Pressroom
  • Mon
    13
    Jan
    2014

    Standing out in the congested genomics data analysis market is a challenge for startups, with each month bringing news of rivals' fresh investments and products. Maverix Biomics is one of many companies trying to gain a foothold in the sector, but it can boast a differentiating factor: One of Google's ($GOOG) original angel investors has contributed funding.

    The Google angel investor, Andy Bechtolsheim, joined with Asset Management Ventures and Apache Design co-founder Andrew Yang to lead Maverix's $6 million Series A round. Bechtolsheim was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems in 1982. He's also known for having written a check to Google for $100,000 in 1998. His latest investment sees Bechtolsheim enter the genomics data analysis space by promising Maverix the cash it needs to accelerate commercialization of its platform.
    San Mateo, CA-based Maverix says its system--the Maverix Analytic Platform--is already being used by pharmaceutical and diagnostics researchers. Maverix also has a co-marketing deal with Qiagen ($QGEN) that aims to make it easier for researchers to extract insights from next-generation gene expression data. Having finished the Series A round, Maverix will now further promote the platform by talking up its ability to simplify the management, exploration and visualization of genomics data.

    Maverix is far from the only genomics data startup to boast big-name backers, though. Exactly one year ago Sequoia Capital--a fund that backed Apple ($AAPL) Google, LinkedIn ($LNKD) and Oracle ($ORCL)--invested in genomics service provider SV Bio. And Maverix wasn't even the only California-based genomics data analysis startup to raise cash this week. Omicia, based a 40-minute drive north of Maverix in Oakland, raised $6.8 million for its whole genome interpretation system.

  • Thu
    23
    Jan
    2014

    2014_1$largeimg221_Jan_2014_152704040

    SAN FRANCISCO, United States

    After crisscrossing California meeting potential voters and huddling with Republican leaders and potential campaign donors nationwide, Neel Kashkari, who ran the U.S. Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, Jan. 21 declared his candidacy for governor of California.

    He made the announcement in Sacramento, Calif., during a noontime keynote address at the Sacramento Business Review at California State University, Sacramento (see sidebar).

    In a far-ranging interview with India-West in downtown San Francisco recently as he prepared to enter the race, the Indian American candidate gave a preview of his campaign strategy.

    Kashkari roundly criticized Democrat Governor Jerry Brown — who is expected to run for reelection as the prohibitive favorite — mainly on California’s poor educational performance and high unemployment rates.

    Born and raised in Stow, Ohio, a suburb of Akron, the former TARP overseer also emphasized his parting of the ways from President Barack Obama, whom he voted for in 2008 and under whom he served in the last three months of his tenure as head of the $700-billion U.S. financial rescue program.

    As president, Obama greatly disappointed him by turning out to be “a partisan warrior,” he said, and the person most “responsible” for the divisiveness of the two major political parties in Washington, D.C., he added.

    While Democratic Party leaders in California previously denigrated Kashkari’s possible candidacy by pointing out snidely that he is the former Golden Sachs executive selected by Henry Paulson, the company’s former CEO and Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury, to run TARP, Kashkari is unapologetic about the recovery program.

    He said it proved successful, averted a great crisis for the nation and produced an “$11 billion profit” for the government.
    Kashkari was referring to a TARP summary issued Dec. 30 by Adam Hodge, a spokesperson for domestic finance at the Treasury Department, who said, “To date, Treasury has recouped $432.8 billion on all TARP investments — including the disposition of Treasury’s remaining investment in AIG — compared to $421.9 billion disbursed.”

    According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the 75-year-old Brown has amassed more than $17 million in campaign funds ready to be tapped, once he formally announces.

    Candidates challenging Brown dwindled by one Jan. 16, when former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, a moderate Republican, ended his gubernatorial bid in the central coast town of Santa Maria, where he became the city’s youngest mayor at the age of 28 about 20 years ago.

    “It’s just time for me to take a break and focus more of my time on being a full-time dad and husband,” Maldonado said. Political analysts, however, pointed out that the Mexican American former state senator’s campaign failed to gain traction or raise significant funds to challenge Brown since its launch in April.

    Maldonado was a key mover of California’s open primary system, approved by voters in 2009. This year, candidates from all parties appear on the same ballot in the primary and the top vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election.

    According to the Chronicle, a Public Policy Institute of California poll done in December showed Maldonado with just seven percent support among likely voters, less than half of that for conservative Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Twin Peaks in San Bernardino County, a Tea Party favorite and now the only other Republican running for governor.

    Media reports have speculated that Kashkari has received campaign pledges for at least $10 million. He did not confirm that to India-West, but said he believes he will be able to raise enough to mount a formidable challenge to Brown.
    He also emphasized that his discussions with GOP leaders nationwide didn’t necessary include endorsements yet.

    Kashkari confirmed that the GOP leaders he has consulted with include Paulson, former President George W. Bush, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels and former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice.

    He has also met with the citizens of California — including visiting schools, sleeping one night in a homeless shelter in Oakland, Calif., marching with members of the Sikh community at a parade in Yuba City, Calif., and meeting with about 60 Indian American professionals Jan. 7 at a reception hosted by Amber India Restaurant Group in Los Altos, Calif.

    Kashkari’s parents, Chaman and Sheila Kashkari, were born in Srinagar. His father, who has a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, joined the electrical engineering department as a professor at the University of Akron. His mother, a doctor, works at Akron City Hospital; and his sister, Meera, is a physician in North Carolina.

    “My parents came from India 50 years. They were not especially wealthy, but they were educated and like most Indian Americans in America, they valued a good education.”

    His family, he added, “hard-wired” him on the need to give back to America and “help those less fortunate.”

    His father supported efforts to “reduce poverty in Indian and African villages…When you can transform lives, you have a moral duty to help,” he said.

    Kashkari told India-West that he “remembers vividly” being present at the White House when his father received the “Presidential End Hunger Award” from President George Bush, Sr.

    As an undergraduate, he attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. After graduation, he majored in aerospace engineering in the graduate program at the University of Illinois, where he was on a team that “built a solar-powered car.”

    Kashkari said he liked “technological challenges” and admired what NASA was doing, so after graduation, he was hired by TRW, a NASA subcontractor in Laguna Beach, Calif. While at the company, he worked on a project to help stabilize the giant mirror on the Hubble Space Telescope.

    It was then his career trajectory changed when he decided he needed to add business and finance capabilities to his experience, so he entered the MBA program at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

    After getting an MBA from Wharton, Kashkari returned to TRW briefly, before joining Goldman Sachs in 2002 in Menlo Park, Calif., which gave him an inside look at the entrepreneurial world in Silicon Valley.

    He met Paulson at this time, but said that he was by no means an intimate of the future treasury secretary.

    But when Paulson later told Kashkari in a phone conversation of his (Paulson’s) impending appointment by President Bush as treasury secretary, the Indian American said he emphatically told Paulson that he wanted to accompany him to Washington, no matter how junior the post.

    He worked at lower-level positions at Treasury in housing and alternate energy assignments, before being tapped by Paulson to run TARP. After leaving Washington, he joined Pacific Investment Management Company in Newport Beach, Calif., where he managed its equities division. He left the firm last year to prepare for a gubernatorial bid.

    Kashkari, who is divorced, is a moderate on most social issues, taking positions that are an anathema to the more conservative wing of the Republican Party.

    He is pro-choice, supports same-sex marriage, favors giving Green Cards to foreign graduates with master’s and Ph.D. degrees in STEM fields from U.S. colleges and universities, and believes the estimated 11 million to 12 million people currently in the U.S. illegally “need some form of legal status so they can file their taxes,” he told another Indian newspaper.

    “We should reform our immigration laws to put priority in the skills that we need in our economy,” he said. The current immigration bill in the Senate “is a reasonable starting place,” he added.

    Kashkari said he met recently with the conservative Lincoln Club of Orange County and received not one question on abortion or same-sex marriage. People at the meeting were more interested in his positions on education and jobs, “which are the issues resonating with voters now,” he said.

    Regarding Brown’s plan to use fees paid by carbon producers to partially fund a $68 billion high-speed rail system in California, Kashkari said it is a “crazy plan and a misplaced priority.”

    California has “$5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.” A failure to take it into account “is like balancing your checkbook, but ignoring making your mortgage payment.”

    Brown on the campaign trail, he pointed out, will have trouble defending California’s 46th ranking among states in spending per pupil in K-12 schools (according to 2011-12 data), and its unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, the sixth highest in the country.

    “These problems are solvable and I’ve been meeting with Republican leaders to find out what works in their states,” he told India-West.

    With Silicon Valley, the movie industry in Hollywood, and increased manufacturing in Southern California, the state is a “rocket ship that is not running at full speed,” Kashkari asserted, due to red tape and a restrictive climate for business that encourages businesses to relocate to other states.

    Kashkari by press deadline had not commented for the record on Brown’s new $155 billion proposed budget, but some Republicans have praised the governor for advocating spending $11 billion on debts and liabilities — including a $6 billion deferred payment to schools — and setting aside $1.6 billion in a “rainy day” fund.

    Under the proposed budget, about $4 billion would be used to pay down economic recovery bonds issued by former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, spending on K-12 would increase to $70 billion from $60 billion, and spending on higher education would rise by $1 billion, including $142 million in increased funds for the University of California and California State University systems, where tuitions would be frozen.

    A Kashkari aide rebutted by e-mail, “This budget actually represents the highest level of general fund spending ever. Not only is it the second-largest increase in general fund spending (as a dollar amount) in state history, but it’s also a 29% increase in total spending since Gov. Brown took office.”

    “Yet no money in the 2014-15 budget is directed toward any part of the unfunded pensions, including the growing $80.4 billion unfunded teachers’ retirement system.”

    Concerning Brown’s controversial $25 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan, which proposes boring two massive tunnels to siphon water from the Sacramento River and carry it beneath the delta to link up with the state Water Project near Tracy, while at the same time trying to protect endangered species with large-scale habitat restoration, Kashkari said it is too expensive.

    “There have to be cheaper ways, such as building more (facilities) for storage. That is a no-brainer.”

    Family farm owners in the Delta, many of them Punjabi Americans, complain the plan would cut off their freshwater supply. But proponents claim it is the best solution to solve the water crisis, which could leave up to 25 million people in the state without drinking water. Brown Jan. 17 declared a drought emergency in California.

    Inevitably, Kashkari’s thoughts returned to education.

    “Every child can learn. Schools need to educate the poorest kids and empower our teachers by not imposing restrictions that tie their hands. We also need more vocational training. We have lost that…Not everyone has to go to college.”

    Citing statistics that show kids regressing during summer vacations, the Indian American said he thinks year-round schools are a good idea. “Schools need to allow teachers and parents to customize learning to meet the needs of their kids,” he said

    Read more at http://www.indiawest.com

  • Tue
    28
    Jan
    2014

    Dear CloudVolumes Friends,
    Wanted to share an important CloudVolumes news with you, in partnership with VMware, today VMware released White Paper and we announce CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition articulated in the white paper. This is in addition to our Desktop and Server products. ThinApp product allows us to work closely with VMW, get their endorsement and reach out to number of their customers. Once customers use Freemium product, we strongly believe they will ask for paid 1) support, 2) Desktop product and/or Server product as paid products deliver substantially more value. We are combining new world and traditional enterprise sales methods, based on success, we will be able to do targeted companion products with other key companies. Key to our success is to leverage out technology with their market reach and built win-win relationship.

  • Tue
    28
    Jan
    2014

    CloudVolumes, the company that virtualizes everything above the OS, today announced a partnership with VMware (NYSE: VMW) to enhance ThinApp management and performance. CloudVolumes’ new ThinApp Edition integrates with ThinApp technology to leverage any VMware vSphere datastore and make individual ThinApp packages instantly available to users logging in to virtual desktops, Citrix XenApp, or Microsoft RDSH, in real-time and on demand through a service catalog. The combined solution and benefits are explained in details in a newly published VMware whitepaper.

    “CloudVolumes not only delivers centralized management, but also significantly boosts the application performance by eliminating the need for network streaming. Furthermore, by using CloudVolumes full Desktop Edition, customers can support user-installed applications as well as deploy and manage applications that cannot otherwise be virtualized.”

    VMware® ThinApp® is designed to deliver virtualized instances of applications in order to help IT administrators with software migration to a newer operating system and eliminate specific conflicts and compatibility issues. The integration with CloudVolumes will enhance the ease of management, speed of deployment, and performance of applications, all while leveraging customers’ existing storage infrastructures. It will also allow IT to scale up without sacrificing the benefits of application virtualization and centralized management.

    “Since the acquisition of Thinstall by VMware, ThinApp customers have asked for centralized management of ThinApps,” said Henrik Rosendahl, the former CEO of Thinstall and former director of application virtualization at VMware. “CloudVolumes not only delivers centralized management, but also significantly boosts the application performance by eliminating the need for network streaming. Furthermore, by using CloudVolumes full Desktop Edition, customers can support user-installed applications as well as deploy and manage applications that cannot otherwise be virtualized.”

    CloudVolumes has broad applicability beyond just enhancing ThinApp. CloudVolumes enables a hybrid-persistence model: the desktop pool is non-persistent, saving on hardware and storage; however, the user has a persistent desktop experience with their profile and user-installed apps managed and delivered separately. CloudVolumes can also deliver complex server applications such as databases, Web servers, and middleware. These virtualized applications and data are placed into one or more virtual disks (VMDK and VHD files), which are dynamically attached and shared across all virtual machines. This approach provides the fastest and most scalable way to deliver applications to any virtualized datacenter or cloud.

    CloudVolumes’ shared volumes significantly decreases I/O traffic from the network and improve application performance, while maintaining isolation between the applications and the operating system. This turnkey solution provides predictability in performance and removes the network as the limiting factor, allowing companies to leverage high-speed and SSD-based storage.

    To ensure simplicity, IT can utilize its existing ThinApp packages with CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition. It complements ThinApp’s dense application environment by dramatically enhancing the responsiveness of applications for end users. It enables IT to scale while leveraging existing infrastructure without sacrificing the benefits of application virtualization and centralized management.

    Key features of CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition include:

    • Flexibility of deployment: Deploy ThinApp packages from shared VMDKs on any datastore that VMware vSphere supports and scale as needed.
    • Centralized management: Manage a single virtual disk containing one or many ThinApp packages and share them across all users. Assign one or more CloudVolumes virtual disks to any active directory user or group. Searchable activity logs for compliance, analytics and audit.
    • Dynamic delivery: Security administrators and IT helpdesk can quickly respond to issues or helpdesk requests by updating or delivering new applications to a running VM.
    • Access to file automation: Automatically create file associations and shortcuts at log on for all ThinApp packages the user is entitled to.
    • Enterprise scale: Solution is design to support over 5,000 ThinApp packages and 10,000 users per Manager with the ability to scale out to 50 CloudVolumes Managers.
    • Increase VM density and simplify hardware support: Increase user density per VMware ESX host by decrease the amount of hardware required to support end users
    • Reduce network usage: Significant reduction of network I/O dramatically increasing the performance and responsive of ThinApp packages by 100% compared to hosting ThinApp packages on a CIFS file share.
    • Freemium license: ThinApp Edition will be available to qualified customers in US and EU free of charge. A support fee will be charged to those commercial customers needing support and maintenance or who have 1,000 or more users

    “We are extremely happy to extend our partnership with VMware and provide a complementary solution to ThinApp which allows users to enjoy a completely persistent and native desktop experience, while IT continues to manage the environment as non-persistent and centralized, including automated entitlement and analytics,” said Raj Parekh, CEO, CloudVolumes. “CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition will significantly reduce the time required to provision, maintain, or decommission ThinApp packages.

    Pricing and availability

    CloudVolumes ThinApp Edition is currently available as a freemium product, with and without support. For more information, visit http://www.cloudvolumes.com/products/thinapp-edition.

    Supporting Resources

    About CloudVolumes 

    CloudVolumes helps businesses solve their complex management, scale, and performance problems with the cloud and virtualized datacenters by virtualizing everything above the OS. Customers rely on CloudVolumes to provide solutions for terminal servers, desktops, and servers, eliminating lock-ins of service providers and hypervisors. CloudVolumes works with a customer’s existing environment to dynamically deliver server or desktop workloads to any generic virtual machine providing instant access to applications, data, and profiles. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. For more information, visit http://www.cloudvolumes.com.

  • Thu
    30
    Jan
    2014

    Punchh announced it has been selected by QSR International to provide its mobile CRM suite throughout the 145-unit, multi-brand enterprise. According to a news release, QSR International operates in 15 countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

    The partnership marks Punchh's first international deployment. QSR International's brands include Cinnabon, KFC, Quiznos, Smashburger and Teriyaki Experience.

    The Punchh-developed mobile app will be offered in Spanish, starting with 60 units, in Q2 2014.

    "This partnership marks our first international endeavor, and the chance to work with a deeply experienced master franchise developer," Jitendra Gupta, founder and CEO of Punchh, said in the release. "QSR International has an exceptional record of developing and operating quick-service restaurant brands throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, but now it will use Punchh's mobile CRM technology to engage customers on their mobile devices. Our goal is to help them drive solid increases in same-store sales and profitability."

    Punchh's brand-specific mobile apps allow brands to engage customers in and out of the store with loyalty programs, reviews, referrals, ordering, gift cards, payments, games and surveys. Punchh's cloud-based platform integrates with a restaurant's POS system to track detailed customer purchasing data and brand-relevant social media activity. Using customers' individual preferences, purchasing history, and demographic data, operators can tailor offers to patrons.

    QSR President Richard Eisenberg said Punchh's platform is an integral component of his plans for QSR to expand rapidly throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

    "In our markets, mobile device use is skyrocketing, and that presents a significant opportunity for us to engage our customers," Eisenberg said. "We're excited to tap the potential of the Punchh platform to increase same-store sales and profitability."

    Read more about mobile initiatives.

  • Fri
    31
    Jan
    2014

    Connected cars are one of the primary use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT) that capture the imagination of the general public and developers alike. At the Machine-2-Machine (M2M) Evolution Conference that was held this week at part of a larger ITEXPO event, PubNub announced that it is making available a Connected Car Solution Kit that developers can employ to access a range back-end cloud services that will enable to them to more easily build and deliver connected car applications.

    Developers can access PubNub’s cloud services via APIs included in the Connected Car Solution Kit. These are building blocks the developers will need to build real-time applications such as taxi dispatch and hailing applications or entire fleet management systems, PubNub CEO Todd Greene says. The services include the ability to push data, store and playback data streams, analytics, presence, mobile application management and security—all of which are delivered and managed via 14 global data centers, Green says.

    The PubNub Connected Car Solution Kit, which supports more than 50 SDKs, provides access to services such as the ability to track vehicle locations, the state of the vehicle and even whether the vehicle has exceeded a certain geographical boundary.

    Greene says the Connected Car Solution Kit is designed to make it easier for developers to bring connected car applications to market without having to build and then manage multiple data centers. It’s not uncommon, notes Greene, for an organization to develop an application only to discover it doesn’t have the capital investment resources needed to manage that application at scale. PubNub takes that uncertainty off the table by providing access to a set of distributed data centers that help ensure application performance by minimizing network latency, he adds.

    PubNub is already seeing traffic levels approaching “Twitter-like levels,” Greene says—yet the biggest challenge facing the company is the tendency of many organizations to want to build everything on their own rather than leverage an existing cloud service.

    Connected car applications are just a small segment of the thousands of applications that already run on PubNub, including videoconferencing applications developed using WebRTC and a BitCoin Exchange application, says Greene. The Connected Car Solution Kit was announced the heels of a recent alliance that PubNub struck with Ford Motor Co. under which the automotive maker is working with PubNub to expose its APIs to create connected car applications. These applications may wind up doing more to show people the potential of the IoT than any other apps.

  • Fri
    07
    Feb
    2014

    California-based Intuary Inc, which provides FarFaria, an iPad app for digital books for kids, has closed $3.25 million in a Series A round of funding led by Inventus Capital Partners to grow its library and also to add more devices.

    As part of the deal, Manu Rekhi from Inventus Capital has joined Intuary's board.

    Intuary was co-founded by Ajay Godhwani (CEO), an alumnus of University of Illinois, and Gennady Borukhovich (CTO) who studied engineering at Rutgers University.

    Its flagship product FarFaria is an iPad digital books app targeted at children aged two-nine. This app gives kids unlimited access to over 600 illustrated children's books, with five new stories added each week, for $3.99 a month. The firm claims its engaging story-discovery features make it easy for kids to find new stories and fuel their love for reading. It provides an interactive book-finding experience for kids and stories can be read aloud with its Read-to-Me feature.

    "Getting kids excited about reading is the best way to set them up for a successful education and a bright future. We are on a mission to make reading more accessible and more fun for children. We see this mission as a global one that can have a massive impact, and we're thrilled to have Inventus behind us," said Godhwani.

    Intuary had previously also developed Verbally, a free augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) aid for people with a speech disability caused by apraxia, ALS, stroke, traumatic brain injury, Parkinson's, cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, muscular dystrophy, etc.

    Inventus is an India-focused early-stage investment firm, which recently raised its second VC fund at $106 million. The new fund, which was originally targeting $100 million, will invest in 20-25 companies operating in the digital services sector, particularly in consumer & business software and technology-enabled services. Although it chases Indian startups, it invests in cross-over firms with Indo-US link.

    The firm has already invested in a few firms from its new fund, including Unbxd (a product recommendation platform for e-commerce companies), Espresso Logic (a database backend services provider for mobile and web developers), PolicyBazaar (online insurance policy aggregator) and eDreams (a startup focused on the education industry), in India.

    "With 40 per cent of children between the ages of two and nine owning their own tablets in the US, companies like FarFaria have an incredible growth potential," said Manu Rekhi.

    -- Copyright 2013 VCCircle.com. All rights reserved. This content/article is provided by Mosaic Media Ventures Private Limited and not by Reuters. All rights, including copyright, in this content/article provided by VCCircle.com are owned or controlled by Mosaic Media Ventures Private Limited. The content may not be copied, broadcast, downloaded and stored (in any medium), transmitted, adapted or changed in any way whatsoever without the prior written permission of Mosaic Media Ventures Private Limited.

  • Tue
    18
    Feb
    2014

    SOURCE: Punchh

    193809_PunchhLogo600dpi-JPG2

    February 18, 2014 11:00 ET

    Ichor Restaurant Group Selects Punchh Mobile CRM Suite to Boost Loyalty and Brand Awareness

    Canton, Ohio-Based Fast-Casual Restaurant Concept Creator Will Drive Customer Loyalty and Mobile Marketing for Old Carolina Barbecue, Baja Pizzafish and Smoke the Burger Joint Brands in Northeastern U.S.

    SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 18, 2014) - Ichor Restaurant Group, a multi-brand operator and franchisor of thirteen restaurants throughout Ohio with an additional restaurant opening in Michigan, will be the first Ohio-based chain to employ the Punchh mobile CRM suite throughout its concepts, Old Carolina Barbecue Company, Baja Pizzafish, Smoke the Burger Joint and Wedge.

    "In partnering with Ichor Restaurant Group, we will be working with a creative and dynamic restaurant concept creator that recognizes the benefit of engaging customers through their mobile devices," said Jitendra Gupta, founder and CEO of Punchh. "Ichor's use of Punchh's mobile CRM technology will help it drive solid increases in same-store sales and profitability, while giving its customers a remarkably easy and convenient way to interact with these fantastic brands."

    Punchh's brand-specific mobile apps allow brands to engage customers in and out of the store with loyalty programs, reviews, referrals, ordering, gift cards, payments, games and surveys. Its cloud-based platform integrates with restaurants' POS systems to track highly detailed customer purchasing data and brand-relevant social media activity. Using customers' individual preferences, purchasing history and demographic data, operators can tailor offers to patrons that bring them back along with their friends.

    "With our mobile apps, we make the dining experience fun for consumers while automating it for operators. That simplicity leaves them free to focus on their business and their guests' dining experiences," Gupta said. "By helping those brands increase loyal customer frequency and new customer referrals, our partners realize unparalleled return on their marketing investments."

    Ichor CEO and co-founder Brian Bailey said he sees Punchh's platform as an integral component of his plans to expand his young concepts throughout the U.S. Ichor, founded by Brian Bailey and Tim Hug, continues to boost its portfolio with the addition of more concepts in the fast causal segment. Ichor Restaurant Group is the umbrella company for popular Midwest brands Old Carolina Barbecue Company and Baja Pizzafish. The newest addition to the Ichor family is called Smoke the Burger Joint, a one-of-a-kind burger concept that offers smoked patties to intensify flavor, which recently opened its first two units.

    "Our brands appeal to demographics that are heavy users of mobile devices, and we recognize our operators' need to engage those customers through that channel," Bailey said. "We're banking on the Punchh platform to increase same-store sales and profitability and we look forward to getting to know our customers better."

    ABOUT ICHOR RESTAURANT GROUP:
    Headquartered in North Canton Ohio, Ichor is a collaboration of individuals who share a passion for food, creativity and excellence. The restaurant group develops, operates and franchises unique restaurant concepts throughout the Midwest. The group focuses on developing efficient and profitable business models and delivering an extraordinary dining experience to its guests. For more information visit ichorgroup.com.

    About Punchh
    Punchh, a mobile CRM suite for restaurants, includes mobile apps for consumer engagement, big data customer analytics, and integration with POS, social media, and other third-party systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Punchh's patent-pending technology operates in more than 1,400 restaurant locations under brands such as Aurelio's Pizza, Earl of Sandwich, Farmer Boys, Hungry Howie's, Mama Fu's, Max's Restaurant of the Philippines, Rita's Italian Ice, Schlotzskys, Vino Volo, and Voodoo BBQ & Grill. Operators using Punchh report:

    Ten percent increases in same-store sales
    Three- to four-times higher participation rates, 50 percent-plus repeat rates, and new customer referrals for the first time ever
    Twenty-five percent-plus redemption rates for marketing campaigns
    Ten- to 15-times more customer reviews than Yelp!

    For more information, visit .

    *Photos available upon request.

    Contact Information

    Punchh Contact:
    Ann Dickerson
    ann@punchh.com
    303-319-4330
    http://punchh.com

    Ichor Contact:
    Chris@nolimitagency.com
    312.526.3996
    http://ichorgroup.com

  • Wed
    19
    Feb
    2014

    Glassbeam and Hitachi Data Systems Expand Partnership With Global OEM Agreement -- HDS Integrates Advanced Machine Data Analytics to Support Complex Enterprise Data Center Environments

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 19, 2014 -- Glassbeam, Inc., the machine data analytics company, today announced a global OEM agreement with Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS). Glassbeam’s flexible any data, any device, any cloud platform delivers advanced machine data analytics that provides OEM partners like HDS proactive information to manage storage, servers, networks and other IT assets for their enterprise customers.

    Enterprise customers turn to Hitachi Data Systems to manage their complex infrastructure environments with stringent service level agreements (SLAs). To improve these SLAs and proactive resource planning, HDS will integrate Glassbeam’s patented log analysis solution in its Managed Private Cloud offering and enhance operational performance and availability. Mining and analyzing structured and multi-structured data in logs is becoming increasingly critical in operating these complex infrastructure environments to create business advantage. HDS plans to leverage Glassbeam as part of a log analytics service to their Managed Cloud Solutions customers.

    “We are seeing explosive growth in managed storage and cloud solutions with global customers asking HDS to be their key infrastructure partner,” said Emmanuel Goutallier, Vice President and General Manager, Managed Cloud Solutions, Hitachi Data Systems. “Glassbeam solves a key challenge in log analysis by automating complex log formats and helps us stand behind tough SLAs with their ground-breaking log analysis platform and applications. Glassbeam has been a partner for a number of years with HDS and we are looking forward to expanding our services portfolio in 2014.”

    Glassbeam’s any data, any device and any cloud solution is flexible enough for use in public cloud, private cloud and appliance models, making it the ideal choice for managed service providers and systems integrators looking to OEM machine data analytics technology. Hitachi Data Systems delivers the gold standard in enterprise information technology, including the cloud, providing customers complete solutions around data center operations. This provides HDS a clear competitive advantage.

    “Glassbeam has strategic partnerships with the world’s largest product manufacturers, systems integrators and managed service providers, which validates both the rising importance of machine data analytics and the opportunity to create new revenue services,” added Puneet Pandit, CEO and founder, Glassbeam. “We are pleased to expand our partnership with Hitachi Data Systems with today’s OEM agreement, which contributes directly to its continued innovation, customer satisfaction and market leadership.”

    Glassbeam’s patent-pending SaaS, business user friendly, and flexible Log Analytics Platform enables customers to reduce costs, increase revenues, accelerate product time to market, and improve customer satisfaction and retention. Glassbeam customers and partners include Fortune 500 companies and enterprises across a variety of markets including storage, wireless, networking and medical devices.

    About Glassbeam Glassbeam is the machine data analytics company. Bringing structure and meaning to data from any connected device, Glassbeam provides actionable intelligence around the Internet of Things. Glassbeam’s next generation cloud-based analytics platform is designed to organize and analyze multi-structured data, delivering powerful product and customer intelligence for companies including IBM, HDS, Aruba Networks and Meru Networks. For more information, visit www.glassbeam.com.

  • Thu
    20
    Feb
    2014

    mama-fu039s-introduces-mobile-application

    Mama Fu’s Asian House partnered with Punchh Mobile CRM to develop its own app in order to directly drive consumer interaction and loyalty.

    In conjunction with the launch of the new mobile application for iOS and Android on February 19, Mama Fu’s is rolling out a complete technology overhaul on the brand, including a new website and online ordering platform. The new website will feature updated branding, healthy dining, and nutritional content and will serve as the foundation for consumer-facing interaction, driving customers and Mama Fu’s Funatics Club members to the mobile application.

    Launching the new mobile app with Punchh Mobile allows Mama Fu’s to use its existing technology while incorporating new features through the flexible platform offered by Punchh Mobile. Serving as the primary platform for all customer interaction, Mama Fu’s is transitioning much of its web content to the new application in order to simplify and create new avenues for consumer interaction. Features of the Mama Fu’s mobile app include online ordering, Funatics Club loyalty program, store locator, full menus, Mama Fu’s news and special offers, and Facebook referral.

    “We know from extensive research that our customers are tech savvy and prefer electronic communication,” says Randy Murphy, president and CEO of Mama Fu’s. “Going mobile with our new app for iOS and Android phones keeps us highly relevant in the fast casual space and greatly simplifies the customer experience for our Funatics. The more enjoyable we make coming to Mama Fu’s, the more often those customers will return.”

    While Mama Fu’s Asian House offers guests convenience and value, the ingredients and fusion of flavors are the primary focus of its Asian-inspired food.  At Mama Fu’s, culinary innovation is showcased and celebrated seasonally in the restaurant’s Black Market Menu. Keeping its menu options fresh and dynamic, Mama Fu’s Black Market Menu is released every six months (in April and October) as an exclusive menu comprised of 5–6 dishes inspired from Mama Fu’s chefs’ experiences traveling through China, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea.

    Only available through the Mama Fu’s mobile app, customers can become Funatics by downloading the application through the Mama Fu’s website or directly from the online App Store or Google Play.

  • Thu
    20
    Feb
    2014

    BANGALORE: Data analytics firm Crayon Data has received funding from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures as it prepares to expand operations in overseas markets. Singapore-government-owned Spring Seeds Capital also participated in the deal.

    Crayon, founded by two graduates of the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, raised Rs 7.3 crore in this latest round. It has now received a total of Rs 27 crore in venture capital from leading angel investors like Meng Wong, co-founder of the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator, William Bissell, managing director of Fabindia, Ernest Pomerantz, chairman of Stone-Water Capital and Ravi Thakran, managing partner of L Capital.

    "We will use the funds to scale up technology and expand our operations in markets such as United States, United Kingdom, Middle East and China," said Suresh Shankar, co-founder of Crayon, who earlier sold his customer analytics company RedPill Solutions to IBM in 2009.

    Founded in 2012, Crayon has built a platform that mines hidden insights, patterns and unknown correlations from huge amount of data. "For instance , when a customer walks into the hotel, the staff already knows his or her choices and offers a personalised experience," said Shankar. "It is no more about loyalty points that the customer has, but knowing the guest's tastes."

    Crayon is the only big data company from Asia to be a finalist at a digital innovation contest which will take place in March at CeBIT, world's largest trade fair for information and communications technology in Germany.

  • Wed
    05
    Mar
    2014

    SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

     

    CloudVolumes, the company that virtualizes above the OS, today announced three new executive appointments to strengthen strategy and execution to meet the rapidly growing customer demand for its products. Dan Rakauskas has joined as executive vice president, worldwide sales, Vish Mishra as a member of the board of directors, and Bill Raduchel as executive advisor.

    “We take a broad view of how to drastically and universally improve application management at the highest level, helping enterprises seamlessly burst to the cloud while future proofing their data center through dynamically constructing complete workloads in near real-time and with any virtualized infrastructure,” said Raj Parekh, president and CEO, CloudVolumes. “I am delighted to have industry luminaries as our advisors, and the additions to the executive team will help us with strategy and implementation to better serve our growing list of customers.”

    Dan Rakauskas, EVP of worldwide sales

    Rakauskas joins CloudVolumes as executive vice president of worldwide sales to help grow sales and enterprise strategy, as well as lead business development for the company. Dan is a seasoned sales and business development executive with Fortune 500 experience. Previously, he was at Brocade where he led their Global Account efforts. Before Brocade, Dan held sales management positions at Juniper Networks and Funk Software, which was acquired by Juniper Networks. Rakauskas holds an MBA from Boston College and a bachelor of business administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

    Vish Mishra, board of directors

    Mishra, a highly regarded technology entrepreneur, investor and influencer, is currently venture director at Clearstone Venture Partners with nearly $700M in committed capital, with successes in the enterprise and consumer space. He has over 35 years of leadership, management and company-building experience in the technology industry covering computers, Internet, communications and software. He is a founder of Telera, a cutting edge voice Web infrastructure company that sold to Alcatel in 2002 for $140 million. Mishra was also a co-founder of Excelan, which went public in 1987, sold for $225 million and became a large component of Novell’s revenue. He has served as a CEO and director of several startups, including Quantros, now a part of Francisco Partners.

    “CloudVolumes is at the forefront of application management for desktops, servers and the cloud, and has proven its leadership position in the market with significant partnerships and major customers,” said Mishra. “I look forward to sharing my experience and knowledge to help the company build its strategy to overcome one of the most important shortcomings of the industry.”

    Dr. William Raduchel, executive advisor

    Bill Raduchel has had a long career on the cutting edge of technology and today advises and serves as a director for a diverse portfolio of companies including the Daily Mail and General Trust, Naspers, Silicon Image, LiveIntent, ePals, Kik and other startups. He was the non-executive chairman of the board of directors of Opera Software ASA. He has also been chief strategy officer at Sun Microsystems and the chief technology officer of AOL and then AOL Time Warner. He was a member of the National Academy Committee on Internet Navigation and Domain Name Services and the STEP committee, which produced “A Patent System for the 21st Century,” and chaired the committee on innovation and copyright in the digital era. Raduchel has held top executive positions at Ruckus Networks, Sun Microsystems, AOL Time Warner, Xerox and McGraw Hill, and currently teaches corporate strategy at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.

    “During the decades I have worked as CIO or CTO at some of the most advanced IT organizations of the time, I have not seen a technology with as much implication as CloudVolumes has to fundamentally change the way IT works,” said Raduchel. “CloudVolumes is a game changer and I am excited to be part of it.”

    Supporting Resources

    About CloudVolumes

    CloudVolumes helps businesses solve their complex management, scale, and performance problems with the cloud and virtualized datacenters by virtualizing everything above the OS. Customers rely on CloudVolumes to provide solutions for terminal servers, desktops, and servers, eliminating lock-ins of service providers and hypervisors. CloudVolumes works with a customer’s existing environment to dynamically deliver server or desktop workloads to any generic virtual machine providing instant access to applications, data, and profiles. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit http://www.cloudvolumes.com.

     

    Contact:

    Mindshare PR
    Heather Fitzsimmons, 650-800-7160
    heather@mindsharepr.com

  • Thu
    06
    Mar
    2014

    CloudVolumes, Inc., the company that virtualizes above the OS, announced three new executive appointments to strengthen strategy and execution to meet the rapidly growing customer demand for its products.

    Dan Rakauskas has joined as EVP, worldwide sales, Vish Mishra as a member of the board of directors, and Bill Raduchel as executive advisor.

    "We take a broad view of how to drastically and universally improve application management at the highest level, helping enterprises seamlessly burst to the cloud while future proofing their data center through dynamically constructing complete workloads in near real-time and with any virtualized infrastructure," said Raj Parekh, president and CEO, CloudVolumes. "I am delighted to have industry luminaries as our advisors, and the additions to the executive team will help us with strategy and implementation to better serve our growing list of customers."

    Rakauskas,CloudVolumes Rakauskas, EVP of worldwide sales Rakauskas joins CloudVolumes as EVP of WW sales to help grow sales and enterprise strategy, as well as lead business development for the company. He is a seasoned sales and business development executive with Fortune 500 experience. Previously, he was at Brocade where he led their global account efforts. Before Brocade, he held sales management positions at Juniper Networks and Funk Software, which was acquired by Juniper Networks. He holds an MBA from Boston College and a bachelor of business administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

    Board of directors Mishra, a technology entrepreneur, investor and influencer, is currently venture director at Clearstone Venture Partners with nearly $700M in committed capital, with successes in the enterprise and consumer space. He has over 35 years of leadership, management and company-building experience in the technology industry covering computers, Internet, communications and software. He is a founder of Telera, a cutting edge voice Web infrastructure company that sold to Alcatel in 2002 for $140 million. He was also a co-founder of Excelan, which went public in 1987, sold for $225 million and became a large component of Novell's revenue. He has served as a CEO and director of several start-ups, including Quantros, now a part of Francisco Partners.

    "CloudVolumes is at the forefront of application management for desktops, servers and the cloud, and has proven its leadership position in the market with significant partnerships and major customers," said Mishra. "I look forward to sharing my experience and knowledge to help the company build its strategy to overcome one of the most important shortcomings of the industry."

    Executive advisor Raduchel has had a long career on the cutting edge of technology and today advises and serves as a director for a diverse portfolio of companies including the Daily Mail and General Trust, Naspers, Silicon Image, LiveIntent, ePals, Kik and other start-ups. He was the non-executive COB of directors of Opera Software ASA. He has also been chief strategy officer at Sun Microsystems and the CTO of AOL and then AOL Time Warner. He was a member of the National Academy Committee on Internet Navigation and Domain Name Services and the STEP committee, which produced A Patent System for the 21st Century, and chaired the committee on innovation and copyright in the digital era. He has held top executive positions at Ruckus Networks, Sun Microsystems, AOL Time Warner, Xerox and McGraw Hill, and currently teaches corporate strategy at the McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University.

    "During the decades I have worked as CIO or CTO at some of the most advanced IT organizations of the time, I have not seen a technology with as much implication as CloudVolumes has to fundamentally change the way IT works," said Raduchel. "CloudVolumes is a game changer and I am excited to be part of it."

  • Fri
    14
    Mar
    2014

    Network World - Cloud storage applications are great enablers of worker collaboration and productivity. When two or more people need to share files back and forth, and especially when they don’t all have access to a single internal storage facility like SharePoint, an application like Dropbox or Box can be helpful. Someone creates a file, drags it to the storage application icon, and the file is sent to the cloud—just that easy.

    But while end users are interested in ease of use, enterprises are more concerned about data security. In response, the providers of these services have enhanced data privacy and security capabilities; for example, by using SSL to secure a file during transmission to the cloud and by encrypting the file at rest in the cloud.

    Despite those protections, some enterprises are still skittish about allowing sensitive files to be stored in the cloud. It comes down to who has access to the files in a potentially unencrypted form. The cloud storage provider, for example, might have access to files in plain text when it’s the one that encrypts the files and holds the keys. This situation can be illustrated with this passage from the Dropbox website under a section entitled, “How secure is Dropbox?”:

    Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store in your account. Employees may access file metadata (e.g., file names and locations) when they have a legitimate reason, like providing technical support. Like most online services, we have a small number of employees who must be able to access user data for the reasons stated in our privacy policy (e.g., when legally required to do so). But that's the rare exception, not the rule. We have strict policy and technical access controls that prohibit employee access except in these rare circumstances.

    This begs the question, how “rare” are the circumstances in which your private data is accessed by the cloud provider? “Rarely” is not the same as “never,” which is the answer most enterprises prefer. We need look no further than the example of Edward Snowden being the insider that gains access to sensitive information and exposes it inappropriately.

    It is in this context that AlephCloud has introduced a solution called Content Canopy that provides encryption and key federation for cloud storage applications. Content Canopy helps to build the trustworthy cloud.  Enterprises and cloud providers can use the solution to ensure that data stored in the cloud is fully encrypted at its source of creation and the cloud provider has no access at all to the keys.

    There are two components to Content Canopy: client software and a cloud service that handles the key management and administration of the overall solution. Let’s break it down to see what each component does and how they fit together.

    To get started using Content Canopy, a company subscribes to the service by buying X number of licenses from AlephCloud. An IT administrator gets a realm activation link and clicks this link to enroll himself in the service. Then he can invite end users to enroll by downloading an app to their desktop, laptop, iPhone or iPad (the company says Android support is coming soon).

  • Tue
    18
    Mar
    2014

    SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 18, 2014) - Punchh, a brand-centric mobile CRM suite for brick and mortar businesses, will create a customized mobile and swipe-card based rewards program for the 75-unit Farmer Boys burger and breakfast chain. The Farmer Boys branded mobile app will allow customers to view menus, earn and redeem loyalty rewards, and refer their friends. The app will be available at select stores starting in Q2 of this year. Customers will also be able to use swipe cards to participate in the loyalty program. 

    With the Punchh loyalty program, Farmer Boys will be able to engage Millennials and baby boomers through their smartphones and swipe cards. Punchh's cloud-based, POS-integrated platform will allow restaurant operators to engage loyalty members in real time, and provide customized offers to boost sales and repeat traffic.

    "Our mobile CRM platform allows restaurant operators to grow their business by engaging customers on their smart phones using mobile apps," said Jitendra Gupta, Punchh CEO and co-founder. "The apps help brands to drive repeat business, word of mouth, and new customers through referrals from existing customers."

    Demetris Havadjias, CEO of Farmer Boys, said the chain chose Punchh to better understand and reward its most loyal customers -- many of whom have been coming to the chain for decades -- while improving its ability to attract new patrons. It also recognized the platform's higher potential for return on marketing investments.

    "We want to engage our customers through one-to-one marketing," said Havadjias. "Our goal with Punchh is to reach our customers in ways we haven't been able to with traditional advertising. The plan is to increase same-store sales and profitability."

    For operators, the Punchh mobile CRM platform makes it easy to track customer purchases and, in real time, makes that data accessible to store and corporate staff through a web-based dashboard. Using the Punchh dashboard, operators can manage customer relationships, see customers' purchasing history in real time, and tailor one-to-one offers.

    Customers use a single mobile app to earn and redeem rewards, place an order, pay for their food, interact directly with brand operators, share reviews about brands with friends through social media, play games, or respond to surveys.

    About Punchh
    Punchh, a mobile CRM suite for restaurants, includes branded mobile apps for consumer engagement, big data customer analytics, and integration with POS, social media, and other third-party systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Punchh's patent-pending technology operates in more than 1,400 restaurant locations under brands such as Aurelio's Pizza, Earl of Sandwich, Farmer Boys, Hungry Howie's, Mama Fu's, Max's Restaurant of the Philippines, Rita's Italian Ice, Schlotzskys, Vino Volo, and Voodoo BBQ & Grill. Operators using Punchh report:

    • Ten percent increases in same-store sales
    • Three- to four-times higher participation rates, 50 percent-plus repeat rates, and new customer referrals for the first time ever
    • Twenty-five percent-plus redemption rates for marketing campaigns
    • Ten- to 15-times more customer reviews than Yelp!

    For more information, visit http://punchh.com.

    About Farmer Boys
    Headquartered in Riverside, California, Farmer Boys is a fast casual restaurant chain founded in 1981 on homegrown goodness inspired by the heartland from which it emerged. Farmer Boys transforms farm-fresh ingredients into wholesome, delicious meals. Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, Farmer Boys prepares more than 75 entrees fresh every day, including the award-winning Farmer's Burger®, specialty sandwiches, crisp salads, signature sides and more. Guests can enjoy casual dining style table service or opt for the convenience of drive thru service. Farmer Boys currently operates 75 restaurants located in five counties across Southern & Central California and in Nevada. For more information, visit http://www.farmerboys.com.

    Media Contact
    Punchh
    Ann Dickerson
    ann@punchh.com
    303-319-4330
    www.punchh.com

    Media Contact Farmer Boys
    Sue Shindle
    sshindle@famerboys.com
    951/823-8527
    www.farmerboys.com

  • Thu
    27
    Mar
    2014

    SUNNYVALE, Calif. — AlephCloud today announced that it has received U.S. Patent #8681992 for an encryption breakthrough that allows content to be shared among multiple parties in the cloud while keeping it secure and private from even application and infrastructure providers.

    The patented technology, called “Monitoring and Controlling Access to Electronic Content”, is a cryptography-based mechanism that enables all parties to securely communicate across trust boundaries in the cloud through a central intermediary (the hub), without the hub ever being able to access either the data or the data access policies. It enables service providers to reassure users that only they can access content placed in the cloud.

    Click to Tweet: .@AlephCloud receives patent for maintaining #contentsecurity and privacy in the cloud http://bit.ly/1j8JU0K

    The technology combines advanced encryption and key federation to layer transparent privacy, confidentiality and audit controls on top of cloud storage services. It allows organizations to keep sensitive content stored in the cloud private, while enabling flexible collaboration between internal or external users.

    “AlephCloud’s patented technology enables cloud providers to establish trust by allowing content owners to control privacy and security mechanisms using a unique blend of encryption and key federation,” said Jieming Zhu, CEO and Co-founder of AlephCloud. “This makes it possible to offer confidential document exchange in the cloud and introduce other advanced services. We believe this invention will change the rules for digital content protection and access both on-premise and in the cloud.”

    AlephCloud Trustworthy Cloud Platform

    The patented technology at the core of the AlephCloud Trustworthy Cloud™ Platform introduces a new model for digital content protection and access that:

    • Applies access controls and policies to the content, not the “container,” to enforce protection regardless of where the content is stored
    • Enables any-to-any secure collaboration across trust boundaries without having to rely on a trusted third party
    • Provides end-to-end encryption and global digital rights management (DRM) for “cradle to grave” security
    • Allows IT to maintain complete visibility and control, but prevents access to the content itself

    AlephCloud at SANS 2014

    The AlephCloud Trustworthy Cloud™ Platform will be showcased with its reference application called Content Canopy™, at SANS 2014 in Orlando at the Walt Disney World Dolphin at Booth #3 in the vendor Solutions Expo. The company will host a Lunch and Learn on Tuesday, April 8 at 12:30 pm.

    About AlephCloud

    AlephCloud allows cloud providers to layer transparent privacy, confidentiality and audit controls on top of cloud storage services, while enabling flexible collaboration within and between organizations. The company’s patented technology combines encryption and key federation to establish trust in cloud services by allowing content owners to control privacy and security mechanisms. AlephCloud is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. Visit www.alephcloud.com to learn more or follow us on twitter@alephcloud.

  • Fri
    28
    Mar
    2014

    Whether it is done in hardware or software, replication is becoming a key piece of data protection projects.

    U.K.-based marketing services firm Brightsource and Collierville, Tenn.-based protective equipment company MCR Safety were among the organizations last year that added replication capabilities to aid backup and disaster recovery.

    Brightsource installed a Nimble Storage SAN for array-based replication, and MCR Safety installed InMage physical and virtual appliances that combine continuous data protection (CDP) and host-based replication.

    Brightsource gains RPO flexibility with array-based replication

    If you had a 500 TB database and you modified one minor field, the whole lot would need replicating.

    Ed Rollinson,
    head of IT for corporate marketing, Brightsource

    Brightsource's Nimble CS2000 system is dedicated to one customer with storage needs requiring a great deal of flexibility, according to Brightsource head of IT for corporate marketing, Ed Rollinson.

    Brightsource also uses an EMC VNXe 3100, but Rollinson said he was unhappy with the way that system handles replication. He said the VNXe replicates any change in a database, meaning, "If you had a 500 TB database and you modified one minor field, the whole lot would need replicating. We were looking at a data set of about 4.2 TB [for a customer project], and it would never complete. There is little control over that replication."

    To get data from the VNXe off-site, Brightsource puts data on a portable hard drive, and an employee takes it by taxicab to an off-site data center. "That's the position having an inefficient replication process has left us in," Rollinson said. "It's cost us considerable amount of time, money and energy doing it that way. That's why we realized we needed something that did data replication more efficiently."

    Nimble's replication is built into its Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout operating system and managed through VMware vCenter, rather than a separate application that EMC requires. Rollinson said Nimble's replication lets him set recovery point objectives (RPOs) for each data set. For instance, he replicates application data every hour, VMs every 12 hours and archive data every 48 hours, instead of replicating 4.2 TB at once.

    "We can replicate large chunks of data over time, or we can run smaller replication jobs more frequently," Rollinson said. "We can change those schedules as quickly as we want. Before, our backup and recovery process was focused on what the technology could give us. I was deeply uncomfortable about that. I always felt the business should take the lead on where we want to be with our DR scenario and how our recovery point objectives and recovery point times met."

    He said his challenge now is whether there is enough bandwidth to handle replication, "but that's easier to manage."

    Brightsource added a Nimble array to store time-sensitive data from a financial services customer that sends out customized information to distribution lists. The data and the emails sent often change due to factors such as varying interest rates and changes in services, resulting in frequent updates.

    "This project takes a large amount of data that would represent a particular marketing campaign," Rollinson said. "They would give us a clean data set. We take that data set and determine what assets needed to go into that marketing collateral.

    "What is incredibly important is not the general throughput of the system, but what we termed our burst capabilities. When we started evaluating products, we said if the system is faster and better than what we do now, that's a good start, but also, at what point does this system fall on its knees? And can we adequately plan for burst work and the challenges that might bring?"

    MCR receives block-level protection with host-based replication

    Replication was part of a two-part data protection transition for MCR Safety, which installed an InMage hardware appliance and a virtual appliance in August 2013. The first step was to replace its backup process of using IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to back up to tape. That was slow and also left MCR with most of its data without disaster recovery, according to MCR systems engineer Michael Cantkier. The next step will be to add a DR site and replicate to it with InMage.

    Cantkier worked as a consultant for MCR and sold the company the InMage products before joining MCR full-time. He said the company only backed up "things considered most important" before switching over.

    Now, MCR uses InMage to protect its data on Microsoft Windows (Exchange, SQL and file servers) and IBM AIX servers (DB2). The virtual appliance runs on VMware virtual machines and the hardware appliance protects the AIX systems running DB2 databases for MCR's enterprise resource planning system. The appliances back up to an IBM DS4700 array, which used to be MCR's primary SAN, but is now dedicated to InMage for data protection.

    Cantkier said he looked at several options before recommending InMage. He considered doing a software-hardware refresh around TSM, as well as bringing in software from Actifio, Veeam Software or Visions Solutions' Double-Take. He said he picked InMage because of its CDP, solid AIX support and replication.

    "We needed to support Windows and AIX," he said. "Everybody does Windows, but not everybody does AIX."

    Although MCR is not using replication yet, Cantkier said that was a requirement.

    "We'll turn InMage into a replication and DR tool," Cantkier said. "We'll replicate to our own cloud and fail over to a different site. Today, InMage protects our entire environment on a block level up to the moment. Any time a block is written to a disk or LUN, that block is split and written to another LUN on another SAN. InMage keeps track of those changes."

    He said InMage's CDP feature makes restores "like a DVR, where you slide back in time to where you want. The most recent stuff is more granular. You can recover from two to five minutes go. The older you get is less granular. The last week we have is a daily point in time that you can recover to. You choose that point in time, and it spins up a virtual LUN that you mount; it grabs files. You have multiple options for recovery. You can spin up an entire virtual machine that's in an alternate location, or you spin up a physical machine as a virtual machine in VMware."

  • Sun
    30
    Mar
    2014

    Tech-savvy couples can find vendors, communicate with guests and view photos from their big day, all with the tap of a finger

    Orange County Register

    POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Mar 30, 2014

     

     

     

    "Today's bride is tech-y," says bridal consultant Natalie Good of A Good Affair in Tustin, Calif. "She will ‘Pin' from her phone and search for vendors as well."

    A search of iTunes for wedding apps spews out more than 2,000 platforms that help communicate with guests, ensure details and deadlines are met and capture moments via mobile device cameras.

    Here are a few apps for the altar:

    » Carats & Cake: Founded in November 2012, this app connects bridal couples with high-end wedding vendors. With reviews posted to categories such as catering and music, the app enables users to narrow down vendors to a desired location. Carats & Cake also allows users to view photos from actual weddings. Brides can click on the weddings they like and find sources for pictured items.

    » Yapp: For those looking to customize communication for guests, Yapp allows users to make their own mobile apps that can track schedule changes, introduce the wedding party, link maps to directions and capture a QR code to enable guests to upload wedding photos to the app's Crowd Pics page. According to Yapp, many bridal couples are opting out of paper altogether, instead sending all invitational details through the app.

    "Busy couples are planning on the go, and it helps to have all the key information on the device they are looking at an average of 150 times per day," says Yapp CEO and co-founder Maria Seidman. "Wedding-planning apps can help bring geographic and contextual information to planning."

    » Wedding Party: I often hear from brides that amid the flurry of the wedding, they hardly remember conversations with guests or how the cake tasted. This app lets guests log in with a custom wedding name code provided by the bride and groom. The Wedding Party app provides a platform for guests to upload photos during the wedding and "like" favorites. Not only are bridal couples treated to more photos from their nuptials, but they also gain different perspectives and feedback from guests.

    » Wedpics: According to Wedpics, more than 35,000 photos are uploaded to the app every day. The media app provides unlimited video and photo storage for guests and bridal party to upload. Useful for engagement parties, wedding showers or bachelorette/ bachelor parties, Wedpics also offers printing services.

    Kristin and Joe Daher of Irvine, Calif., used Wedpics in August for their wedding. A photo of Joe's 2-year-old nephew playing with Kristin's 82-year-old grandfather — the youngest person in Joe's family and the oldest in Kristin's — was snapped by a wedding guest and uploaded. A moment that could have gone unseen is now a cherished photograph.

    Because weddings usually include a mosaic of generations, introducing apps might require some finesse. For less tech-savvy guests, the couple might want to have a few disposable cameras handy and consider keeping the traditional mailed paper invitation.

    "Over 80 percent of young people aged 25-34 have a smartphone, and that number is over 60 percent for the U.S. population, according to Nielsen," Seidman says.

    "So, when it's time to plan a wedding, there is most certainly an app for that."

    Be sure to check the details and fine print of wedding apps.

    Yapp, Wedding Party, Wedpics and Carats & Cake are free and compatible with IOS and Android.

  • Tue
    01
    Apr
    2014

    MCR Safety

    The Challenge
    :
    MCR’s IT team supports the computing needs of over 350 employees at their headquarters in Collierville, TN, manufacturing facility in Glenwood, AR, and two distribution centers across the U.S. MCR has migrated the majority of their servers to virtual environments, which power their business applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL and file servers. They have AIX systems running DB2 to power their mission critical SAP ERP system that runs their sale s, purchasing, accounting,
    manufacturing, quality, warehousing, and distribution operations. When the MCR Safety team decided to move their data center, they opted to upgrade their backup and disaster recovery to address both their current and future needs.
     
    There are consequences when data is lost, most of which revolve around revenue.For MCR, the pain of downtime extends beyond potential revenue. There is also the immeasurable cost of customer satisfaction and loyalty being tarnished by having to call customers to go over orders and explain reasons for delays an unacceptable option given the high level of MCR’s customer service standards.In an effort to minimize the risk of data loss, MCR would run backups of critical
    systems frequently throughout the day, but doing so presented challenges. “The issue with our former solution was the frequency of backups that we wanted to take,the size of the email stores, and the change rate on the file servers. We encountered numerous issues with timing and getting backups to complete quickly. This was also taxing to our infrastructure causing storage I/O and network latency,” said Michael Cantkier, System Engineer at MCR Safety. Prior to joining MCR, Michael was an IT consultant for a technology Value Added Reseller and had firsthand knowledge of how InMage could provide the most robust solution to meet their requirements. “Before accepting my position at MCR Safety, I worked as a consultant and they were my client. I sold them the InMage product and was instrumental in its installation. It is extremely rewarding as I actually got to ‘build the house’ I live in
     
     
    The Solution: Meeting the Needs of Today and Tomorrow.
    MCR Safety had to address both short term and long term goals
    when selecting a new backup and disaster recovery solution. Theirshort term need was to replace their former backup solution with a scalable product that would give them continuous data protection,would work effortlessly with AIX and VMware, and would give them the freedom to evo
    lve as their needs change. In the future, they’ll have a Disaster Recovery site and use InMage protection and replication technology to seamlessly migrate systems to the cloud.In essence, InMage provides four services backup, replication,cloud migration and disaster recovery in one unified solution.InMage’s unique hybrid recovery technology enables granular recovery capabilities that can meet the most stringent recovery point and recovery time objectives while completely eliminating backups as a discrete operation. InMage is a significant improvement over the solution that MCR Safety formerly employed.Now they can pick any point in time and roll a system back to that point, to ensure the recovery point they are selecting is precisely where they want it right before a critical failure, file corruption or unwanted change.Choosing a solution that supports AIX was quintessential for MCR.InMage enables MCR to protect their AIX systems with the same awardwinning solution they use across operating systems, on both physical and virtual frastructure. Everything that runs their core business resides in SAP, powered by DB2 databases running on top of AIX which is the spinal column of their operations. The one solution approach of InMage saves MCR both time and money since they do not need to implement multiple disparate solutions to
    protect their AIX and Windows machines.Hypervisor heterogeneity and support for physical infrastructure were equally important to MCR. With over 100 VMs running business app
    lications, MCR Safety is no stranger to the needs of virtualization. MCR chose InMage because it covers the widest range of hypervisors and is the only company enabling customers to recover or migrate to any combination of physical and virtual targets even allowing the seamless migration from one hypervisor to another (i.e. VMware to HyperV). Only InMage was able to spin up a virtual machine, even if it was previously a physical machine, and have it running in a happy state with a few clicks.
     
     
    Result
    :
    After implementing the solution, MCR saw immediate value from InMage’s Continuous Data Protection (CDP). The continuous data protection is like having a DVR for their systems. They can pinpoint exactly where they want to be and find the files or volum es before
    they were corrupted. On multiple occasions, the team at MCR Safety has been able to use InMage to recover systems from as recently as a few minutes to as little as a few seconds from a
    problem or failure point. This has saved considerable time, effort and preserved their stellar
    reputation.Not only did InMage provide a superior backup and recovery solution to their prior product, eliminating backup windows and offering granular CDP, but it did so without any performance degradation. Michael decided to conduct an experiment and
    protected the test team’s servers, without letting the team know ahead of time, to see if they’d notice degradation in performance.Previously, they hadn’t backed up their test systems as there
    would always be a significant impact to performance at the 4 hour mark when the backups would begin. Michael’s test was a success; the systems were protected in realtime with InMage and
    the test team never noticed.Due to InMage’s unique lightweight architecture, MCR experienced
    no I/O overhead or impact to network performance. According to Michael, “InMage has no noticeable impact to our production systems even though it provides more granular data protection
    than our former solution.”Having worked with many solutions over the years, Michael
    considers InMage as the best of breed solution in the market for its unique mix of performance coupled with its robust capabilities that eliminate the need for multiple solutions. In fact, InMage supports the widest range of systems out of any solution available today.
    Michael is not just thrilled with the InMage product but he’s also been impressed with the team supporting him. “The professional services and support teams at InMage are absolutely stupendous.The folks who have helped us implement the solution and resolve any issues we have had, have been responsive, really taken ownership, and always made sure I was happy and comfortable with timelines and results. Without a doubt, they’re a 10 out of 10!”With InMage in place at MCR Safety, Michael and the rest of the MCR IT team rest easy at night. “I now have full confidence that if we ever have one of those really bad days, I get to be the hero and if I ever get stuck, I have the security of knowing I can pick up the phone and get one of the InMage’s support specialists to help me through it.”
     
     
  • Wed
    16
    Apr
    2014

    New York, New York (PRWEB) April 16, 2014

    ServerPronto, a leading host for IT infrastructure, has released a new case study on customer satisfaction. Customers across various industries are reporting strong results from recent initiatives to drive return on investment.

    When Sam Inala set out to create a web app that would let people access thousands of virtual machines from any browser, he knew he needed to transition from his self-created lab environment to a professional dedicated hosting environment. But he also knew he needed an affordable, reliable solution to build Tiebax prototypes.

    Tiebax.com lets you manage virtual machines with a single glance, keep a permanent record of what you changed and why--and never forget a password again. It works with any cloud, anywhere, or you can build your own virtual machines behind the firewall. Inala likes to say that Tiebax brings sanity to IT infrastructure management. And ServerPronto helps him do it.

    "We use ServerPronto dedicated servers to prototype the initial service," says Inala. "ServerPronto is very reliable and the service works well for us because it's a dedicated server. We don't have to worry about the performance issues that go along with shared servers. It's the perfect solution."

    Although Inala occasionally uses the Amazon EC2 environment when clients are reliant on virtual machines that are accessing the Amazon cloud, he says it is not an affordable option in most cases. ServerPronto offers a dedicated server at a fraction of the cost of Amazon EC2 that he finds reliable as a test environment for most of his clients.

    "ServerPronto is the most economical dedicated server on the market," says Inala, who has been a ServerPronto customer for more than four years. "The affordability and reliability of ServerPronto's dedicated servers allowed us to start up small and then scale up quickly. It's been a good experience and we look forward to growing our business with ServerPronto."

    Inala gives ServerPronto high marks for customer support and reliability, but it's the affordability that is making the biggest impact on his business. Inala says working with ServerPronto cuts his server costs in half for a single server at Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, and other large providers. And that cost savings will multiply exponentially as the company grows.

    "Companies like TieBax are making it possible for enterprises large and small to do more with less through virtual technologies and the Internet," said Chris Kurzweg, CEO of ServerPronto. "It thrills us to play a role in helping TieBax and other technology start-ups getting up and running--and help change the landscape for businesses everywhere."

    Click here to read ServerPronto case studies from satisfied customers.

    About ServerPronto ServerPronto currently has customers in 130 nations. ServerPronto, the hosting Subsidiary of Infolink, has been leading a low-cost revolution in the hosting industry since 2003. ServerPronto has broken the price barrier for cloud hosting in secured and reinforced Data Centers with redundant power, lightning fast fiber connections, and 24x7x365 support from a staff with more than 14 years of experience in operating data centers. Learn more at http://www.serverpronto.com.

    Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/04/prweb11766850.htm

    Read more:  http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1853244#ixzz2zw3L38Pl

  • Fri
    18
    Apr
    2014

    Fri Apr 18, 2014.                                     

    Post-Bulletin                           

    Associated Press

        

    Doug Appleton's grandparents couldn't travel to his New York City wedding last October, but the tech-savvy Floridians were as present on the big day as anyone could be from 1,000-plus miles away.

    Thanks to FaceTime, the two-way Apple video-calling app, Gerald and Jacqueline Sherman watched by video stream as Appleton, 27, and Lauren Becker, 26, tied the knot. The newlyweds even have a picture of the ceremony that captures the Shermans' faces on the iPhone that was used to connect them.                            

    Next, the Shermans joined in the post-nuptial festivities via Wedding Party, an app that instantly uploads photos taken by guests to a website that posts them in chronological order. That allowed them to watch the celebration unfold in real time.

    "My grandparents get this stuff, which is great," Appleton said. "They loved seeing what was going on."

    Applications that can be downloaded to smartphones and tablets are part of many weddings today, from the initial planning to the honeymoon. The hectic pace of life has encouraged the trend, said Leila Lewis, an industry expert and founder of Inspired By This, a wedding website.

    "In this day and age, the digital bride is planning the wedding on the go, which means planning from a phone or tablet," she said.

    "Brides want to be planning, searching and experiencing weddings conveniently. They want quick access to an abundance of information, and that's what apps and technology provide."

    The proliferation of wedding apps can make choosing which ones to use overwhelming. Here are just several worth noting:

    — Appy Couple. Sharmeen Mitha-Sehgal created this app after the nerve-wracking experience of trying to keep track of her sister's wedding itinerary — a wedding in Mumbai, India — using various invitation and social media websites. Appy Couple aims to provide all wedding-related services on one platform. It helps manage RSVPs, send email invites and create a schedule of events. Guests can use it to book travel, share photos and submit song requests to DJs.

    — Lover.ly. Lewis likes this one for planning. Also billed as a one-stop-shop for the betrothed, it offers shopping and planning platforms as well as info on trends, from '70s-style dresses to serving doughnuts.

    — Evernote. A nod to keeping you and your betrothed on the same page during the wedding planning process. This organizational app — you can snap pictures, make lists and take notes — syncs on devices so that everyone knows what's going on.

    — Wedding Party. One of the apps designed to boost the experience of the day itself by allowing guests to use their phones to share photos, videos and comments. About a week ahead of her wedding, Becker asked guests to download this app so they could help the Shermans get in on the action.

    — WedPics. Lets couples create personalized photo albums of all the events surrounding their nuptials, from bridal showers to honeymoons, using pictures and videos uploaded by friends.

    — Tiffany & Co. Engagement Ring Finder. The jeweler's app helps you choose the right diamond.

    http://www.postbulletin.com/life/lifestyles/app-happy-wedding-help-in-the-palm-of-your-hand/article_22af9597-b7ce-5746-acf3-3ca3c06b8728.html

  • Tue
    22
    Apr
    2014
     

    Punchh, a  CRM suite for restaurants, has created a customized mobile loyalty rewards program for Capriotti's Sandwich Shop, a 100-plus unit fast casual sandwich chain based in Las Vegas. Dubbed "CAPAddicts Rewards," customers can use the new program's branded mobile app to earn rewards based on how frequently they visit and how much they spend. The app will be introduced nationwide in Q3 2014, according to a company press release.

    Punchh's cloud-based, POS-integrated platform allows restaurant operators to engage customers in real time on their mobile devices and provide offers that boost incremental sales and repeat traffic. Using one-to-one engagement, restaurant operators can customize offers to each customer's established preferences, said Jitendra Gupta, Punchh CEO and founder.

    "We founded Punchh to bring the benefits of CRM to restaurants," he said.  "We are excited to work with Capriotti's and help it drive repeat business, word of mouth and bring in new customers through referrals."

    Jason Smylie, Capriotti's CIO and CMO, said the chain chose Punchh to better understand and give back to its customers, many of whom have patronized the brand for decades. The platform will help Capriotti's reward loyal customers meaningfully and personally while improving its ability to attract new patrons.

    "Using the Punchh platform, we can engage our customers right on their mobile devices in ways that traditional advertising can't," Smylie said. "In order to increase same-store sales and profitability, we must first know our customers and then give them more of what they want and deserve. For us and our customers, this is a win-win."

    The Punchh mobile CRM platform simplifies tracking of customer purchases, reviews, and referrals in real time, and makes them easily accessible to store and corporate staff through its web-based dashboard, Gupta said. Through the dashboard operators can manage customer relationships by viewing their purchasing history, determining their unique desires and tailoring personally relevant offers.

    For Capriotti's customers, the Punchh app delivers convenience by letting them use their smartphones to earn and redeem rewards, interact with the brand, share reviews about their experiences through social media and refer their friends.

    "Our platform's unparalleled capabilities allow restaurant brands of any size to maximize their marketing potential," Gupta said. "Customers want and respond to a personal touch, and this level of one-to-one marketing delivers that."

    http://www.fastcasual.com/article/231434/Capriotti-s-chooses-Punchh-s-mobile-CRM-platform-for-loyalty

  • Fri
    25
    Apr
    2014

    Wish Upon a Fish for Leo's Pad Available Today on the App Store; to Be

    Featured at Games for Change Arcade During the Tribeca Film Festival

    NEW YORK, April 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

    Kidaptive , an innovative edtech company focused on early learning, today introduced Wish Upon a Fish, the sixth appisode in its award-winningLeo's Pad: Preschool Kids Learning Series for iPad . Leo's Pad is available today on the App Store and will be featured live at the Games for Change Arcade event, taking place April 26, 2014 at the Tribeca Family Street Fair during the Tribeca Film Festival.

    Leo's Pad comprises beautifully animated learning games, called appisodes, created in collaboration with scientists from Stanford to teach children developmentally appropriate Kindergarten-readiness skills at home. In Wish Upon a Fish, characters Leo, Fusch, and Cinder guide players through a series of adaptive games tied to a research-based early learning framework embedded into the storyline. With encouragement from Leo and friends, players embark on a quest to catch the elusive Wishing Fish, a Koi fish with magical powers.

    Also included in Leo's Pad is the newly updated Parent's Pad feature, now accessible through a browser on a phone or computer, as well as inside the app. Parent's Pad includes analysis of kids' gameplay across dozens of learning dimensions, and also provides parents with ideas for engaging with children through additional offline learning activities.

    "All parents want to prepare their kids for success in school, but they don't always know the best way to do that," said Dylan Arena, PhD, co-founder and chief learning scientist at Kidaptive. "It turns out that the most important preparation isn't mastery of routine skills like reciting the alphabet or counting to 30; foundational skills like attention control, emotional awareness, problem solving, and curiosity are actually better ingredients for academic success."

    In Wish Upon a Fish, players learn and practice these foundational skills, honing in on: attention control, mental shape manipulation, problem solving, identifying facial expressions in others, impulse control, and delay of gratification.

    • Attention control – In the first game, learners are invited to feed the fish to entice it to come closer. The challenge for players is to focus on one task at a time without getting distracted.

    • Mental shape manipulation – In game two, Leo and friends decide to build a submarine to try to catch the Wishing Fish. Learners practice skills including tracing, rotating and scaling the shapes of the submarine.

    • Problem solving – Game three targets problem solving skills through the introduction of aRube Goldberg Machine . Players work on generating novel solutions to a problem and predicting whether another character's solutions will work.

    • Identifying facial expressions – Next, Leo and friends decide to try a more social approach to catch the Wishing Fish, by playing a game with it. Kids imitate the facial expressions of the fish and snap pictures of themselves to compare.

    • Impulse control and delay of gratification – Finally, in a nod to the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification, learners play an adaptive game that challenges their self regulation and impulse control.

    Wish Upon a Fish is available for download as an update to Leo's Pad: Preschool Kids Learning Series for iPad on the App Store today.

    About Kidaptive Kidaptive is an innovative edtech company offering a comprehensive early-learning curriculum and assessment framework to engage children and empower parents. Through intelligent storytelling and research-based educational games developed in collaboration with scientists from Stanford, Kidaptive provides entertaining and adaptive content that helps preschool children andtheir parents learn. Kidaptive has received more than $10 million in funding from partners including Formation 8, Menlo Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund, NewSchools Venture Fund, and Prana Studios. More details at http://kidaptive.com .

    Copyright (C) 2014 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

  • Wed
    30
    Apr
    2014

    Virtualization company CloudVolumes introduced version 2.0 of its workload deployment and management software, adding enhanced support for Citrix XenApp. The company is announcing an upcoming capability called AppCloaking, which will give customers additional flexibility to deploy multiple applications inside a single stack, and expose applications per user based on policy. CloudVolumes 2.0 features hybrid multi-cloud enablement, which allows customers to choose to easily provision workloads to cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. It will enable developers to test and deploy their application stacks, driving more efficient resource utilization through increased virtualization. CloudVolumes’ virtual appliance now works with XenApp to enable support for both Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp and VMware Horizon deployments. “With over 15,000 students, managing applications and their deployment can be a very daunting task, especially without a major infrastructure overhaul,” said Lucien Haak, team leader workplaces, Maastricht University. “CloudVolumes enables us to easily manage our complex desktop applications, so that we can rapidly deploy them to our students and faculty. Since it requires no modifications to existing applications, it is easy to implement and also reduces our software and hardware requirements, which helps us save on costs.” AppCloaking, a soon to be released capability, will be introduced across the CloudVolumes family of products and will provide users with the flexibility to deploy multiple applications inside a single volume, instantly delivering applications only to entitled users. This unique approach will simplify deployment for users who want a golden image and single volume containing many applications, while avoiding the cost of delivering and managing large base images and simply hiding applications within them, which significantly limits agility. “As we work with customers, we uncover more use cases that show the need for Software Defined Workload management solutions that simplify deployment in a cloud and virtualized world,” said Harry Labana, SVP and chief product officer, CloudVolumes. “Our goal is to provide customers with flexibility when it comes to their applications, so they are able to easily deliver them across diverse infrastructures, increasing efficiency and saving on costs.” http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/04/29/cloudvolumes-2-0-enables-software-defined-workload-management/

  • Wed
    30
    Apr
    2014

    InMage Systems ‏@InMage · Apr 25 InMage has been selected as a finalist in Backup and Recovery with the InMage 4000 for Best of #TechEd 2014!

    Be sure to visit us in Houston, we'll be at booth 843!  pic.twitter.com/H8vmPGcHKc

    http://northamerica.msteched.com/News#fbid=x0fq-0GorMd

    Embedded image permalink

  • Mon
    05
    May
    2014

    Bridging the LAN and the WAN: Our IoT Hack at Hackendo

    By Joe Hanson                Follow @ToeJamson                May 5, 2014          

    In 2010, there were over 12.5 billion connected devices spread across the globe. These devices aren’t just phones and tablets, but really are anything with an IP address. Yet, only 1% of the world’s connected devices are actually connected to the WAN. We need to be able to connect your devices securely and reliably not just locally on the LAN, but anywhere on Earth over the Wide Area Network. At the SF Wearable and IoT Hackendo Hackathon last week, our PubNub team aimed to do just that. Devices need to work on closed networks and private networks (the LAN) but also outside the local area network too (the WAN). Users need to be able to turn on lights or open their garage door or receive telemetric and photonic sensory data no matter where they are, regardless of network configuration. As a result, we removed those limitations and expand a secure and reliable way for devices to connect on the wide area network independent of network configuration and 100% closed firewalls. In the video below, Stephen and Geremy talk IoT and demo our hack: We used the AllJoyn IoT framework and bridged it with PubNub to allow smart devices to communicate with each other, no matter how they are connected on closed networks. With PubNub, we extended connectivity not just through the LAN bridge, but also the ability to connect to over 50 different platforms simultaneously in realtime, removing ops configuration barriers altogether. We succeeded in bridging connected homes, cars, buildings and warehouses into the WAN, even through closed private networks without changing network configuration. We were able to fully automate several smart home devices with our product and additionally created a dashboard to monitor these systems. The dashboard receives and shows electricity consumption stats, and also gives you the ability to turn on and off devices with the press of a button. Where does PubNub come in? PubNub powers the Internet of Things with our globally distributed realtime network, and allows you to connect devices securely and reliably. Users and businesses can communicate with their other fleet, sensors and devices in realtime, over 4G, WAN and private, secure networks. Security is paramount for an IoT solution provider and it is no small task to secure 40 billion devices. PubNub provides beyond industry expected security requirements with socket based PubNub Access Management with ACL (Access Control Levels), AES256 Ciphers, SSL 2048bit TLS, Public Private Key Cryptography, SHA256 Origin Signing and more. And with fourteen data centers spread across the global, messages are replicated to ensure delivery. Consider PubNub your CDN for IoT; your global IoT realtime network tailored for all networks with devices running embedded platforms including TinyOS, Contiki, PIC32, Linux, Arduino, RTOS, FreeRTOS, RaspberryPi, Android Embedded, mBed (ARM), Electric Imp and many more. Categories: ● Realtime Technology - See more at:

    http://www.pubnub.com/blog/bridging-the-lan-and-the-wan-our-iot-hack-at-hackendo/

  • Mon
    12
    May
    2014

    SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - May 12, 2014) - Today InMage announced the release of Scout 7.1, enabling customers to leverage the public, hosted and private cloud as a target for backup and/or disaster recovery (DR). This next generation solution for hybrid cloud backup, recovery and migration is available in three form factors -- software, SaaS and the InMage 4000 Series appliance, which was named a "Best of TechEd 2014" finalist. Key Updates in Scout 7.1:

    •Industry First & Only Public, Hosted & Private Cloud Support for Backup & DR Scout 7.1 empowers customers to leverage the public or private cloud for backup and/or DR. Instead of chaining customers to a proprietary service, InMage customers will enjoy the freedom of leveraging the public or private cloud of their choice!

    •Faster Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to join current best of breed recovery point objective (RPO) InMage already boasts the best RPO/RTO in the market powering key service providers, but with Scout 7.1, pulls even farther ahead of the competition. Recovery RTO and DR-Drill operations have been optimized and significantly improved, especially so for larger environments. Pre-Rollback operation time has been reduced, and VMs are now simultaneously powered on for a recovery or DR-Drill. Parallel recoveries or DR drills of disks are now also possible across VMs allowing for substantially improved RTO.

    "We've always been ahead of the pack with our award winning technology, but with the addition of public and private cloud support for backup and DR, we're now truly in a class of one," said Kumar Malavalli, CEO, InMage Systems. According to Josh Kulberg, VP of Information Technology for The Learning Experience, InMage was the ideal solution for their needs. "We needed a disaster recovery plan for our business critical systems like Exchange, SQL, file servers, web servers, and customer data. A single InMage 4101 appliance allowed us to seamlessly replicate our systems in South Florida to a remote site in New Jersey, rather than using the multiple products required by other vendors or implementations. I'm relieved to know that our physical and virtual servers are protected by a continuous backup, near zero RPO solution!"

    With InMage in place, leveraging the cloud is a breeze.

    Come visit us at Microsoft TechEd in booth #843 and see the solution in action! Already Have a Solution in Place? Don't Lose a Penny Promo: InMage is so confident in the superiority of their solution that from now until July 31st, 2014, InMage will match the existing backup/DR software licenses you own, regardless of brand with equivalent InMage licenses running on InMage 4100 or above appliances.

    Interested? Learn more: http://go.inmage.com/EB-2014-04-InMage-4000-Upgrade_Promo.html

    Contact: Media Jennifer Sparks Bocchino Sparks & Associates

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/inmage-takes-data-protection-migration-101500078.html

  • Tue
    13
    May
    2014

    Punchh to Deliver Industry's First iBeacon Solution to Enhance SF Soup's Guest Experience and Drive Same-Store Sales

     market to them directly.
                                            

    "Part of what makes our concept so popular is the convenience and portability of fresh soups, custom tossed salads and sandwiches," said Steve Sarver, cofounder of SF Soup. He and wife, Jennifer, launched the company in 1999. "Punchh's Mobile CRM technology stood out for us because it will really help us serve our customers better without impacting line speed and reward them for their patronage, while driving same-store sales."                                        

    What the Punchh platform will enable SF Soup to do:           

            --  Engage customers on mobile devices when customers are near or in the
                stores (using iBeacon technology)
            --  Reward customers for loyalty, word of mouth, and referrals
            --  Deliver daily soup notifications when customers' favorite soups are
                being served
            --  Tailor offers to each customer based on spend, visits, and order
                preferences

                                

    The platform employs the restaurant industry's first use of iBeacon, to automatically identify loyalty program members with Bluetooth-enabled smartphones as they come near to or enter a SF Soup restaurant. Knowing such customers are near the location allows SF Soup to send a personalized offer to that patron immediately. Once inside, the staff can offer even more personalized touches.                                        

    "Punchh's support for iBeacon technology within the Punchh Mobile CRM platform is the industry's first such solution. Using our platform, we want to help SF Soup transform their guests' experience, based on their proximity to the stores. SF Soup will be able to better understand each of their customers, and grow same-store sales and profitability via one-to-one offers," said Jitendra Gupta, CEO of Punchh.                                        

    The SF Soup mobile app will launch in June at select stores, and will be available for download on iOS and Android devices from the Apple Store and Google Play Store.                                        

    About San Francisco Soup Company San Francisco Soup Company is a 17-unit fast-casual chain founded in 1999 by Steve and Jennifer Sarver. Recognizing a need for busy workers in San Francisco's Financial District, the couple designed a concept to provide nourishing, fresh soups customers could enjoy quickly and affordably on their short lunch breaks. In addition to more than 80 soup recipes in its lineup, including a host of vegetarian, low-fat, dairy-free, low-carb and gluten-free options, San Francisco Soup Co. serves custom tossed salads, sandwiches and light breakfasts. Growing steadily, the company's units are located throughout the Bay Area. For more information, visit         www.sfsoupco.com .                                        

    About Punchh Punchh, a mobile CRM suite for restaurants, includes branded mobile apps for consumer engagement, big data customer analytics, and integration with POS, social media and other third-party systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Punchh's patent-pending technology operates in stores under premier brands such as Aurelio's Pizza, Earl of Sandwich, Farmer Boys, Hungry Howie's, Mama Fu's, Max's Restaurant of the Philippines, Rita's Italian Ice, Schlotzskys, Vino Volo, and Voodoo BBQ & Grill. Operators using Punchh report:                                        

            --  Ten percent increases in same-store sales
            --  Three- to four-times higher participation rates compared to
                traditional loyalty programs, 50 percent-plus repeat rates and track
                and manage new customer referrals for the first time ever
            --  Twenty-five percent-plus redemption rates for marketing campaigns
            --  Ten to 15 times more customer reviews than Yelp!
            --  For more information, visit http://punchh.com.                                

    Media Contact - Punchh
            Ann Dickerson
            ann@punchh.com
             303-319-4330
            www.punchh.com
           
            Media Contact - SF Soup Co.
            Steve Sarver
            steve@sfsoupco.com
             415-867-9434
            www.sfsoupco.com
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-soup-company-selects-punchhs-ibeacon-enabled-mobile-crm-platform-2014-05-13

  • Thu
    15
    May
    2014

    PowWow is First to Provide Custom Mobile Gestures, Keyboards and User       Interfaces with No Coding; Enable Jointly Controlled Collaboration on        iPadsReceives $1.1 Million in Seed Funding

     
            
                                                       

     

     

                        

     

    SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2014 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- PowWow, Inc. today announced the launch of the company and the  availability of its flagship product. For the first time companies can move existing Windows or web applications adapted with a mobile-specific user experience, to any mobile device in minutes, giving employees the freedom to easily and securely access full featured enterprise applications anywhere in the world. The company also announced that it       has received $1.1 million in seed funding and has one of the top banks  and one of the top pharmaceutical companies as customers.                                        

                        

     

    Until now, a solution hasn’t existed that moves applications adapted for mobile in a way that’s true to the mobile experience. Users with tablets and laptops still find themselves tethered to their desktops. IT can create native applications over several months or years, but this is costly, time-consuming and typically only moves one to two apps to  mobile each year. PowWow now puts more control and power in the hands of IT and users at a fraction of the cost, and faster than any other option.                                        

    “Today companies are stymied by the inability to quickly take rich desktop application experiences and optimize them for mobile,” said  Andrew Cohen, Founder and CEO of PowWow. “When just a few native applications are being ported to mobile each year, users don’t realize  the true benefits of mobile. As a matter of fact many companies report that their employees develop ‘mobile apathy’ because what they’re able to do with their mobile devices doesn’t live up to their expectations. With PowWow, IT and expert users can move thousands of their most  important applications to mobile—and it isn’t just a cut and paste—these applications are now customized for tablets and laptops and allow people  to jointly collaborate on any document. We’re empowering mobile to finally deliver on everyone’s high expectations.”                                        

    PowWow runs Windows and Web applications on any mobile device in  minutes, optimizing them with a unique adaptive user interface technology. The PowWow Architecture, which is based on a patent-pending  software layer, allows each application to have custom gestures, keyboard and UI to be configured by device with no coding. Collaboration has also been built into the PowWow protocol. PowWow makes any single user application multi-user. For the first time mobile users--when given       control by a document’s owner--can jointly edit and co-author in real time. This fulfills a key need to fully collaborate as people leave their desks with their mobile device of choice. PowWow can optimize thousands of applications in hours while maintaining the control and security IT needs to protect users and assets. It can be deployed in on-premise, via the cloud and in hybrid environments and seamlessly  integrates within any back-end hardware and software platform.                                        

    Several large and small companies are using PowWow, including a top five bank, a top three pharmaceutical company, a Fortune one hundred insurance company, and a Fortune 10 conglomerate. PowWow is productively used across many enterprises every day.                                        

    The company also announced that it has secured a $1.1 million seed round from industry heavyweights Dave Schwab, managing director of Sierra Ventures; Mark Angel, Nuance and Kana Software; Kumar Mallavali, founder of Brocade; and Prabhu Goel, founder Gateway Design Automation (Cadence).                                        

    “Deploying windows apps to the tablet has been a poor imitation of the desktop experience,” said Prabhu Goel, Managing Director, Green Span  Ventures. “All that changes with PowWow. PowWow transforms enterprise apps into mobile apps that take advantage of everything everyone wants from mobile—the easy to use gestures, access to important data, and the ability to do anything you could do at your desk, anywhere in the world. Companies are seeing PowWow as a necessary supplement to their VDI, MEAPS and DaaS solutions. With PowWow, mobile devices will finally have the impact on enterprise productivity that they have already had on consumption.”                                        

    PowWow is available immediately and is priced at $25/month per user. A  free trial is available for use with a company’s own applications for select enterprises.                                        

    About PowWow, Inc.                                        

    Founded in 2012 by Andrew Cohen and Jonathan Kaplan, PowWow is a Virtual  Application Delivery and Collaboration platform that frees enterprise users from being tethered to their desktops-- giving them the ability to work the way they want and need to work, no matter where they are. For  the first time companies can move existing Windows or web applications to any mobile device in minutes, giving employees the freedom to easily and securely access full featured enterprise applications anywhere in the world. PowWow also enables joint editing and collaboration on iPads for the first time. Companies can keep the best of their existing IT solutions, while giving users the freedom to use the applications and mobile devices of choice.                                        

    The PowWow management team comes from respected enterprise software companies, including IBM, Lotus, KANA, Sun, Booz Allen Hamilton, and  WebEx. The company sells their services via direct and OEM  relationships. You can find PowWow at www.Powwowinc.net .                                        

    Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available:         http://www.businesswire.com/multimedia/home/20140515005433/en/                                        

    SOURCE: PowWow, Inc.                                        

    Copyright Business Wire 2014                    

  • Tue
    20
    May
    2014

    SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/20/14 --  InMage announced today that InMage won the Best of TechEd 2014 award in the Backup & Recovery category.

    InMage enables customers to leverage the public, hosted and private cloud as a target for backup and/or disaster recovery (DR). This next generation solution for hybrid cloud backup, recovery and migration is available in three form factors -- software, SaaS and the InMage 4000 Series appliance.

    Best of TechEd awards, co-sponsored by Microsoft and Windows IT Pro, recognize Microsoft partners that offer innovative products and services for the industry. Winners were announced at the Microsoft TechEd North America 2014 conference in Houston, Texas.

    "We are honored and would like to congratulate all finalists and winners who were acknowledged," said Rajeev Atluri, CTO, InMage. "InMage is focused on innovation and we pride ourselves in making it easy for customers to leverage the Cloud and increase operational efficiency. This award is a special honor as it validates our vision, from the customer community."

    "These products add business value for the people who adopt them. As cloud and mobile become more integral to the workplace, innovation continues to accelerate at a rapid pace. Windows IT Pro is proud to be on the front line for evaluating the best technology solutions," said Amy Eisenberg, Editor-in-Chief of Windows IT Pro.

    For more information on InMage's award winning products, please visit www.inmage.com

    Media Contact: Jennifer Sparks Bocchino Sparks & Associates Email Contact

    Source: InMage Systems

  • Wed
    28
    May
    2014

    Rapid Company Growth Draws Strong Leaders from Game-changing Companies Including MySQL, WebLogic, BEA and Zendesk

    San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 27, 2014

    PubNub, the only global Realtime Network, today announced the appointment of Katherine Rincon to vice president of Marketing, and Zack Urlocker to its Board of Directors.  With a career-long focus on developer platforms, communities and demand creation, Katherine is tasked with driving awareness and growth of PubNub’s cloud-based services.  PubNub’s success is further validated by the addition of industry veteran and startup advisor Zack Urlocker, renowned as a key player responsible for much of MySQL’s and Zendesk’s growth. 

    Katherine brings more than 17 years of marketing leadership experience at both start-ups and public companies, having held executive-level marketing positions at companies including WebLogic, BEA, Embarcadero Technologies, Cape Clear (now Workday) and SL Corporation. She has demonstrated great breadth and depth in helping drive rapid growth at early stage startups, and building developer communities measured in the millions.

    Zack is an investor, advisor and board member who works with venture-backed startup companies to help them scale their businesses. His involvement with PubNub goes beyond a typical board member: he commits significant time for ongoing mentoring, brainstorming and project execution to help further PubNub’s rapid expansion. Zack has held executive positions at Borland, Active Software, MySQL and Zendesk, and has been key in raising revenues in technology startups from under $6 million to over $100 million.

    “Even in this competitive recruiting environment, PubNub continues to attract outstanding talent at all levels of our organization,” said Todd Greene, CEO and founder of PubNub.  “Katherine and Zack have already contributed amazing value in just the first few weeks they’ve been onboard at PubNub.”

    Katherine and Zack join forces with PubNub’s deep bench of players to support the vision of “One Step Closer to the Singularity,” where every device in the world is linked together on PubNub’s global realtime network, communicating in less than ¼ of a second.  Already, PubNub is seeing this vision solidify, with over 150 million connected devices per month, and a dramatic growth in Internet of Things (IoT) customers who are quickly realizing PubNub’s many benefits.

    “PubNub is making it easy for developers to add real-time capabilities to a broad range of web, mobile and social applications. Experiences that used to cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver – like Twitter, World of Warcraft and Nest – can suddenly be developed on a hacker’s budget,” said Katherine. “I’m thrilled to join such a bright and experienced team to help catapult the world’s ability to deliver real-time communications and synchronizations.”

    “PubNub provides a cloud-based infrastructure that enables a new generation of real-time, highly scalable applications that will change consumer and business expectations about what it means to operate in real time," said Zack.  “I look forward to working with the team as they continue to set the standard in delivering these applications.”

    time interactivity across mobile, browser, desktop and server, and supports over 50 environments including iOS, Android and JavaScript. With traffic distributed and replicated across 14 datacenters worldwide, PubNub currently powers thousands of real-time apps, and streams three million messages per second to over 150 million devices each month, all while adhering to 99.999% SLAs.

    http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/05/prweb11876366.htm

  • Fri
    30
    May
    2014

     

    Recognized in the Big Data 100 Emerging Big Data Vendors and Business Analytics Lists

    Businesses are struggling with the rapidly increasing volume, speed and variety of information being generated today -- what's come to be known as "big data." In recognition of the growing importance of big data technology, CRN editors identified the key vendors that are bringing innovative business analytics, data management, and infrastructure technologies and services to market in conjunction with channel partners.

    Glassbeam's core platform is designed to analyze machine data generated by Internet of Things (IoT) to create actionable intelligence that can be leveraged across the enterprise. Built to handle any data, structured or unstructured from any device, Glassbeam's SaaS solutions can be deployed on any cloud. Glassbeam's applications provide support, product and engineering teams with analytics to reduce support costs and MTTR, add new revenue streams with value-add services and build better products with real time operational intelligence from machine logs.

    "This continued recognition by CRN validates Glassbeam's unique value proposition to the IoT market," said Puneet Pandit, CEO of Glassbeam. "Our applications provide unprecedented ROI to product manufacturers enabling them to deliver a superior customer experience and stay ahead of their competition."

    "Channel partners are deluged with choices when it comes to selecting the technology they use as building blocks for big data solutions, making it critical to have a trusted resource that can be used to identify the most cutting-edge technologies and tools available," said Robert Faletra, CEO, The Channel Company. "Being a part of the CRN 2014 Big Data 100 is an industry wide recognition of these vendors' dedication and innovation to meeting the big data challenge."

    The 2014 Big Data 100 list is featured online at www.crn.com.

    About Glassbeam Glassbeam is the machine data analytics company. Bringing structure and meaning to data from any connected device, Glassbeam provides actionable intelligence around the Internet of Things. Glassbeam's next generation cloud-based analytics platform is designed to organize and analyze multi-structured data, delivering powerful product and customer intelligence for companies including IBM, HDS, Aruba Networks and Meru Networks. For more information, visit www.glassbeam.com.

    About The Channel Company The Channel Company is the channel community's trusted authority for growth and innovation, with established brands including CRN, XChange Events, IPED, and SharedVue. For more than three decades, we have leveraged our proven and leading-edge platforms to deliver prescriptive sales and marketing solutions for the technology channel. The Channel Company provides Communication, Recruitment, Engagement, Enablement, Demand Generation and Intelligence services to drive technology partnerships. Learn more at www.thechannelcompany.com.

    http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/glassbeam-named-to-crn-big-data-100-list-1915692.htm

  • Thu
    12
    Jun
    2014
  • Thu
    12
    Jun
    2014
  • Mon
    23
    Jun
    2014

    The video-search startup Baarzo has something that Google is willing to pay for.

    Reports today from TechCrunch and others say that the two companies have been in talks and that a deal has now been reached.

    Baarzo says what Google wants from it is “true video search,” which looks for specific events in videos — like a dramatic reveal, a runback for a touchdown, or a stunning World Cup goal.

    Here’s how the company describes its service at its website:

    “Unlike Google or YouTube searches, which only evaluate the text around the video, the Baarzo search technology actually analyzes the video content, recognizing hundreds of thousands of objects and millions of faces, and locates the precise moment in the video when the search objects interact in the way you had specified.”

    The technology apparently works, or else Google would never have come so far down the road to an acquisition.

    Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt reportedly saw a demo of Baarzo’s technology at Stanford’s business graduate school.

    Baarzo lists two individual angels at its AngelList page. The company lists Sun Microsystems cofounder Scott McNealy as an adviser.

    We’ll have more on this story after formal announcements are made.

     

    http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/23/google-reportedly-acquiring-video-search-startup-baarzo/

  • Tue
    01
    Jul
    2014

    More Than 60,000 Downloads in 3 Weeks and Ranks #4 Amongst Top Restaurant Brands in iTunes App Store

    SUNNYVALE, CA, Jul 01, 2014 (Marketwired via COMTEX) -- Punchh, a brand-centric mobile guest relationship management platform for restaurants, has helped Schlotzsky's create and launch Lotz4Me(TM), a branded smartphone app for the 350-unit sandwich chain. The Lotz4Me(TM) app makes it fun and easy for Schlotzsky's guests to earn rewards for their purchases, share their feedback and experiences via social media, participate in surveys, get special offers, and receive exclusive insider news. Using Punchh's patent-pending technology for tracking referrals, the Lotz4Me(TM) app introduced industry-first features to reward Schlotzsky's guests for referring their Facebook friends who download the app and make a purchase at Schlotzsky's. Launched on June 2nd with a million sandwich giveaway, Lotz4Me(TM) also enables Schlotzsky's guests to like or follow the restaurant brand on social media channels.                                        

    Punchh creates 'Starbucks'-like branded mobile apps for restaurants that consumers can use to earn rewards for their visits, refer friends, respond to surveys, interact with the brand's social media channels, play games, post online reviews in real-time and best of all, redeem rewards from within the app. Restaurant operators can use Punchh's cloud-based, POS-integrated mobile CRM platform to engage guests on their smartphones to boost incremental sales, repeat traffic, word of mouth, and get new customers. The Punchh platform gives operators a complete picture of their guests including who they are, what orders they are placing, which of their friends they are referring to the restaurants, what reviews they're posting, their survey responses, and offers they are redeeming. Through Punchh's segmentation capability, restaurants can tailor offers to each guest's established preferences, and behavior including order history.                                        

    "We're excited to partner with a premier brand like Schlotzsky's for their mobile initiative. With Lotz4Me(TM), Schlotzsky's will be able to engage its guests in real-time and understand more about them than ever before," said Jitendra Gupta, Founder and CEO of Punchh. "Lotz4Me(TM) has ranked #4 in the iTunes App Store ahead of premier restaurant brands such as Papa John's, Panera Bread and Chipotle."                                        

    "The Lotz4Me(TM) app is a game changer because it drives online and in-restaurant engagement and introduces Schlotzsky's to new guests via the referral technology," said Kelly Roddy, president of Schlotzsky's. "We hope to grow sales, boost our online presence and appeal to younger guests with this app. With over 60,000 downloads in just three weeks, we are sure we made the right decision in tapping Punchh to help us make Lotz4Me(TM) a Lotz Better guest rewards program."                                        

    To learn more about Punchh, please visit         www.punchh.com . To learn more about Schlotzsky's and sign up for Lotz4Me(TM), please visit         http://www.schlotzskys.com/?section=lotz4me .                                        

    About Punchh Punchh is a mobile CRM platform for restaurants, which includes branded mobile apps for consumer engagement, big data customer analytics and integration with POS, social media and other third-party systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Punchh's patent-pending technology operates in stores under a variety of premier brands. Punchh's platform helps restaurants engage their consumers and increase same-store sales, repeat rates, online reviews, new customer referrals and marketing campaign performance. For more information, please visit         www.punchh.com .                                        

    About Schlotzsky's  Since 1971, Schlotzsky's has been the home of The Original(R) oven-baked sandwich. The menu has evolved with customers' tastes to include the highest quality sandwiches, pizzas, flatbreads, salads, and soups available today. With more than 350 locations worldwide, Schlotzsky's is the fast-casual choice for a quick, healthful, and fresh dining experience. Schlotzsky's is enjoyed around the world, with restaurants in 36 states along with locations in Azerbaijan and Turkey. Schlotzsky's is owned by FOCUS Brands Inc.(R), the franchisor and operator of more than 4,000 Carvel(R), Cinnabon(R), Schlotzsky's(R), Moe's Southwest Grill(R), Auntie Anne's(R) Pretzels, McAlister's Deli(R) locations and the franchisor of Seattle's Best Coffee(R) on certain military bases and in international markets. For more information, visit         www.schlotzskys.com .                                        

    SOURCE: Punchh

  • Fri
    11
    Jul
    2014

    Summary: Microsoft hopes the acquisition will boost the Azure Site Recovery service and lure more enterprise clients to the Azure platform.

    By for Between the Lines |

                                     

    Building_36_Redmond_Campus_Web
    Credit: Microsoft

    Microsoft has acquired InMage to improve hybrid cloud business continuity solutions and make Azure the top choice for disaster recovery for enterprise servers worldwide.

    The deal was announced on the official Microsoft blog.

    InMage offers backup and disaster recovery technology for the enterprise market and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), allowing businesses to use a single solution that protects virtual, physical, UNIX and database systems, rather than having to use multiple products.

    Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 10.36.36

    Microsoft says that the concept of business continuity — backups, replication and the quick recovery of data and applications in the case of system failure — is rapidly becoming an important consideration in today's business environment, especially as revenue, supply chains, customer loyalty, employee productivity and more rely on these systems to function efficiently.

    However, due to the expense associated with such services, corporations often don't have "the budget or time to do it right."

    This is where InMage comes in. The Redmond giant says the purchase will accelerate the firm's strategy to provide "hybrid cloud business continuity solutions for any customer IT environment, be it Windows or Linux, physical or virtualized on Hyper-V, VMware or others." Once InMage's technology is integrated within the Azure platform, the company hopes this will make Azure "the ideal destination for disaster recovery for virtually every enterprise server in the world."

    With the completion of the acquisition, InMage technology will be integrated within the Azure Site Recovery service, and existing customers will be able to continue to use InMage products. Eventually, InMage subscribers will gain access to Scout through Azure Site Recovery.

    Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    Laura DuBois, Research Vice President for IDC said the acquisition is a "great move to meet important customer needs with the cloud as a target for disaster recovery," what she deems to be "a poorly understood and underserved market."

    Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Marketing at Microsoft said:

    Enterprise customers are looking for the best, most valuable ways to take advantage of the cloud. Business continuity is often a great place to start, which is why we are very focused on delivering strong solutions in this area for our customers. It is a key element of our continued effort to deliver a consistent hybrid platform and a broad range of services that connect customer, partner and Microsoft clouds.

     

    http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-acquires-disaster-recovery-solutions-firm-inmage-to-strengthen-azure-7000031490/

  • Mon
    21
    Jul
    2014

    Sorry, there's no an app for that. Connecting iPhone users to their

    enterprise desktop or Web applications, PowWow picks up where Apple's

    App Store leaves off.

     
    Posted July 21, 2014 By

    Pedro Hernandez

    PowWow, a San Francisco, Calif.-based software startup, today announced that the company's self-named mobile application delivery platform is available on the iPhone, following a version for tablets like the iPad.

    Despite the explosive growth of the mobile software market, not every business desktop or Web application has made the transition to the iPhone. And it may be years before such software is ported to iOS, if ever.

    PowWow's technology, dubbed a "real-time transformation engine," offers on-the-go access to select functionality or a subset of a business application's capabilities, instead of the whole application. As the company explains, organizations can give their mobile users "a customer loyalty purchase entry feature as part of a larger enterprise-wide CRM application, or stock trading features as part of a larger trading system."

    What results is a mobile-optimized experience that adheres to the iPhone's user interface, complete with touch enabled perks like custom gestures and virtual keyboards. According to Andrew Cohen, PowWow's co-founder and CEO, organizations can deliver those targeted app experiences quickly. The company's tech "puts a company's Windows and Web applications on mobile devices in minutes, and those apps feel native, as if they were written for that device," he said Cohen.

    PowWow is already catching on, added Cohen. He reported that PowWow, which is in "extensive trials," has already racked up orders from Fortune 500 customers.

    The firm's cloud-based alternative to custom mobile apps and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) requires "a one-time upgrade process for IT," according the company. Base workspaces can generally be configured within a day and specific applications within an hour, without coding and little IT overhead.

    In terms of security, data sent over PowWow is never stored on a device, eliminating the risk that sensitive information can be plucked from a lost or stolen iPhone. Data shared between devices and corporate networks are secured via SSL.

    Finally, PowWow offers a smattering of collaboration features. Features include file and application sharing between users and non-users. Browser-based links enabled non-PowWow colleagues to access applications and files via their PC or mobile browsers.

    PowWow for the iPhone is expected to ship in the fall of 2014. Currently, PowWow (non-iPhone) is available for $25 per month per user.

    http://www.datamation.com/mobile-wireless/powwow-streamlines-enterprise-apps-for-the-iphone.html

  • Tue
    22
    Jul
    2014

    By  Devang Mehta

    We’re thrilled to announce that Dimension Data has joined our fast-growing list of customers. The Dimension Data deal is notable for a few reasons. It marks our foray into the Data Center Infrastructure management market - one that we think is primed for capitalizing on the various capabilities of our machine data analysis platform. And, that is exactly what Dimension Data is using Glassbeam for:

    • Helping plan capacity for virtual machines, storage, servers and IT infrastructure.
    • Setting up alerts, and getting notified, for anomalies in data (based on predefined thresholds)
    • Profiling of usage and security parameters inside different time windows.

    Second, is the sheer heterogeneity of data that will be parsed and analyzed; Dimension Data has more than 4000 clients spread across 25 data centers and the Glassbeam platform will be sifting through millions of data points daily. And that is data that emanates from a large variety of devices – storage servers, virtual machines, etc. We see this as a true endorsement of our ability to parse structured, semi-structured and unstructured data and a combination of these too! Incidentally, Dimension Data is also our hosting partner. We will be hosting a Webinar in early-August that talks about how we partner with them to keep our customer’s machine data secure. We will be putting up details on our Website and on social media channels (LinkedIn and Twitter) as soon as these become available. Stay tuned.

    http://www.glassbeam.com/dimensiondata/

  • Tue
    19
    Aug
    2014

    Glassbeam Recognized by CRN as a 2014 Emerging Vendor

    List Highlights Hottest Tech Startups Impacting the IT Channel, Technology Industry

    Marketwired                    

                                Glassbeam                                 August 19, 2014 9:01 AM                            
     
                                                     
     

    SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 19, 2014) -  Glassbeam, Inc., the leading machine data analytics company, today announced it has been recognized as one of 2014's hottest emerging technology vendors by CRN, the top news source for solution providers and the IT channel. The annual Emerging Vendors list identifies up-and-coming technology vendors that have introduced innovative new products, creating opportunities for channel partners in North America to make high-margin, cutting-edge solutions for their customers.

    Glassbeam's core platform, Glassbeam SCALAR, is designed to analyze machine data generated by Internet of Things (IoT) to create actionable intelligence that can be leveraged across the enterprise. Built to handle any data, structured or unstructured from any device, Glassbeam's SaaS solutions can be deployed on any cloud. Glassbeam's applications provide support, product and engineering teams with analytics to reduce support costs and MTTR, add new revenue streams with value-add services and build better products with real-time operational intelligence from machine logs.

    "As business analytics become crucial to every organization, we are dedicated to arming the IT channel with the machine data analytics enterprises need to glean value from their data," said Puneet Pandit, founder and CEO at Glassbeam. "We're thrilled to receive this award affirming the value of our unique machine data analytics technology and hope to continue creating opportunities for partners in the IT channel with our platform."

    "Solution providers are always on the hunt for the next big technology trend so that they can bring new solutions to their customers before they even know they need them. These vendors are on the forefront of IT innovation and are offering products and services that channel partners can use to stay ahead of the competition," said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company, publisher of CRN. "We congratulate 2014's Emerging Vendors for creating the next wave of technology that will drive the IT industry forward and for opening the door to new, unique solutions from the IT channel."

    Companies included in CRN's 2014 Emerging Vendors list were founded in 2008 or later and are actively working with channel partners in North America. The list, along with information about each vendor, will be published in CRN's August 2014 issue and will also be available online at www.crn.com.

    About Glassbeam Glassbeam is the machine data analytics company. Bringing structure and meaning to data from any connected device, Glassbeam provides actionable intelligence around the Internet of Things. Glassbeam's next generation cloud-based analytics platform is designed to organize and analyze multi-structured data, delivering powerful product and customer intelligence for companies including IBM, HDS, Aruba Networks and Meru Networks. For more information, visit www.glassbeam.com.

    About The Channel Company The Channel Company is the channel community's trusted authority for growth and innovation, with established brands including CRN, XChange Events, IPED, and SharedVue. For more than three decades, we have leveraged our proven and leading-edge platforms to deliver prescriptive sales and marketing solutions for the technology channel. The Channel Company provides Communication, Recruitment, Engagement, Enablement, Demand Generation and Intelligence services to drive technology partnerships. Learn more at www.thechannelcompany.com.

    • Technology & Electronics
    • Internet & Networking Technology
                        Contact:                
    Media Contact Danielle Salvato-Earl Kulesa Faul for Glassbeam, Inc. (650) 922-7287(650) 922-7287 Email Contact
     
  • Wed
    20
    Aug
    2014

    SOURCE: VMware, Inc.

    VMware, Inc.

    August 20, 2014 16:05 ET

    Acquisition to Provide VMware Customers With a Simpler Way to Deliver Native Applications

     

     PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 20, 2014) -  VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the acquisition of CloudVolumes, a leading provider of real-time application delivery technology that enables enterprises to easily deliver native applications to virtualized environments on-demand. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to be immaterial to VMware's financial results.

    "Customers are looking to modernize their existing Windows application delivery architecture to be more like mobile IT," said Sumit Dhawan, senior vice president and general manager, Desktop Products, End-User Computing, VMware. "The combination of CloudVolumes and VMware Horizon will allow customers to build a real-time application delivery system that enables all applications to be centrally managed, always available and up-to-date, and delivered to virtualized environments for desktop, server or cloud on-demand."

    "Customers are looking for game changing solutions," said Raj Parekh, chief executive officer, CloudVolumes. "By bringing together CloudVoumes and VMware, we will be able to deliver winning technology solutions for the desktop and beyond, that few competitors can match."

    Revolutionizing Application Delivery and Management With the continued consumerization of IT, companies have increasingly turned to desktop virtualization to provide employees with secure, anytime, anywhere access to desktops, applications and data. With the addition of CloudVolumes to the VMware End-User Computing portfolio, VMware Horizon 6 customers will be able to lower their desktop and application infrastructure and management costs while giving end-users a personalized experience. 

    This promises to change the game for desktop virtualization and addresses the application delivery and performance challenge. With real-time application delivery, personalized desktops and application environments can be created at a reduced infrastructure cost by using a single gold image for multiple users or groups. As a result, customers will no longer have to choose between cost and a personalized experience.

    CloudVolumes will also enable VMware to build real-time application delivery across all three of its technology focus areas that include end-user computing, software-defined datacenter and hybrid cloud services.

    Additional Resources

    About CloudVolumes CloudVolumes helps businesses solve their complex management, scale, and performance problems with the cloud and virtualized datacenters by virtualizing everything above the OS. Customers rely on CloudVolumes to provide solutions for terminal servers, desktops, and servers, eliminating lock-ins of service providers and hypervisors. CloudVolumes works with a customer's existing environment to dynamically deliver server or desktop workloads to any generic virtual machine providing instant access to applications, data, and profiles. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. For more information, visit www.cloudvolumes.com or follow CloudVolumes on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cloudvolumes.

    About VMware VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2013 revenues of $5.21 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements        

    This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding the planned features of combined CloudVolumes and VMware products and solutions and their potential benefits to customers. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to (i) the successful integration of CloudVolumes products and solutions with VMware; (ii) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (iii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the mobile device, end user and cloud computing markets, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (v) our customers' ability to develop, and to transition to, new products and computing strategies such as cloud computing and mobile device management; (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software and platforms for cloud and mobile device computing; (viii) changes to product development timelines; (ix) VMware's ability to protect its proprietary technology; and (x) VMware's ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

    VMware and Horizon are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective organizations.

    Contact Information

    http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/vmware-acquires-cloudvolumes-pioneer-of-real-time-application-delivery-technologies-nyse-vmw-1940214.htm

  • Wed
    27
    Aug
    2014

    Posted on August 27, 2014 by Arnal Dayaratna, Ph.D. (@cloud4computing)

    Glassbeam Inc today announces $2M in additional funding by means of a capital raise led by the VKRM group. Glassbeam also revealed details of a strategic partnership with Tableau whereby Tableau can integrate with SQL-compliant extracts from Glassbeam to enable customers to more effectively visualize machine data and discern trends by way of Tableau’s powerful visualization capabilities. In an interview with Cloud Computing Today, Glassbeam CEO Puneet Pandit noted that the company plans to deepen its strategic partnership with Tableau by delivering offerings from Tableau that are specific to Glassbeam, pending the finalization of further negotiations. Moreover, Kumar Malavalli, a well known Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur, will take over as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer.

    Glassbeam’s cloud-based platform is designed to ingest, process and analyze massive amounts of machine data. The platform’s deployment model involves the creation of a customized SPL file that, when deployed in the cloud, facilitates the integration of machine data into the Glassbeam platform.  Glassbeam’s differentiation with the machine data analytics space involves its focus on the internet of things and the subsequent business need to rapidly transform massive amounts of complex data into actionable business intelligence. Today’s funding raise brings the total capital raised by to $8.1M. Glassbeam’s capital raise affirms its traction in the machine data space as evinced by its signing of Dimension Data as a recent customer. Expect to hear more details from Glassbeam as it continues to sharpen its product differentiation for big data analytics related to the internet of things.

    http://cloud-computing-today.com/2014/08/27/glassbeam-announces-2m-funding-and-kumar-malavalli-as-chief-strategy-officer/

  • Thu
    18
    Sep
    2014

    By Joseph F. Kovar on September 17, 2014, 3:18 pm EDT

    Formation Data Systems this week came out of stealth mode with a mission to disrupt existing storage infrastructures with a new technology that aims to move customers away from legacy hardware and software to a unified storage solution that supports all types of formats and media. Fremont, Calif.-based Formation Data Systems also said it received funding to the tune of $24 million from a number of investment companies including one strategic investor, Dell. Also investing in the company are a number of individuals who see the value of data center disruption, including Box CEO Aaron Levie, Seagate CEO Steve Luczo, Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly and InMage CEO Kumar Malavalli.

    Formation Data Systems co-founders include CEO Mark Lewis, former EMC executive vice president and CTO and former general manger of the storage division at Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, and COO Andy Jenks.

    Formation Data Systems is trying to help move the storage business from one that is siloed according to different vendor offerings, or different technologies like SAN and NAS, which has created poor manageability and efficiency for users, Lewis told CRN. Lewis also believes current moves to fix storage, including the wave of software-defined storage technologies now hitting the market, mean fixing the problem for a coming boom of new types of applications, including big data, require a new storage architecture. "Now vendors are trying to create a new layer to manage storage called software-defined storage," he said. "But that doesn't eliminate the top problem: There are too many foundational platforms. We're starting from scratch and doing what Google and Facebook did: Write our own storage platform. Customers don't want to deal with so many platforms. We feel it's a great idea." The company, in response, has developed Formation XV, or Formation eXtensible Virtualization, a storage virtualization technology based on standard off-the-shelf hardware. Formation XV embraces flash and spinning disk storage, along with API-based cloud storage, Lewis said. "The whole idea is to open up all media types and virtualize across them," he said. Formation XV includes a data connector that projects a virtualized data layer for any operation. For example, Lewis said, applications needing block storage see the technology as a SAN, those needing file storage see it as a NAS, and other applications see it as block storage like that projected by Amazon Web Services or Swift-based technologies.

    The Risk of Asking Customers To Drop Old Storage Tech: "It's analogous to the creating of the smart phone industry," he said. "For the first generation, you had a phone, a GPS and a music player. That was good until people realized all the devices had similar hardware, with all the functions coming from software. Apple came along with its iPhone, but didn't make a better phone. It made a good phone, a good music device and a good GPS all in one." Formation Data Systems is doing the same for storage by virtualizing all block, file and object storage and projecting it to customers as needed.

    However, Lewis said, the company does not see itself as developing a technology for every use. "There will be 'corner' requirements for specific purposes," he said. "Someone will find an all-flash storage array better for specific purposes. But our solution will fit 95 percent of user cases." However, unlike most new storage technologies that aim to either take advantage of customers' existing hardware or software or gradually wean them off prior platforms, Formation Data Systems expects customers to replace existing infrastructures, Lewis said. "Our difference is, we are completely incompatible with old platforms," he said. "One potential customer recently told us we have to embrace all their old platforms. I said, well, I guess we're not going to sell to you."

    Formation Data Systems' technology does not support the most common storage industry technologies including SCSI, Fibre Channel, NAS and hardware RAID, Lewis said. "I can't make the old stuff cheaper," he said. "I can't make 30-year-old proprietary technology better. But look at Google and others. All the new successful platforms have rarely been built on existing platforms." The most disruptive things happen when one needs to get rid of existing technology, Lewis said. "That's why people add this vendor for NAS, that vendor for dedupe, this vendor for flash. Now they're adding a new vendor for big data and Hadoop. It's a pending earthquake. CIOs look at what Facebook and Google are doing, and ask why they are paying so much more for storage. They are asking their IT departments why they can't do that."

    Solution providers who have known Lewis from his Compaq days said getting customers to part with their existing storage technologies will be tough, but that he is the person with the experience to succeed with such a strategy. Lewis is correct when he talks about the problems in managing disparate storage platforms and the need for unity, but will find replacing tried-and-true storage platforms a long-term job, said Rich Baldwin, CIO and chief strategist at Nth Generation Computing and a former colleague of Lewis from over 20 years ago when they both worked at Digital Electric Corporation (DEC) before Compaq acquired it. The kind of management skill and experience needed to manage Hitachi Data Systems, EMC and NetApp in the same data center is already difficult, but it becomes a big stumbling block when one even thinks about replacing them, Baldwin told CRN.

    "I can walk into a customer to talk about HP's 3PAR storage, and the customer may say, 'Wow, that's great. But I have four EMC VMAX arrays now and want to replace two. But one is one year old and another is two years old, and I need to get the ROI from them,'" Baldwin said. "They may like the 3PAR but would need two different storage teams. And then when they add Hadoop or data warehousing or some other new platform, they face a new, major learning curve." However, Baldwin said, Lewis built the DEC StorageWorks business that eventually became the core of Hewlett-Packard's storage business, and at EMC worked closely with the team involved in mergers and acquisitions related to new technologies. "Lewis has a lot of credibility in the storage industry," he said. "And he has the background and the connections with the kind of people who can make Formation Data Systems work." Carl Wolfston, principal at Pleasanton, Calif.-based HP solution provider Headlands Associates, also worked with Lewis back at DEC, and told CRN Lewis' background and knowledge gives his new venture a lot of potential. "He's a great manager and a real geek at heart," Wolfston said. "My only complaint is he has gotten investment from Dell and not from HP." Wolfston said he is excited to see where Lewis will go with his new technology. "I love the concept," he said. "But if Formation Data Systems is trying to be a new storage platform, why won't it work with existing equipment? Look at Linux. If it's open, it has to work with everything." An even bigger question, Wolfston said, is how Formation Data Systems will work with the channel.

    Lewis said his company, like most startups, will initially work directly with customers to get its footing and to understand the market and its requirements, but "we want to expand into the channel as soon as possible," he said. Lewis said Formation Data Systems is a 100 percent software-focused company and has three primary initial target markets. The first is large enterprises that are building and developing a number of front office and customer-facing applications and want flexibility without giving up their "crown jewels" to Amazon Web Services. The second is new SaaS companies that are scaling their operations and are ready to build their own data environments. The third are large companies that have already scaled their operations but are looking to build their own platforms, he said. Formation Data Systems' technology is currently in beta testing, and the company hopes to take it to general availability in the second quarter of 2015, Lewis said. "In mid-2015, I expect we'll start working with channel partners who are integrating solutions for our specific target markets," he said.

  • Wed
    24
    Sep
    2014

    SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 24, 2014) - PowWow, Inc. today announced $2.5 million in Series A funding, further validating the company's commitment to driving enterprise mobility application delivery. Investors include OurCrowd, Vertical Venture Partners, IT-Farm, Julien Nguyen, Prabhu Goel and Kumar Malavalli. PowWow will use the financing for go-to-market activities and to expand its engineering teams.

    The number of mobile devices deployed in the workplace has exploded. However, the software used to run most medium and large enterprises is still generally Windows-based. Delivering enterprise applications to mobile devices has traditionally been very expensive; software development is time consuming and costly and other approaches, like Desktop Virtualization, deliver a poor user experience. Available for the iPhone and iPad, PowWow offers the first solution to quickly move any Windows or web application to any mobile device in minutes, all while delivering that native mobile experience users are looking for.

    "PowWow has the technology and team in place to deliver significant business value by mobilizing any Windows application in minutes. We provide an end-to-end solution so that medium and large enterprises can deploy, configure and transform their Windows applications for mobile devices. PowWow preserves an enterprise's investment in core technology without the need for a multi-year and multi-million dollar deployment," said Andrew Cohen, co-founder and CEO, PowWow, Inc. "This funding not only enables us to take PowWow to market, but it also allows us to expand operational capabilities to support our fast growing customer base."

    Until PowWow, a solution hasn't existed that easily mobilizes Windows and web applications in a way that's true to the native mobile experience. Not only does PowWow transform the application's user experience, it identifies the type of mobile device being used and automatically adjusts that experience to match its natural look and feel -- as if custom built for the device being used.

    With PowWow's real-time transformation engine, companies can quickly move hundreds or thousands of their existing Windows and web-based applications to mobile devices in a cost effective manner.

    "PowWow exemplifies the type of company in which Vertical Venture Partners historically looks to invest in -- a business at the forefront of an exciting market, a uniquely engineered solution and an experienced team that keenly understands the strategic business needs of the market," said David Schwab, founder and managing partner, Vertical Venture Partners. "Today's workforce is powered through mobile computing and with every new product introduced, such as Apple's recent announcements, another level of significance is added to the zero-code delivery of Windows and web-apps to mobile devices."

    About PowWow, Inc.         Founded in 2012 by Andrew Cohen and Jonathan Kaplan, PowWow is an application delivery platform that frees a company's workforce, bringing all their enterprise apps to mobile devices. With PowWow, companies can move existing Windows or web applications to any mobile device in minutes, making them feel native, like they were written to deliver the one function or an essential workflow that employees need. Companies can keep the best of their existing IT solutions, giving users the freedom to use the applications and mobile devices of choice.

    The PowWow management team comes from respected enterprise software companies, including IBM, Lotus, KANA, Sun and Booz Allen Hamilton. The company sells their services via direct and OEM relationships. You can find PowWow at www.powwowinc.net and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mypowwow.

     

                                        Contact Information

    • Media Contact Scott Lechner Kulesa Faul for PowWow, Inc. (530) 521-3095(530) 521-3095 Email Contact

     

    http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/powwow-inc-closes-25-million-series-a-funding-transform-enterprise-mobile-application-1950171.htm

  • Wed
    01
    Oct
    2014

    By: Barry Levine

    The containerization of applications continues to roll along.

    A new startup called C3DNA, which provides “meta-container technologies” that it says help make Docker-ized applications more manageable, has announced $2 million in seed funding. “We allow [applications] to be deployed and run and associated with their business needs,” CEO and co-founder Paul Camacho told VentureBeat.

    “We can change the way people distribute and run any application.”

    Or as the company says on its website: “C3DNA introduces the concept of a meta-container that abstracts applications from underlying infrastructure to remove dependencies on proprietary solutions, architectures and APIs. This coupled with C3DNA’s ‘Application Soft Switch’ technology enables instant mobility of applications running across Clouds in Virtual Machines, Containers (LXC, Docker) or Physical Servers.”

    Docker’s containerization “is great,” Camacho said, “but it doesn’t provide the level of management” that businesses need. “They package up the business code, and we’re bringing life to that code.” Camacho also said that his company’s technology can provide meta-containers for “existing legacy applications, proving the mobility to manage it anywhere.” “Docker cannot do that, retrofit any application,” he said.

    The 18-month-old company is the result of a five-year, self-funded, full-time R&D effort by co-founder and chief scientist Dr. Rao Mikkilineni, whose experience includes Bell Labs. The company said it will introduce its technology within the next few weeks.

    The seed round was led by VKRM’s Kumar Malavalli, who was also the co-founder and ex-CTO of Brocade Communications.

    “C3DNA’s new cognition-infused platform is a huge evolutionary step towards making both Docker and OpenStack applications intelligent in a way that’s never been seen before,” Malavilli said in a statement.

    Camacho said the funding — the only money raised so far — will be used to launch the product, grow the engineering team, and develop partnerships. He didn’t identify specific partnerships yet, but he said possibilities include companies like Cisco and VMware.

    http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/meta-container-startup-c3dna-scores-2m-to-bring-life-to-docker/

  • Thu
    09
    Oct
    2014

    Fast-casual chain focuses on mobile loyalty, Millennials

    Schlotzsky’s CMO Mark Mears has a unique, diverse background in building growth brands, with experience at Pizza Hut, McDonald’s and The Cheesecake Factory.

    Mears, who was most recently president of Mimi’s Café, discussed Schlotzsky’s recent turnaround successes and future plans, including a new mobile loyalty strategy and marketing to Millennials.

    Can you provide a brief snapshot of your brand for anyone unfamiliar with Schlotzsky’s?

    Since we first opened for business in Austin, Texas, back in 1971, Schlotzsky’s has been the home of The Original oven-baked sandwich, featuring sourdough bread baked fresh-from-scratch in our restaurants each day with no preservatives. The menu has evolved to reflect the changing tastes and dietary concerns of our guests, which includes the highest-quality oven-baked sandwiches, gourmet pizzas, artisan flatbreads, fresh-tossed salads and signature soups. With more than 350 restaurant locations worldwide, Schlotzsky’s is the fast-casual choice for a quick, healthful, and fresh dining experience. Schlotzsky’s is enjoyed around the world, with restaurants in 36 states and locations in Azerbaijan and Turkey.  Schlotzsky’s is owned by Focus Brands Inc.

    Schlotzsky’s has been in the midst of a turnaround. Tell us about that.

    Our president, Kelly Roddy, has done a masterful job of rebuilding the brand and regaining trust within our franchise community and among our guests during the last seven years.  His vision to elevate Schlotzsky’s from its roots as a QSR sandwich/deli player to a leader within the fast growing fast-casual bakery-café segment has galvanized our entire organization. In fact, Kelly is largely the reason why I came to Schlotzsky’s — to partner with him and his executive team, along with our franchise community in doing something very special with this proud 43-year old brand. Our upside potential and planned growth trajectory are very exciting indeed. The pursuit of fulfilling our Lotz Better brand promise is what drives me and my team every single day.

    How has the Cinnabon co-branding performed?

    Our co-brand partnership with Cinnabon has worked out very well for both brands. Cinnabon is a globally recognized brand name with a wide array of irresistible items that provide our guests with new reasons to dine at Schlotzsky’s. Cinnabon provides an incremental sales layer for Schlotzsky’s, while we provide many additional points of distribution for the Cinnabon brand. We will continue to explore co-branding partnerships that make sense for our brand, as long as they offer an added value to our guests and a solid financial return for our franchise partners.

    Consumer Reports recently ranked Schlotzsky’s above tough competitors such as Chick-fil-A, Panera Bread and Chipotle in terms of taste. What efforts have contributed to that?      

    This is high praise indeed, and reflects the breadth, depth and passion of our fan base, who view Schlotzsky’s as a uniquely crave-able and differentiated dining experience. The results of this Consumer Reports survey certainly help to substantiate our Lotz Better brand positioning, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have earned this special recognition from the readers of such a well-respected publication.  

    You have brought a much larger emphasis for the brand around mobile marketing. Why has that been important?

    Given the advent of both digital and social media, coupled with the increased level of control enjoyed by today’s more tech-savvy guests, the ability to reach a mass audience through traditional means has become very challenging, especially on a limited budget where every dollar spent must provide maximum return. As a result, we must employ an integrated marketing communications approach — a balance of both mass and micro techniques — leveraging guest information and data to develop more targeted and measurable plans to reach our desired audiences in an effective, yet cost-efficient manner.

    Reaching Millennials is critically important to the growth of our brand and, given Millennials practically “live” on their mobile device, we knew we needed a relevant, compelling way to engage with them on their terms.

    You recently introduced a mobile app with a loyalty component. How does it differ from others?      

     In partnership with Punchh, a mobile customer engagement platform provider, we recently launched a mobile app-based guest rewards program called Lotz4Me. With Lotz4Me, we are able to engage our guests right on their smartphones, in our restaurants or wherever they are, in a personalized manner. In just three months, we have obtained over 100,000 members. In fact, during our initial launch phase, we ranked as high as the No. 4 app within the Apple App Store among all restaurants. Our Lotz4Me rewards program is different from many others as we aim to deliver both commercial/rational benefits along with psychic/emotional benefits to our members. This data-rich platform provides relevant, compelling and engaging news through each of our four benefits: Reward & Recognition, Exclusive Insider News & Special Offers, Social Media Sharing & Referral Bonuses, and Guest Feedback & Surveys.

    What is your advice to restaurants looking at getting into mobile advertising and apps?

    From my perspective, it all comes down to two important and interrelated mandatories, differentiation and relevance, setting your mobile app apart from the crowd and endeavoring to deliver benefits that are relevant to your target audience. Don’t just use technology to create a “wow.” Rather, use the data, information and insights that technology provides to engage your guests on a more intimate, one-to-one level. This will elevate your brand from a surface-level transactional exchange to a deeper, more relational level with your guests.

    How important are Millennials to Schlotzsky’s and the restaurant industry?                                                                    

    Currently, Baby Boomers and Gen Xers represent the base of our business today. However, our future growth hinges on the cultivation of our aspirational target — Millennials. Millennials are not only a large and influential demographic segment, but they represent a challenge in how to effectively and cost-efficiently reach them in a relevant way. The key to success with this guest segment is to engage with them on their level. They have more information and exert more control over the conversation than ever before, so we must appeal to them in a way that is real, genuine and authentic to gain their trust, loyalty and advocacy. They are certainly not shy in taking to their social networks to express how they feel about a particular product or service, whether their experience is a positive or negative one. They like the ability to share and connect digitally with their friends.

    http://nrn.com/cmo-perspectives/cmo-perspectives-mark-mears-schlotzsky-s

  • Tue
    21
    Oct
    2014

    By Stephen Blum

    With any subscription based service, particularly SaaS, companies (like Netflix and Adobe Creative Cloud) are dealing with the problem of account subscription sharing. A user can begin a subscription and give another user their login credentials. So how can we mitigate, or better yet, prevent subscription sharing for subscription based services?

    In this blog post, we’ll look at strategies to mitigate and prevent subscription sharing between users.

    Data Stream Network Security Guide for Mitigating Account Sharing Between Users

    This is a guide on how to mitigate sharing access and stealing your business subscription revenue by preventing account sharing for subscription based businesses and websites.

    The PubNub Data Stream Network provides a set of core “building-block” services that can be used to build and scale a wide range of applications. PubNub provides a reliable geo redundant signaling solution (WebSockets, XMPP, BOSH, Comet, HTTP Long-polling, etc.) with many design patterns and over 50 SDKs to fit your growing business needs including Android Java, iOS Objective-c and JavaScript Web/Mobile.

    In this document, we will describe to you a growing demand for a new security pattern being requested by security focused businesses. This Design Pattern document describes a unique technique and business solutions around a customers requirement to have one connection, and one connection only, per authenticated user when using a Data Stream Network similar to C# .NET SignalR, SocketIO / SocksJS for Node.JS JavaScript.

    Business Application and Opportunity Loss with User Subscription Sharing

    The use-cases can vary. Maybe its a music-streaming product, like Spotify, that would like its users to use it services locked to one device only and hence will log-off the user already signing in. Maybe it’s a hotel-chain that wants its guests to only be able to use one card key for one room and hence will not allow any new keys to be set.

    We’ve had this conversation many times here at PubNub and there are many more business-driven scenario which will derive value from our point solution design pattern. Does any of that sounds familiar?

    List of Tools to Prevent Subscription Sharing

    1. Access Authority Database (Identity Management)
    • Any directory and identity management database (LDAP, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc) containing your user identities such as Email/Password services you already have implemented.
    • Alternatively OAuth or Third Party Identity Management systems like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
    1. PubNub Account

    Two Options to Prevent Subscription Sharing

    You are now ready to make a decision between two business rules to follow when restricting access to users who share their security login credentials. When a user is authenticated by your identity management system, you will have two choices on how to proceed with granting access through your subscription paywall.

    Option One is to remotely force logout any devices associated that have been granted access to the subscription service. Option Two is to block access to subsequent login attempts while another use is online and logged in on another device.

    Option One: Force Remote WebSocket Logout

    You would like to always accept new logins by revoking previous login sessions and issuing new access keys. The new grant (the latest grant request) will be the only user who has account subscription access. You would like to deny and block access because another user has an existing session in use.

    1. User will Request Access with Email/Password or 3rd Party OAuth.
    • POST Parameters include Email, Password, RSA Public Key.
    1. Find the associated User Account in the Identity Database.
    • Use Administrative Access Keys (PubNub Secret Key, Publish Key and Subscribe Key) to generate a new PubNub Data Stream Network class instance. PubNub SDKs provide you the secure websocket data stream which allow you to mitigate account accesses sharing.
    • Revoke all previous granted access associated with this user account and issue a PubNub.Revoke({...}) from the previously granted access keys. This will force all remote sessions to be logged out in realtime!
    • Save or Overwrite RSA Public Key from User’s Access Request.
    • Key Rotation – Regenerate The Following Keys: Cipher Key, Auth Key, Channel Name, Session ID (SID) and store in database.
    • Use newly generated Auth Key and Channel Name to issue a PubNub.Grant({...}) – with a Session TTL of 1 Hour.
    • Respond to authenticated request for key exchange with the new credentials over TLS HTTPS Secure Stream with the following keys: PubNub Subscribe Key, Cipher Key, Auth Key, Channel Name, Session ID (SID).
    1. User’s Client Device will incorporate secure credentials into PubNub Data Stream class instance instantiation.
    2. Repeat Process Each Hour or Each Cycle based on Key Rotation Policy.
    3. Send Subscription Material/Signals via PubNub.Publish({ … }) methods with user’s keys.

    Note in Step (2.4) – we ask you to generate a new channel name. However you may not need to generate a new channel name if the data stream source is a shared channel such as a stock quote symbol channel stream.

    Option Two: Block Access while WebSocket Subscription in-Use

    Any user who has a shared email/password will be blocked access while another user is using the subscription service. You can accomplish access blocking this by following these steps:

    1. User will Request Access with Email/Password or 3rd Party OAuth.
    • POST Parameters include Email, Password, RSA Public Key.
    1. Find the associated User Account in the Identity Database.
    • Use Administrative Access Keys (PubNub Secret Key, Publish Key and Subscribe Key) to generate a new PubNub Data Streams class instance with Presence Options Enabled.
    • Use PubNub.Here_Now({ … }) on the associated User’s Channel Name to detect if there is an active device session subscribed.
    • If there is an active live session, deny the access request.
    • If no active sessions exist, proceed with Step 2 from the Option One above.

    Both of the options above provide to you the necessary steps required to prevent subscription sharing for subscription based paywall websites and apps. These steps are generalized to control access and mitigate duplicated permission grants allowing you to manage access and deny request for access based on your business requirements.

    http://www.pubnub.com/blog/mitigate-and-prevent-subscription-sharing-for-saas-companies/

  • Tue
    18
    Nov
    2014

    The internet of things could be very helpful to organizations or bury them under the weight of operational data from a herd of devices, their software, and their applications. Glassbeam believes its SCALAR is the tool that will make sense of it all.

    By for Virtually Speaking |
     

    The company is building its machine learning and predictive analysis tools on top of the Apache Spark in-memory, highly scalable, distributed database engine to provide extremely fast data analysis. The goal is to provide organizations with real-time analysis of just about any type of data their devices might be generating.

    Here's what the company has to say about its product

    Specifically, the new version of Glassbeam SCALAR will provide:

    • Superior performance and scalability: Apache Spark is a fast in-memory distributed compute architecture. When combined with Glassbeam SCALAR, it is the best of both worlds as Glassbeam SCALAR was architected with Cassandra as a distributed data processing architecture that not only scales linearly but also horizontally across thousands of nodes.
    • Advanced analytics: With MLlib library integration from Apache Spark, Glassbeam SCALAR now has the industry’s best machine learning algorithms to perform predictive analytics on large sets of machine data in the cloud.
    • Real-time analytics: Implementing Apache Spark SQL directly on Cassandra data will allow real-time analytics on data as it is streaming in and getting parsed and transformed through the Glassbeam SCALAR platform.

    Glassbeam’s patent-pending, cloud-based technology enables customers to reduce costs, increase revenues, accelerate product time to market, and improve customer satisfaction and retention. Glassbeam customers and partners include Fortune 500 companies and enterprises across a variety of markets including storage, wireless, networking and medical devices.

    Snapshot analysis

    We're hearing more and more about the internet of things computing environment and how it is likely to impact the IT organization. Some of the real effects IT will experience remain to be seen. What is clear is that staff and customers are using more and more different types of devices to access the organization's workloads and those workloads are being hosted on a growing array of different types of systems, networks and storage devices.

    IT is expected to be able to quickly detect performance and security anomalies and get to the root cause. Wading through all of the log files produced by all of the devices, their operating systems, the application frameworks and the databases in use could easily become a time-consuming chore that would prevent a timely discovery and resolution response.

    Many performance monitoring and management companies have jumped into the market with their own approach to turning what appears to be a huge, growing mass of different type of structured and non-structured data into something useful to IT administrators. Glassbeam believes that its approach will be the best.

    I'd suggest taking the time to speak with other suppliers of tools, such as Splunk, Sumo Logic, LogLogic, Loggly and a few others before making a selection. It may turn out that Glassbeam will be the best fit to address your organization's needs. It also may turn out that one of the others will be a better fit.

    http://www.zdnet.com/glassbeam-scalar-analysis-of-the-internet-of-things-7000035912/

  • Tue
    02
    Dec
    2014

    Learner Mosaic helps parents come up with activities based on what their kids are learning. 

    In 2012, P.J. Gunsagar and Dylan Arena founded Kidaptive and released their first iPad app, Leo’s Pad. It stars Leo, a young inventor with a treehouse laboratory, and combines segments of animated story with a variety of mini-games. It’s been downloaded over 800,000 times, with an App Store rating hovering near five stars. Kids love it.

    But there is science hiding behind the fun: A tool, built on cutting-edge research in developmental psychology, that closely tracks the cognitive progress of its young users and adjusts the app’s difficulty accordingly. It’s a toy, but it’s one that gathers a tremendous amount of data on how it’s being used.

    Now, Gunsagar and Arena want to put that data to use to help parents. Kidaptive’s new free app, Learner Mosaic, serves up ideas for backseat games and dinner table discussion topics that reinforce the skills being learned in the Leo’s Pad app. It takes the latest understanding of what kids ages five and younger should be learning, dices it into activities that are manageable for overworked parents, and surfaces those activities at just the right time in a kid’s development. The vision, as Gunsagar puts it, is to put a really smart preschool teacher in every parent’s pocket.

    A New Type of Kids App

    When they met in 2011, Gunsagar and Arena were both working with children, albeit in much different ways. Gunsagar owned a production company that worked on movies like Planes and Tinkerbell. Arena was at Stanford, pursuing a PhD related to games and their effect on learning. Gunsagar started spending time at Stanford, learning about Arena’s work and immersing himself in the latest research in developmental psychology. He quickly had a realization: No one was using the stuff.

    Leo and friends.

    Gunsagar was teaching his own young kids the ABCs and the 123s. At Stanford, however, he was hearing about the importance of skills like impulse control and cognitive flexibility. Here were entire dimensions of his youngsters’ development that he’d previously been oblivious to.

    Leo’s Pad was created to engage all these different types of skills. It teaches kids about colors and counting, sure, but also has games specifically designed around skills like categorization, symbolic representation, and turn-taking. At the heart of the game is an “adaptive learning engine” that evaluates kids’ performance in these skills and adjusts subsequent games accordingly. If your kid’s mastered counting, for instance, the game might introduce more advanced concepts, like grouping and cardinality. The adaptive approach helps the app “ask the right questions at the right time,” Gunsagar says.

    P.J. Gunsagar and Dylan Arena

    A Lightweight Tool for Parents

    The aim with the new app is to give parents additional activities to bolster what the kids are already learning. It was designed with the help of design consultancy Frog, which invested in Kidaptive as part of the firm’s incubator program, FrogVentures. In discussions with parents, Frog’s designers zeroed-in on a tricky balance of demands: “The overwhelming message from parents was, ‘we absolutely want to be engaged,’ but the corollary message was, ‘we absolutely don’t have time,'” says Ethan Imboden, Frog’s head of venture design.

    The app thus supplies lightweight activities directly linked to their kid’s progress through Leo’s Pad. These could be games, activities, or simply topics for discussions—many of which derive from findings in peer-reviewed studies and have been molded by masters-level preschool teachers. Say your daughter Jessica finishes a Leo’s Pad game that exercises impulse control. Learner Mosaic might suggest a “watery adventure” activity that explores the same skill. In this case, you put a blanket on the floor and tell Jessica it’s a river. You tell her to jump in the river, then you have her jump out. In, out. In, out. Then, you switch up the order of the instructions and see if Jessica will follow. The aim is to get her to delay gratification by listening to the instructions, even when their pattern in changed—kind of like Simon Says.

    A Learner Mosaic card.

    The idea is to reinforce the skill learned in the game with an activity outside it. “Connecting learning across context is a way to reinforce transfer, and transfer is the fundamental problem of education,” Arena, who serves as Kidaptive’s chief learning scientist, explains. “You teach a kid a thing, but you don’t want them to just reproduce that thing in that context. You want them to take it out into the world.” The more situations in which a kid exercises impulse control, the better chance they have at internalizing it.

    Building a Platform for Learning

    Gunsagar and Arena hope Learner Mosaic could eventually become a platform that takes in data from all sorts of other activities, as well as third-party apps. Someday, there could be a whole section of games in the App Store that automatically feed information to the app when your kids play with them.

    Eventually, Gunsagar says, these learning profiles could be powerful tools for an entirely different type of evaluation. By cross referencing a kid’s performance on certain skills in Leo’s Pad with those same skills as put to work in a new app, Kidaptive’s platform could help sort which other learning apps are effective and which are bunk.

    “Just think about the problem that solves for the apps ecosystem,” Gunsagar says. “They’re struggling with app discovery. Parents are buying the hardware, schools are buying the hardware, but they don’t know which apps work. We can start to speak to, with real empirical evidence, which apps work and which apps don’t.” It’s a vision in which Kidaptive becomes an algorithimic gatekeeper for learning apps, crunching the numbers on which new titles are worth your time and growing its own data sets all the while. But now that’s all adult stuff, isn’t it?

    http://www.wired.com/2014/12/data-driven-parenting-app-gives-personalized-tips-every-kid/

  • Sun
    07
    Dec
    2014

    Greg Satell

    In the mid-20th century, Linus Pauling was one of the world’s most celebrated scientists.  His discovery of the structure of hemoglobin and other biological molecules created an entirely new field of science and, when he focused his ample talents on deciphering the structure of DNA, no one doubted that he would be the one to do it.

    But he wasn’t.  In fact, it was two relatively unknown researchers, James Watson and Francis Crick who would win that particular prize.  Yet what was really astounding was the way they did it.  While other scientists spent their time in the lab, Watson and Crick played with models and talked about them.

    What seemed like child’s play to most academics was actually the best way to imagine possibilities and see how their ideas reflected diverse—and often confusing—empirical clues.  Today, a growing contingent of academics believes that games can have the same effect on how children learn and a company called Kidaptive is determined to prove them right.

    The Case For Informal Learning

    Everyone knows that school is a chore.  Students sit at desks, get lectured to and then are tested to see whether they have absorbed the required knowledge.  Anytime the teacher goes off script, kids are bound to ask, “is this going to be on the test?”  Learning, all too often, is seen as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, even by parents and teachers.

    At the same time, it has been reported that more than three quarters of American children have a video game console at home and 40% play video games every day.  Many of these games are mind numbingly complex, requiring players to absorb and internalize extensive knowledge and consult outside resources, yet kids attack those tasks with gusto.

    James Paul Gee, one of the growing cadre of academics that advocates learning in informal environments, calls games like these passionate affinity spaces and argues that they also extend to other leisure activities like fan fiction and advocacy groups.  Unlike traditional types of games, the focus in these activities is not so much competition, but mastery.

    What’s more, as I argued in an earlier post, today’s digital games can be amazingly effective at simulating real world skills.  The US Army, for example, uses a video game to train soldiers.  Other games, such as World of Warcraft, encourage players to collaborate to solve problems and complete projects.  These types of skills are devilishly hard to teach in a classroom, but ideally suited to games.

    Entertainment Meets Education

    As a student, P.J. Gunsagar felt poorly served by his education.  It’s not that he didn’t do well, he did, earning a dual degree from UCLA and a law degree at Stanford, it was just that he didn’t feel that the system gave him a good idea of what his real skills were.  So he ended up taking a series of jobs that, while prestigious, left him unfulfilled.

    Then, while working with Intel Capital in Mumbai, he came across an animation company in the portfolio and almost immediately knew what he wanted to do.   After spending a year diving into the space, he co-founded Prana Studios, a computer animation company that has helped create kid favorites like Disney’s “Tinkerbell” series and Pixar’s hit film, Planes.

    When P.J. had kids of his own, he began to think that the type of work that Prana was doing could do more than just entertain.  It seemed that if he could take the kind of immersive storytelling that made the company such a huge success and applied it to education, he could make an enormous impact.

    That idea led him to the education school at Stanford where he met Dylan Arena, a researcher who focused on the nexus between games, learning and assessment. The two hit it off and decided that they could build a different kind of game company, one that not only made learning fun, but that helped guide the education process.  Kidaptive was born.

    The Learner’s Mosaic

    Perhaps not surprisingly, given Gunsagar’s background, Kidaptive’s product, Leo’s Pad, feels more like a film from Pixar or Dreamworks than a game app.  It follows Leo and his pet dragon Cinder as they meet a host of friends and solve problems in the course of the story. The game even boasts an impressive soundtrack performed by the likes of Laurie Berkner.

    However, the slick veneer belies an extensive analytics and recommendation platform underneath.  As the child helps Leo and his friends perform various tasks, they are assessed across six skill areas that transcend conventional subjects like math and reading.  The result is a snapshot of how the child learns that Kidaptive calls the Learners Mosaic.   Leo's pad - personal mosaic   Traditionally, we’ve assessed children’s learning with statements like “Johnny’s bad at math, but loves social studies.”  Yet the truth is that while Johnny may have trouble with abstract symbols, he might also excel at mathematical reasoning (and those same conceptual skills make him a whiz at social studies). In a nutshell, that’s the problem the mosaic seeks to solve.

    Kidaptive uses the Learners Mosaic to guide the child’s experience in the game. For example, in Leo’s Pad’s first chapter, the child needs to help Leo find his pet Cinder hiding behind a series of colors, shapes and other objects.  As the child performs the task, assessments are made about the child’s skills and the game adjusts accordingly.

    The company also has a team of PhD’s continually analyzing the data to hone the educational experience.  So while a child’s performance is being assessed, it is also being combined with data from other kids to understand how to match tasks with proficiencies, how problems should be sequenced and to seek out insights about what to develop in the future.

    Ironically, despite the obvious passion for, and investment in, production quality, it is the back end—the part that kids never see—that may be the key to the company’s future success.

    A Learning Ecosystem

    For Gunsagar, what started out as a serendipitous interest in animation has been transformed into a mission to change how kids learn and help them avoid the lack of assessment he felt he experienced in his education.   He believes that the Learner’s Mosaic can form a crucial bridge between informal and formal learning.

    Kidaptive has recently released a Learner Mosaic app for parents that suggests activities outside of the game that they can do to support their children in important areas.  The company has also created a software development kit so that other developers can hook into the powerful ecosystem the company has built.  Several are already in the testing phase.

    Eventually, Gunsagar and Arena hope that their analytics platform will be incorporated into the classroom so that teachers can instruct and assess across the full range of educational experiences, not just what happens during lectures and homework assignments.

    While the company’s ambitions seem boundless, so far they seem like they’re off to a good start.  They closed a $10 million funding round last year and will likely do another one sometime next year.  Leo’s Pad has already attracted over a million users and the founders believe the company can be cash flow positive by the end of 2015.

    More than a half century ago, Watson and Crick showed that formal reasoning is not always the best path to scientific discovery.  It’s time we start taking a similar approach approach to help us unlock the potential of our children as well.

    Greg Satell is a US based business consultant.  You can find his blog at DigitalTonto.com and follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto

     

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2014/12/07/this-company-wants-to-use-games-to-reimagine-how-your-child-learns/