Citrix is buying mobile device management (MDM) house Zenprise.
Terms weren’t disclosed but Fortune says it’s paying $355 million.
The company, founded in 2003, raised $64.5 million from Bay Partners, Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, Mayfield Fund, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Shasta Ventures.
When the deal closes in Q1, Citrix means to integrate Zenprise’s solution with its CloudGateway and Me@Work widgetry.
CloudGateway offers a single control point to manage and securely deliver native mobile apps, as well as Windows, web and SaaS apps to any corporate or personal device.
Crittercism, UserVoice Partner for Customer Communication Platform for Mobile App Developers
Crittercism announced that it has partnered with UserVoice to deliver a customer communication platform for mobile app developers. As a result, developers can now monitor and manage app performance, as well as communicate directly with customers in real-time through a single, easy-to-use dashboard on upcoming upgrades, support issues and more via the cloud.
App crashes and user support are the top two issues affecting user retention and in-app purchases. As such, customer support is critical and has a direct impact on app store ratings, reviews, customer engagement and revenues.
With UserVoice for iOS, mobile app developers using Crittercism’s robust Mobile APM solution can now easily insert a customer support contact form into iOS mobile applications, giving users the ability to provide direct feedback from an iPhone or iPad.
Furthermore, mobile app developers can now access hosted feedback forums that allow users to create, discuss and vote on ideas to help prioritize order of importance, giving developers an easy way to collect critical feedback and improve their apps in a timely manner. As a result, developers are able to benefit from a complete customer communication and support service that not only increases customer satisfaction as well as retention.
“Crittercism’s mobile APM solution is extremely flexible and we are able to easily integrate new technologies into our system that make developers’ lives easier,” said Andrew Levy, Crittercism’s co-founder and CEO. “We are pleased to expand on our platform to offer our developers new, unique ways to reach their customers to offer the best user experience possible and provide actionable ideas on how to improve their products.”
“Consumers today expect a seamless mobile app experience, and will often abandon an app based on continued crashes or other issues, especially if they aren’t able to quickly report and resolve them,” said Richard White, CEO of UserVoice. “With Crittercism, we are extending our customer communication, support and feedback capabilities to mobile app developers, giving them the most comprehensive, flexible and intuitive support solution for mobile applications.”
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Accessing the Power of the Cloud
“Green Button is a multi-cloud management environment. It makes it very simple for users to access the power of the cloud,” explained Scott Houston, CEO of Green Button, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
New Cloud Ecosystem
I was touring what reminded me of the Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker – one of the safest places on earth. Except in this case, this was one of the safest places for your enterprise data on earth. “The entrance will open, you will drive in, and an armed guard will be out to escort you.”
That was the beginning of my tour of a Tier 4 datacenter, furthest from any natural disaster. 100% guaranteed up time.
I was staking out where we would launch our newest version of the Infochimps Big Data cloud service – our enterprise cloud service would soon be launched in the most trusted datacenter in the world, along side the largest enterprise data installations in the world.
SYS-CON.tv Interview: Big Data Storage and the Cloud
“Big Data is everywhere these days and what we’ve been explaining to people at Cloud Expo is that Big Data is not a marketing hype. Big Data feeds the cloud,” stated Tom Leyden, CMO of Amplidata, in this SYS-CON.tv interview with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan at the 11th International Cloud Expo, held November 5-8, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.
A Rock Star Faculty, Top Keynotes, Sessions, and Top Delegates!
Cloud Expo 2013 New York, June 10–13, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York, will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading Cloud industry players in the world.
The Cloud Cost Question and What Doesn’t Fit into the Usual Debates
The cloud community and anyone with an opinion if not immediately, periodically and frequently gravitate to the question of cost. Is it more? Is it less? Are we being wasteful? Are we being too frugal? Will Google and AWS drive the price of storage to zero? Can we scrunch the market forces of Cloud into a theoretical framework we already understand?
And yet just as cost of computing has been accounted for poorly when assessed in the corporate datacenter, when similar measures are applied to Cloud, Cloud becomes subject to the same Procrustean Bed as the corporate datacenter.
Contractors would do well to use the cloud
Building contractors were told this week that cloud computing could make a huge difference to the construction industry, especially when it comes to project management.
Autodesk, which develops some of the most influential design software such as AutoCAD and 3DS Max, claimed this week that the construction industry could use cloud hosting to power remote servers, given the nature of working on a building-site, an essentially rugged environment.
This would enable an industry which has otherwise been slow in taking up cloud technology (mainly due to security / reliability concerns) to flourish, changing the nature in which projects are run.
Autodesk senior VP Amar Hanspal thinks that the technology is now ripe for the construction industry to jump on board, just as they did for Building Information Modelling (BIM).
Hanspal said that by using technology such as mobile phones, the work force could be reached and drawings, building models and instructions …
Where does Forrester see cloud computing in 2013?
With 2013 just around the corner, it’s not surprising to see many companies rolling out their 2013 tech predictions – and it’s even less of a surprise that cloud computing features heavily.
Analyst house Forrester has revealed its top 10 cloud computing predictions for next year, with all the contributors to the Forrester cloud playbook giving their view before narrowing down their insight to the best 10 enterprise cloud forecast.
These predictions include a waning of AWS’ cloud prowess, companies no longer fussing over service level agreements (SLAs), and a further convergence of cloud and mobile.
“We can stop speculating, hopefully stop cloudwashing, and get down to the real business of incorporating cloud services and platforms into our formal IT portfolios”, wrote Forrester analyst James Staten in a blog post.
The 10 predictions from Forrester are:
- We’ll finally stop saying that everything is going cloud: Specifically, people will …
Deploying Cloud Security for Shifting and Evolving Defenses
Most attacks, like the recent DDoS attacks on banks, show most hackers do not use brute force to gain entry to sensitive data. And as organizations expand the perimeter of their networks,, there are so many more opportunities for data leakage and theft. To control it, a more nimble, flexible and agile strategy of defense is necessary…and that can come from the cloud.
A few weeks back I was watching my beloved San Diego Chargers lose in a most embarrassing way on Monday night. And in the waning seconds of blaming the quarterback for such ineffectual 2nd half play, it occurred to me, it wasn’t his fault. It was the coach. It was the lack of planning for the type of attack the Denver Broncos would bring. It was the lack of leadership that should have easily closed the deal. In short, it was sticking to the status quo while everything around was changing.
Cloud Computing: Cloudera Gets Another $65 Million to Grow On
Cloudera, the four-year-old Hadoop and Big Data pioneer, has closed a massive $65 million E round led by Accel Partners, which participated in all four of the start-up’s previous rounds raising an initial $76 million.
Existing backers Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and Meritech Capital Partners also kicked in. They valued Cloudera at $700 million according to All Things Digital, which figures it’s warming up for an IPO given the huge market it’s addressing.
The money will be used to fund global sales growth and continued development of the company’s platform. It expects to open a European headquarters in the UK in the first quarter.
Accel says Cloudera is “well positioned to expand its revenue and global customer footprint.”