to maintain that leadership position and to aggressively fuel its cloud-based initiatives with Xsuite Cloud. Xsuite Cloud is a comprehensive privileged identity and access management platform designed to provide additional protection for organizations that are taking advantage of the cost, power and scalability of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in conjunction with existing datacenter infrastructure.

“We are very pleased to be announcing this latest round of financing coincident with the unveiling of our new Xsuite Cloud offering,” said Glenn Hazard, Xceedium CEO. “We are seeing significant adoption of our privileged identity and access management solutions within both the commercial and federal sectors. As these customers adopt cloud and hybrid architectures, Xsuite Cloud along with this latest funding extension uniquely positions us to take full advantage of this growing market opportunity.”

In addition to ArrowPath Venture Partners, new investor Western Technology Investment joined existing investors in the Series B financing extension.


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Cloud Computing: TwinStrata CEO to Discuss Cloud SANs at Cloud Expo NY

TwinStrata, Inc., the leading innovator of cloud-based data storage, backup and disaster recovery solutions, on Tuesday announced that company CEO Nicos Vekiarides is a featured speaker at Cloud Expo. Specifically, he’ll discuss how Cloud SANs are rapidly becoming the new approach to building and enhancing storage area networks. In addition, the company will be exhibiting its CloudArray Storage Gateway at the Expo in Booth No. 339 of the Javits Center in New York, June 11-14.
“Despite numerous benefits over their direct-attached predecessors, SANs still present a number of challenges,” said Vekiarides. “In this session, Cloud Expo delegates will learn how Cloud SANs are rapidly becoming the new approach to building and enhancing storage area networks. Attendees will learn how using cloud storage, in combination with enterprise-class cloud storage gateways, overcomes the limitations of traditional SANs through a pay-as-you-go cost model while offering unlimited capacity, multi-site scalability, and even cloud-based disaster recovery without dedicated infrastructure and resources.”

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Cloud Computing: Compuware to Speak on Cloud Performance at Cloud Expo NY

Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company, on Tuesday announced that Michael Kopp, a Technology Strategist for Compuware’s application performance management (APM) business, will present a session titled: “How to Do Application Performance Monitoring in the Clouds: Lessons Learned” at Cloud Expo 2012 New York in New York City.
Organizations face the challenge of monitoring and managing performance in clouds every other day. Not only is APM different in a cloud, but all clouds are not equal either.
During this session, attendees will learn how to do APM in different types of clouds (Azure, EC2, VMware private clouds) and how clouds differ from more traditional environments. The session will also cover performance monitoring, troubleshooting and tuning in environments where resources are virtually infinite but application performance is not.

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SoftLayer Delivering Cloud to Gamers

“Gamers require a high-performance, always on, graphically attractive and quick-responding experience,” writes SoftLayer Chief Strategy Officer George Karidis in a recent blog post. “If they don’t get that experience, they move on.”

Thus go the thought processes at the Dallas based company, which claims to be “the go-to provider” for top game developers such as Broken Bulg Game Studios, East Side Games, Kixeye, Hothead Games, and Storm8.

Delivered as IaaS, SoftLayer strives to give game developers the ability to roll out cloud-computing instances in minutes, or turn up dedicated servers in just two hours. It provides dedicated, virtualized, and managed servers in a “consumptive billing” (ie, pay as you go) model, with a focus on precluding the outage interruptions, network lag, and scalability problems caused by unpredictable, spiky usage patters that can cause gamers to go elsewhere.

As Karidis also notes, “Game developers do not have the time, operational expertise or resources to manage their own complex data centers because they need to focus on…developing new games, launching before the competition and keeping players engaged.”

SoftLayer’s dozen-plus datacenters are found throughout the world, including Dallas, Seattle, San Jose, Washington DC, Amsterdam, and Singapore, connected via private, 10Gb Ethernet point-to-point connections.

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