SailPoint today announced it posted record annual revenue growth in 2011 and closed its largest growth quarter to date in Q4 2011. The company’s momentum resulted from growing customer demand in all geographies and the strong industry validation SailPoint received in 2011 as an identity management market leader. SailPoint’s customer roster now features more than 100 Global 2000 companies spanning 25 countries. During 2011, SailPoint also opened three new Centers of Excellence internationally and inked a global [...]

If you wanted to start a company based on the financial markets, Austin might not be your first choice. Technically, for 9WSearch CEO Susan Strausberg, it wasn’t. “My husband and I picked Austin to start a green-oriented business, but it took a little longer than expected,” said Strausberg.  ”So we went back to our roots and started 9WSearch.” Those roots run the deepest in financial services, and with Strausberg’s track record in the industry, it [...]

Socialware, the leader in social media compliance and engagement, today announced that CrunchFund, founded by tech industry veterans Michael Arrington, Patrick Gallagher, and MG Siegler, will join other investors in a $7M series C round of funding. While CrunchFund was founded to invest in promising early stage startups, the investors see great potential in Socialware’s grasp on the importance of personal interaction in social business initiatives. “Many companies miss the mark by only leveraging social [...]

When you hear someone talk about disruption in technology, it almost sounds passé. But if you ever want a simple cheat sheet to impress your friends, read this piece by Netscape Founder and Venture Capitalist Marc Andreessen. It’s basically a series of case studies in disruption, each showing how software-driven services are invading companies large and small. Recently, I caught up with two tech execs that want to accelerate the way nonprofits are being eaten [...]

TalentGuard announced the release of Version 6.0 of its enterprise-class SaaS solution, Talent®, an integrated suite of products designed to help organizations better plan and execute on talent management and workforce development initiatives. With our platform, employers achieve a lower cost of ownership, faster initial deployment, more frequent upgrades, and they avoid technical headaches—so they can focus on the people-side of talent management implementation. With Version 6.0, employers will see increased ease of use and [...]

Noesis Energy is targeting the estimated $70B in annual U.S. energy waste by helping commercial and industrial customers drive greater energy efficiencies out of their operations. Backed by an initial investment of $6.5M from Austin Ventures, and support for follow-on acquisitions, the company plans to unveil a cloud-based energy management platform that combines free analytics tools, energy market data, educational resources and a community of experts to help in-house energy managers and third-party consultants make [...]

mobileTech Tuesday, by Steve Guengerich I attended Dell World 2011 last week and it was pretty remarkable on a number of levels. On one level, I reflected on Dell’s maturation as an enterprise. While the majority of what we write about in AustinStartup.com are new hardware and software ideas being brought to market, it’s easy to forget a couple of things. One, that Dell itself – presently 41st on the Fortune 500 list of largest [...]

Spiceworks™, Inc. today announced that IT professionals at small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) can now manage and automate printer ink and toner purchasing directly within the Spiceworks social network for IT.  The new social commerce feature will make it easier for the 1.6 million IT pros in Spiceworks to keep their printers up and running, while giving ink and toner suppliers access to more than $3 billion in refills every year. Spiceworks users, who are responsible [...]

Spredfast, a leading social media management system provider, today announced it has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by InterWest Partners. Also participating in the round is Austin Ventures, the lead investor of the company’s $3.6 million Series A round.  Spredfast plans to use the funding to expand its industry-leading platform that helps companies better manage engagement and conversion across all major social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs and Foursquare. “The [...]

If you are building a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or infrastructure-as-a-service  (IaaS) company, there are some great resources for you courtesy of TechStars Cloud and Rackspace. I asked Jason Seats for a guest blog post on the subject. Jason is a founder of Slicehost (acquired by Rackspace) and also TechStars Cloud Manager. You have heard of TechStars in Boulder, New York, Seattle and Boston and now we have one here in our back yard. Two weeks ago [...]