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May 30, 2008

Editor’s Notes: College Tonight; Is Debt Financing a Bad Thing?

College Tonight Makes Big Statement on Users’ Privacy – StartUp Beat featured collegiate social network College Tonight is backing up its commitment to online privacy in a big way by appointing former FBI profiling expert John Douglas to its board of advisors. More on the announcement and Douglas’s background: FBI’s Legendary Special Agent John Douglas Joins College Tonight Inc. College Tonight’s StartUp Beat Pitch: 4/22/08 – Featured Company: College Tonight

Is Startup Debt A ‘Reality-Avoidance’ Ploy? – This is the opinion of Mitchell Kertzman, managing director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, in a Wall Street Journal article about tech startups taking on debt financing. The argument seems to be that VC financing is far superior to debt. Granted, too much debt is never a positive, but “reality-avoidance” seems to be a bit of an overstatement, to say the least. What do you think? Here’s the article: High-Tech and Laden with Debt

May 27, 2008

Featured Company: StackSafe

StackSafe logo 

 

Web Site: www.stacksafe.com
Headquarters:
Vienna, Virginia
Year Founded:
2005
Founder:
Loren Burnett
Investors:
Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Chart Venture Partners
Total Capital Raised:
$7.9 Million Series A
Company News:
www.stacksafe.com/index.php/Press-Releases

*Updated 5/27/08

Loren Burnett

By Loren Burnett, President and CEO 

Overview

StackSafe provides software infrastructure testing solutions that enable IT operations to significantly improve uptime and resiliency.  StackSafe’s flagship product, StackSafe Test Center, directly addresses incomplete and ineffective IT operations staging and testing of changes to multi-tiered software infrastructure stacks.  With Test Center, StackSafe provides the first easy-to-use virtualized staging and testing solution that enables IT operations to understand the business impact of changes—before they touch production systems.

What IT problem does StackSafe Test Center address?

Simply stated, the problem is downtime and its causes.  IT downtime on any scale has a negative impact on all businesses, no matter the size or industry.  In today’s global economy, businesses need to be ‘always on,’ requiring 100 percent uptime of services and networks.  StackSafe’s research has shown that changes to the software infrastructure are the leading cause of downtime.

Application and infrastructure change requests, in all sizes, from the large-scale and important to the miniscule and low priority, continually inundate IT operations teams.  To meet these requests and maintain the level of high service availability, which businesses expect and demand, IT operations teams must remain responsive to these requests even though these changes may impact their ability to continue day-to-day operations work and cause network or application downtime.  This brings about a “perfect storm” for IT operations teams: IT and infrastructure changes are necessary in every organization and grow along with business and system expansion – but in organizations with increasingly complex environments, changes often lead to significant service outages and downtime across the enterprise.

How can downtime be prevented?

Implementing a change management process as well as better IT operations testing tools and methodologies can prevent the risk of downtime.  In response to this need StackSafe developed StackSafe Test Center – a new, cost-effective, automated staging and testing solution that improves availability and resiliency through enhanced software infrastructure testing.  Test Center directly addresses incomplete and ineffective IT operations testing and analysis of changes to multi-tiered software infrastructure stacks.

What are Test Center’s main functionalities?

Virtualized Staging Environment
Using virtualization technology, StackSafe Test Center enables IT operations teams to create copies of the production servers that make up the software infrastructure stack and test changes on these copies.  Once imported, the virtual components of the infrastructure stack safely execute and interact inside the staging environment with little or no impact on any live environments.  IT operations teams can import components from physical as well as virtualized multi-tier, multi-system environments with a “single click” for each component.  Although StackSafe uses virtualization to build the staging environment, the complexity associated with virtualization is handled in the background – eliminating complicated settings or configurations.

Multi-Purpose Testing

Test Center lets IT operations teams conduct testing on imported images around the clock, without requiring scheduled downtime by eliminating interaction with the production software infrastructure stacks.  A variety of software infrastructure tests for status, functionality, configuration, reliability, security, connectivity, and performance are included in Test Center.  Additionally, Test Center supports a user’s ability to build custom tests depending on the requirement.

Analysis and Reporting

StackSafe Test Center reporting capabilities give IT operations teams the ability to document and certify their testing work, which can feed directly into compliance, governance and oversight processes.  In the past, IT could not say with confidence that a change request or service request was safe.  With Test Center, change requests and proposed configurations can be tested in a safe, virtualized environment until they are either deemed safe or rejected because they will cause a failure or impact performance.

What differentiates StackSafe’s technology from others in the same space?

StackSafe is taking virtualization beyond server consolidation and has applied the technology to the pre-production testing process for IT operations.  By creating a virtual copy of the infrastructure stack, Test Center enables IT operations teams to thoroughly test changes prior to implementation as well as run a series of diagnostic tests to prevent future outages.  No other virtualization empowered testing solutions combines staging of production environments with pre-packaged testing and analysis for IT operations.

Is Test Center available today?

StackSafe released the first version of Test Center in January at the DEMO 08 show and is planning an upgrade to be released in Q2 2008. 

What do you think about StackSafe?  Leave your comments below.  Feedback about StartUp Beat?—email us at editor@startupbeat.com

May 23, 2008

Editor’s Notes: Google and Microsoft: Ready for a Challenge?; Startups Go Reality TV

Sneaking up on Google and Microsoft – More-and-more, Google and Microsoft appear to be facing off on the future of Internet search and online advertising.  So, does this mean a loss of focus and an opening for a new, innovative company to eat into their respective market shares?  Hint: Think Google’s early days and Yahoo!’s market position back then.  Here’s Larry Dignan’s take: In search of: Startups that could upend Google and Microsoft

American Idol for Tech Startups – Would you enter your startup in this reality TV competition?: Reality TV Show for Startups Announced

May 20, 2008

Featured Company: Syncplicity

Syncplicity logo

Web Site: www.syncplicity.com 

Headquarters: San Francisco
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Leonard Chung, CEO; Isaac Hall, Vice President of Technology; Ondrej Hrebicek, Vice President of Product and Platform
Investors: Angel investors
Employees: 4 plus part-time contractors
Company News: www.syncplicity.com/Press

 

By Leonard Chung, CEO

 

Leonard Chung, SyncplicitySyncplicity is a company with a simple goal: eliminate the limitations, headaches, and worries associated with user data.  We have built a product that ensures your files are always available, wherever and whenever you need them—automatically.  

Chores such as backing up or emailing files back and forth are a thing of the past.  Create a letter on your desktop, and it’ll be on your laptop, waiting for you.  Use Google Docs or want to view your letter on your cell phone?  No problem—your letter is already there, ready to go.  Sharing your letter with co-workers?  They’ve already got the latest version.  Any edits they make are safely synchronized and every file along the way has been backed up so there is never any risk of data loss.  All of this is done seamlessly.  Syncplicity is the only product that never asks you to change the way you work or forces you to create new places to store your data.  Just install Syncplicity and leave your worries behind.

The Real Cost of Data

 

Quick: name the most important part of your computer.  It’s a bit of a trick question as the most important and expensive part of a computer isn’t something you can touch like the processor or hard drive.  It’s your data.  Data is the only part of your computer that increases in value over time.  Over time, your data becomes more valuable as you invest more time and money while the rest of your computer loses value.

 

Think of how much time and money you spend taking care of your data.  If you do a good job, it’s costly, difficult, and monotonous.  The time and money spent managing copies across a desktop and laptop or between home and at work, spent tracking and emailing files back-and-forth to share and collaborate with others, and spent protecting data with backups is high.  If you do a bad job, the time and money lost to inconvenience (going to work and realizing the file you wanted is still at home) or catastrophe (your hard drive crashes) is even higher.

Eliminate Headaches

 

Given that data is the most important part of a computer, why is it still so hard to deal with?  Why hasn’t there been a solution that is broadly adopted?  There are many specialized products available today that do everything from backing up files to uploading photos to Web sites.  We founded Syncplicity around the realization that these products were as much of the problem as they were the solution.  The costs and headaches of losing and managing data were just replaced with learning and managing multiple products, each devoted to a small sliver of the overall problem.  Backup and folder sharing software, Web site word processors, and photo uploaders, oh my!  Users didn’t want multiple products, but instead a single solution.  They wanted their data to be available anywhere, anytime they needed it, but they didn’t want to just replace one type of headache for another.

We built Syncplicity around three simple ideas:

 

Users must have their data readily and safely available anywhere and anytime it’s needed.

 

Always remove and never add complexity. Make a complete and user-friendly solution that works the way people do rather than the other way around.

 

Data should be active and mobile: it should never be held back by barriers such as those between machines, users, and Web sites.

Why Syncplicity?

 

Taking these ideas to heart, we’ve built a one-of-a-kind, complete solution that eliminates headaches for consumers and businesses. Here’s just a taste of some of the features that set Syncplicity apart:

 

The only complete solution: Never buy, learn, and deal with the hassles of multiple data management products.  

 

Syncplicity is the only solution that does it all.\Real-Time Backup: Murphy’s Law doesn’t pay attention to the clock.  Syncplicity backs up and versions your files not once a month, once a week, or even once an hour, but immediately.  Create a masterpiece only to accidentally delete it three seconds later?  Skip the sinking feeling.  Just go straight to the Syncplicity Web site and get your precious data back.

 

Sharing made Simple: Instantly share any folder with anyone with a simple click of the mouse.  Because your files are already in Syncplicity, others get access right away.  And if they choose to use the Syncplicity client, the files simply show up on their computers.

 

Access anytime, anywhere: Access your files while away from your computer through the Syncplicity Web site.  At friend’s computer, and need to print out a file?  Grab it from the Web and print it out.  Find a typo along the way?  No worries. Just make the change and upload it back.  The edited version will be waiting for you on your computer when you return.

 

Multiple Computers, One View: Keep all of your computers in sync.  With Syncplicity, it doesn’t matter which machine you use.  Writing a letter at home on your desktop, but need to run?  No problem!  Just save the file like you normally would, grab your laptop and go.  Your letter will be on your laptop, ready and waiting.

 

Works the way you do: Pleasant and powerful.  The Syncplicity client is built to be second to none.  It intelligently synchronizes your computer and never requires any configuration.

Syncplicity’s Simple Interface

 

The Web and Desktop, together at last: Syncplicity is the only solution that bridges the online and offline worlds.  Think with “and” instead of “or.” A document is no longer in Google Docs or Microsoft Word.  With Syncplicity, you have the choice to use the best tool for the job.  Write a letter in Microsoft Word and share it using Google Docs.

 

Syncplicity is currently free while in beta.  After beta, it will be available at a competitive monthly price for both consumers and businesses.

 

If you would like to learn more about Syncplicity, please visit our Web site at www.syncplicity.com.  We are also actively pursuing partnerships and trials for businesses.  If you are interested in these opportunities, please send an email to partners@syncplicity.com.

 

What do you think about Syncplicity?  Leave your comments below.  Feedback about StartUp Beat?—email us at editor@startupbeat.com

May 01, 2008

Editor's Notes: eHow; Pluggd; Big $$ for Chinese Tech Firms

eHow Featured in NY Times -  This week, the New York Times included a feature about the budding online "how to" industry that included eHow.com, a company featured on StartUp Beat.  It's an interesting business that sort of melds social networking with useful Internet search.  Users Demand Expertise at How-To Web Sites

Foreign Investment in China Tech Grows - Despite the economic slowdown, investors seem to still be bullish about Chinese technology companies.  From the Wall Street Journal: Tudou Raises $57 Million

Pluggd CEO to Speak at Digital Hollywood - Alex Castro, CEO of Pluggd, a StartUp Beat featured company, will be a part of the "Online Video": TV-Broadband Programming, Content & Advertising Innovation" panel at next week's Digital Hollywood conference.  Pluggd enables advanced online video search.


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