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Kwaga, a Paris, France-based startup that specializes in tools to make email ‘smarter’ by leveraging semantic technology, has raised $1.55 million in Series A funding. The company, which received seed funding from Seedcamp and Kima Ventures after its founding in 2008, raised the money from unnamed private investors.
Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
Posted: Thu 12th of January, 2012
US-based desktop virtualization software maker DeskStream has acquired Northern Irish cloud start-up WorldDesk, the companies are set to announce today at CES in Las Vegas. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close this quarter, were not disclosed.
Interestingly, the acquisition will see DeskStream adopt the WorldDesk name and branding.
Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
Posted: Thu 12th of January, 2012
NewsGator. Those of us who were using RSS readers in the middle of the past decade most likely think of desktop app FeedDemon for Windows or desktop/mobile app NetNewsWire for Mac when we hear the name.
But the company has spent the last several years turning itself into an enterprise networking company that competes with Jive, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and the many others out there. And it’s had its biggest year yet in 2011, chief executive JB Holston tells me, by steadily building up its business on top of a place you might not have thought of: Microsoft SharePoint.
It’s riding the popularity of simpler social software for businesses by bringing industry-leading features to Microsoft’s extremely full-featured and extremely arcane collaboration platform, which has 125 million or so seats worldwide. Which is to say, a big pool of clients who don’t naturally gravitate to the freemium model that some competitors have used to get in with small and medium-sized businesses. Instead, all the products cost money. (Also, note that the RSS reader, which are still available for download after all these years on the NewsGator site, are now owned by Nick Bradbury and Black Pixel, respectively.)
The results in 2011? NewsGator added one million new paid seats over the course of the year, on top of its existing two million. Those additions aren’t just from a few clients who went all in, Holston says, but from among the 300 companies using it now. 100 of them were new last year, he adds, including both the “Global 2000″ corporate customers that normally it targets, as well as medium-sized businesses of 5,000 seats or less who decided to buy in.
Having been founded in 2004, and having raised some $39.3 million in venture backing, the company has come a long way to being profitable and growing across its key metrics.
How did the transition happen? Holston says that back in 2006, defense contractor Lockheed Martin had taken its enterprise RSS service, cobbled it together with SharePoint, Google search and some other features to create its own “Facebook for enterprise.” The SharePoint team at Microsoft noticed, and talked to NewsGator about building a fuller-fledged product line.
NewsGator then went on to launch the first versions of its modern software suite at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in 2007, and has been expanding its business since then. Today, the components for its marquee product line, Social Sites for Microsoft SharePoint 2010, include Microblogging, Activity Streams, Communities, Spheres, Social Profiles, Social Insights, as well as desktop and email clients, and integration with Microsofts Lync and Glassboard products.
Beyond these Facebook-style features, the company has taken the typical approach among enterprise vendors, building out additional features for compliance, IT support, local hosting etc. While it provides APIs to import or export data from other products, like Salesforce’s Chatter, SharePoint is where it’s staying focused on, Holston says. ”Our view is that there’s so much that Microsoft is doing to continue to push their enterprise relationships that we can leverage, that we think it’s a rich place to stay.”
When I asked about the long-time plans for the company — say, an acquisition by Microsoft, or an IPO — he said that the plan for now is continuing to grow the company as its core business continues to take advantage of the current market.
Posted: Thu 12th of January, 2012
Every business seems to want its own mobile software, and now Pyxis Mobile is transforming to help companies build apps for themselves. Previously, Pyxis created apps for enterprise financial services companies, but today pivots to offer its app development platform directly to clients. The company has rebranded itself as Verivo Software, and taken a $17 million funding round from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, as well as existing investors Ascent Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital.
The new funding will build on the combined $7.15 million secured in Pyxis Mobile’s Series A and B rounds. The money will go towards marketing, product development, recruiting, APIs, and growing its global presence with new offices in Europe and Asia.
Rather than having to work with an outside vendor to issue updates and support, Verivo’s platform will let clients take care of everything in house. Clients can build apps with a drag-and-drop interface, deploy them across device types and operating systems, and manage functionality changes.
The shift from Pyxis Mobile to Verivo has been 16 months in the making, so the platform has already been utilized by several clients beyond financial services. Sales companies like Bunzl have built field operations apps for their employees, Indiana State University offered a campus information app to students, and health tech companies like Healthrageous have used apps to retain customers. Other clients include Allstate Insurance, Halliburton, and Oracle.
Enterprise mobility software demand is booming. Verivo saw license bookings increase by 220 percent and revenue run rate up 50 percent in 2011. By distributing the development power, Verivo can improve its platform in a scalable way instead of fixing the apps of individual clients.
Posted: Tue 10th of January, 2012
Tealium, which specializes in enterprise tag management solutions (more on that below), has raised $1.1 million in Series A funding from a bunch of digital marketing CEOs – and former CEOs – including Limelight Networks’ Jeff Lunsford, Collective’s JoeApprendi, eValue Group’s Thomas Falks and EyeWonder’s John Vincent.
Jim MacIntyre, founder of Visual Sciences (acquired by WebSideStory) and former chief of e-commerce technology for GSI Commerce, participated as well, and also joined Tealium’s board.
Founded in 2008, Tealium provides page tag management solutions that do not require customers to run application servers to load digital marketing vendor tags onto Web pages, relying instead on a ‘client-side’ methodology and a combination of browser caching, CDNs and proprietary tag management techniques.
The company’s tag management system, Tealium iQ, lets digital marketers and Web analytics professionals use a fairly simple drag-and-drop interface to manage all their page tags (analytics, advertising, affiliate, PPC search and whatnot) without taxing their IT departments.
Clients include Citrix, Big Fish Games, TracyLocke and US Auto Parts.
Posted: Tue 10th of January, 2012
As companies move their data out from behind firewalls into the cloud and employees use self-provisioned mobile devices, infosecurity must change. That’s why cybercrime prevention provider ThreatMetrix will announce tomorrow its acquisition of TrustDefender, which detects malware-based attacks. ThreatMetrix can now offer an integrated fraud protection solution that verifies the identity and integrity of any device trying to access secure data. If an endpoint has been compromised through malware or identity theft: access denied.
Reed Taussig, ThreatMetrix’s CEO tells me the acquisition was made with a combination of cash and stock. It was bankrolled by ThreatMetrix’s 300% year on year revenue growth and the $12 million funding round it took in October 2010.
TrustDefender co-founder and CEO Andreas Baumhof will become the new ThreatMetrix CTO. The majority of the Australian TrustDefender’s team was picked up, but won’t be relocating to ThreatMetrix’s San Jose headquarters. TrustDefender took $16 million in funding from Nexbix Ltd in March 2010.
ThreatMetrix’s device identifications system looks at over 250 aspects of an endpoint device to determine its integrity. — where is it, hidden proxies, if text is being rendered in foreign language, or if that email address has been used to make a request from multiple continents. TrustDefender detects malware and other threats including trojans, Poison Ivy, and man-in-the-browser-attacks. It services financial institutions, SaaS providers, ecommerce companies, and government.
Before now, companies had to seek out separate vendors for device identification and malware detection. Taussig tells me “The identification of malware on a device should be a feature of device identification. We were fortunate to have found a malware ID company that has leading edge technology with referenceable, high-end customers that recognize this is a match made in heaven. The acquisition provides huge advantages, as clients can be supported by a single product.”
Additionally, ThreatMetrix has just signed a partnership with major credit bureau TransUnion. This will help it verify the authenticity of user biographical and financial data to protect logins and payments.
Instead of only accessing firewalled data through dedicated, pre-screened devices, employees now accessing the cloud with their own laptops, tablets, and phones. Let’s be honest. Who knows what those devices are being used for in the off-hours? It’s therefore more important than ever for IT departments to have a strong device ID security system. Otherwise their company’s source code, intellectual property, design docs, customer names or credit card numbers could be at risk.
Posted: Tue 10th of January, 2012
Today at Intel’s CES 2012 Keynote, the firm announced a strategic partnership with Nuance. If you’ve forgotten, Nuance is a voice recognition company, so yelling at your new ultrabook may be a closer reality than you thought.
You’ll have voice commands for checking in on notifications, and the processing never has to go through the cloud since ultrabooks will provide enough processing power to begin with.
According to the Nuance boss, responses will be spoken back in natural language and the program will provide for up to nine different languages, including English, French, German Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, and Mandarin.
They also mentioned that the power is there to eventually enable real-time language translation.
Posted: Mon 9th of January, 2012
