Monthly Archives: March 2009

ShopFujitsu.com Launches Ratings and Reviews

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Bazaarvoice LogoBazaarvoice announced that Fujitsu has launched the Bazaarvoice social commerce platform with Ratings & Reviews™ at www.shopfujitsu.com. Now consumers and business professionals can easily access the authentic and credible opinions of their peers as they research Fujitsu LifeBook® notebook and Stylistic® tablet PC purchases, allowing them to make the smartest decision about the mobile computer that best fits their needs. By offering this valuable content directly on its eCommerce site, Fujitsu improves the shopping experience while also increasing site traffic and search engine rankings, and decreasing product returns and customer service calls.

Fujitsu, which added Ratings & Reviews in February of 2009 is also analyzing review content to identify areas of improvement for its products and services and feeding review data to the teams directly responsible for solution development. The company also plans to place this user-generated content at the center of its advertising and marketing initiatives this spring and beyond.

“Fujitsu strives to be a valued and trusted partner, and Bazaarvoice’s social commerce solution provides a valuable tool for gaining first-hand customer feedback,” said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management, Fujitsu Computer Systems. “With Ratings & Reviews, Fujitsu customers have an easy way to share their opinions and ultimately make better decisions about their purchases – both online and offline.” Continue reading →

Pervasive Launches DataRush

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Pervasive Software, an emerging leader in next generation analytic applications, today announced the general availability of Pervasive DataRush™, a revolutionary high-performance, embeddable software platform for the next generation of data-intensive processing and analytics. This transformative technology addresses the gap between rapidly proliferating multicore processors, exploding volumes of data and the lack of analytic software to fully exploit industry hardware and efficiently extract useful intelligence.

By delivering dramatic performance improvements over current technologies, early users of this patent-pending technology have been able to analyze large data sets from multiple sources at unprecedented speeds, removing roadblocks to new business models and improving the way these organizations analyze and manage data.

“The analytics market is poised for unprecedented innovation and we are leading the way forward with our introduction of Pervasive DataRush to power new classes of analytic applications,” said Mike Bryars, General Manager of DataRush Products at Pervasive Software. “Data volumes are exploding and data must often be analyzed and acted upon in near real-time. Pervasive DataRush sets a new standard with unmatched performance for processing data-intensive applications on popular multicore hardware.” Continue reading →

Jack McDonald for Congress

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You may have read Thom Singer’s blog post titled “Hey Congress, You Don’t Know Jack!” where he was probably the first to announce that Jack McDonald was forming an exploratory committee to evaluate a run for U.S. Congress in the Texas 10th district, right here in our backyard.

Congress is full of attorneys, and Jack actually started his career as an attorney, but he’s been growing businesses and employing people for probably longer than he practiced law. More importantly he’s been growing his business and raising his family right here in Travis County for over 10 years.  Call me crazy, but I think we need more entrepreneurs in DC.

The Obama campaign proved that you can be successful raising funds from the average person like you and me, in smaller and reasonable denominations. Multiplied by thousands of voices, those funds become powerful enough to initiate change.

I urge you to go to www.jackforcongress.com to see what he is all about, and to consider making a donation. Remember that no contribution is too small, and if you happen to see Jack around town at any of the Austin organizations that he is involved with, I’m sure he would extend to you his heartfelt thanks.

AdLucent Adds Executives

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adlucentAdlucent, a leader in performance-based search marketing, today announced the appointment of two executives to its management team. The company has promoted Accenture veteran Jon Armstrong to the position of CEO, and appointed former Trilogy executive Ashwani Dhar to the position of Senior Vice President. In their new roles, they will help manage and drive growth for the firm, which has grown revenues by 150 percent in the past year by helping some of the world’s most successful Internet retailers increase sales with unique performance-based search marketing initiatives.

“We’re honored to attract talent of this caliber to the Adlucent management team,” said Michael Griffin, co-founder and CTO of Adlucent. “The demand for our search marketing solutions and services is accelerating, and we need seasoned leaders like Jon and Ashwani to help guide our growth at this important stage in our company’s lifecycle.”

Mr. Armstrong brings more than 20 years of strategy development and executive leadership experience to his new role as CEO. He was recently a Partner and Senior Executive at Accenture, where focused on developing and implementing technology-based business strategies to drive sustainable growth for clients. Mr. Armstrong has also served as COO of Tribeza; Vice President of services at Contextual, a venture-backed CRM software company; and Director at Trilogy.

Mr. Dhar brings to Adlucent over 20 years of sales, marketing, business development and venture capital experience. He was a senior executive at Iconixx, Agea and Trilogy where he was responsible for revenue generation, market positioning and the business success of the companies. He also founded and managed DC International, a global consulting company that focused on the emerging markets of Latin America for clients like BankBoston and YPF. Mr. Dhar began his career as a consultant with Accenture and was most recently making venture investments through his firm Venio Capital Partners.

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Startup Weekend World

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startup-weekendMany cities have done their own StartupWeekend ever since it was first launched by Andrew Hyde.  Now the model is open source, and anyone can run their own StartupWeekend and leverage the experience and knowledge from previous events. There will be over 50 simultaneous StartupWeekend events all around the world April 3-5, 2009. It’s called Startup Weekend World. That is coming up pretty soon!

Check out the new website for StartupWeekend that just launched last night, check out the challenge, and feel free to use our comments section to organize an Austin startup weekend.


A Startup Weekend Challenge from Andrew on Vimeo.

Boundless Network Expands into Canada

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Boundless Network, a technology-enabled branded merchandise distributor, today announced a transnational expansion into Canada and the addition of more than 30 sales professionals to the company during the first quarter of 2009. Austin-based Boundless Network achieved more than 15 percent growth during the first three months of 2009.

Boundless Network attracts top industry professionals with its award-winning professional development and next generation technology platform. The company increased revenue 675 percent in 2006, 94 percent in 2007 and 174 percent last year. In 2008, the Austin Business Journal ranked Boundless Network the No. 2 fastest growing company in Austin.

“Boundless Network enables sales professionals to fully devote their time and energy to exceeding their customers’ expectations,” said Boundless CEO Jason Black. “Sales professionals join Boundless because they become better positioned to retain and grow accounts using technology to provide higher levels of customer service, savings and value. For sole proprietors and distributorship owners, we eliminate the constraints of having to manage the day to day aspects of business and enable them to get back in front of their customers. The Boundless value proposition has proven to be extremely attractive to top sales professionals desperate to find a way to retain and even grow their business in this tough economy.”

The company’s 2009 growth includes the addition of Dallas-based distributor Corporate Specialties, a 20-year veteran of the “Multi-Million Dollar Roundtable,” an Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) designation honoring members with annual sales of more than $2 million.

Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills

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This star-studded panel (if you’re a geek) debated the merits of creating your startup in Austin, Silicon Valley, Shanghai, or any other city in the world. Conjunctured’s John Erik Metcalf moderated the panel, which featured (in the picture below), Robert Scoble, Mike Maples Sr., Kaiser Kuo, and Penelope Trunk.

sxsw09-ditch-the-valley

Having a panel discussion at 10am on a Sunday might not be too difficult for some, but when there are tons of parties going on till late hours of the night (and you’re on California time), it can prove challenging. Especially for Robert Scoble. He lookedl like he had about 30 seconds to shower, and did so about 5 minutes before the panel. I had to feel bad for him as he got up from his chair half way through the discussion to grab another glass of water for some extra hydration. Robert is such a fan of the little guy with the big idea, that SXSW must be overload in terms of interesting discussion and fodder for his video blogging.

Mike Maples Sr. is a popular early stage investor on the Austin startup scene. He was formerly a senior executive at Microsoft, and is highly sought after for advice and mentorship. Kaiser is a writer, creative, and observer of the emerging tech scene in China. Penelope Trunk is an author from Madison, WI and writes the popular Brazen Careerist blog on the new workforce.

Panelists confirmed that when it comes to starting up a company and seeking funding, money is local. The financial system may be global, but early stage angel and venture moeny is highly local. Penelope said she’s been to the Silicon Valley trying to raise money, and being from Madison Wisconsin is a non-starter. In the end, she found backing from angel investors in Madison, although they are more difficult to find.

There was plenty of debate about Austin vs. Silicon Valley, but the reality is that the valley is simply a very large ecosystem of tech people. Everybody in the area works in some sort of technology field, and pays attention to technology. If you go to Armadillo Willies when it was on DeAnza Blvd, everybody in the place was talking about Apple technology. Any Starbucks or ToGo’s is filled with people discussing the latest innovations in Twitter and Facebook. The density of thought and discussion, as well as people with tech skills is high. The money follows the density of new ideas. If that’s what you need, then that’s where you should be.

Region is also important. If you have an energy technology startup, then you should be in Houston. For the next big B2C company requiring lots of venture capital, you should be in the valley. For enterprise software or gaming, Austin is a great place to be. There were no big revelations in this panel, but it’s fun to discuss and to hear the experiences of the incredible assembly of panelists.

Phurnace and Hyper9 Named Gartner Cool Companies

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Austin-based Phurnace Software and Hyper9 were both named as “cool companies” by Gartner Group in the IT Operations and Virtualization market. Each year Gartner Group names several companies in their research areas as “cool” and making great progress in their space. According to the Gartner report:

The growth of virtualization and the emergence of Web 2.0 and cloud-computing architectures are resulting in repercussions across a range of virtualization technologies and management tools, but several vendors are applying new techniques to managing the changing IT infrastructure landscape.

Phurnace has a reprint of the report accessible through their website. Hyper9 announced the general availability of their flagship product last week. We will be on the lookout for Austin companies in their other research areas that have also been recognized this year.

SailPoint Adds Virtualization and Other Services

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sailpointSailPoint today announced a suite of new deployment offerings for its identity governance solution, SailPoint IdentityIQ, including a virtual appliance, a hosting option and a menu of managed services, to streamline and simplify the process of buying, implementing and managing identity management solutions. These new options, in addition to SailPoint’s conventional hardware appliance and software licensing offerings, give customers a broader range of deployment environments to fit their specific situation, providing immediate ROI and better control over technology costs.

SailPoint’s new deployment options adapt to unique customer requirements, such as those of a global bank that needed IdentityIQ to address compliance requirements but faced a three month delay for the procurement of hardware and system software to run the application. The IdentityIQ managed hosting option enabled them to stay within their original project plan while maintaining the flexibility to migrate back to a traditional software deployment in the future if their needs change. A leading financial services provider chose to implement IdentityIQ in a virtualized environment, which allowed them to make use of extra data center capacity and to deploy IdentityIQ very quickly to address their identity governance business needs.

“The down economy is forcing companies to strengthen their identity management practices and access controls,” said Ian Glazer, senior analyst at Burton Group. “In order to help companies meet their needs in this economy, vendors have to address immediate business problems, and they also have to be creative with licensing and deployment models.”

SailPoint developed its new delivery options, available through SailPoint and its partners, to provide more flexible deployment, maintenance, and operating models for organizations facing constrained IT resources and lower IT budgets. Identity governance remains a top priority, but many organizations lack the internal resources needed to deploy and manage new applications. That was the case with a Fortune 500 organization that was in the process of being acquired by a larger company. By using SailPoint’s hosted solution for IdentityIQ, the company was able to quickly deploy IdentityIQ for access certifications and policy enforcement, providing proof of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley before, during and after the acquisition.

Capital Factory Extends Deadline for Entrepreneurs

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cf-logoThe applications for Capital Factory for the 2009 year are rolling in, but many entrepreneurs are asking for some extra time to prepare their applications. You can apply to the program using the online application, and the new deadline is April 3rd. If you look at the application form, you can see that you don’t need a massive business plan to apply.  Become a fan of Capital Factory on Facebook, or get your questions answered on GetSatisfaction.

Most young companies are excited by the cash component of the program, but those truly in the know understand the value of the mentorship in the program. Our mentors have started and grown some of the most successful companies in Central Texas. If you know of somebody that is trying to grow their technology company, please forward information on the program to them.

If you think that you could never have a chance of getting in, you really do! We expect 60-100 applications, and our goal is to pick 3 winners. You might have a 5% chance just by applying! During the 10-week summer program, you will make some incredible progress as a company. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by!