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Category: News

  • The Rise of the Worker-Friendly Data Center

    cyrusone-slide

    The recreation area at the new CyrusOne data center in Carrollton, Texas features a spiral slide between stories, fitness machines, a rock climbing wall and a putting green. (Photo: Rich Miller)

    CARROLLTON, Texas – As you walk through the new CyrusOne data center near Dallas, the tour winds through a modern cafeteria with a stylish eating area, an annex housing foosball tables, and a gaming nook with an advanced video game system. This opens onto one of the most unique spaces in the facility – a two-story recreation area featuring a climbing wall, putting green, and a spiral slide allowing a speedy trip from the fitness machines on the upper level.

    The recreation area at CyrusOne reflects a new focus on the data center as a work space for busy professionals, complete with amenities to help them be more productive and unwind a bit. Data centers are designed primarily to house thousands of servers, but the nondescript concrete bunker of the past is giving way to campuses optimized for humans, complete with comfortable offices, conference rooms, theaters and gaming areas.

    “We are pairing all our next generation facilities with industry-best office space so it’s a uniquely comfortable experience for our customers,” says Kevin Timmons, CTO at CyrusOne. “They will have ample room to relax, connect, or grab an espresso in an environment a short stroll away from their infrastructure.”

    Differentiating Multi-Tenant Facilities

    It’s a trend seen primarily in multi-tenant data centers, where customer amenities offer an opportunity to differentiate a facility in a competitive market. This has meant more attention to the needs of data center staff, a unique breed of workers that historically have had to labor in 100-degree hot aisles, work on laptop carts, and traverse man-traps and biometric security just to get to the restroom.

    CyrusOne, which offers both colocation cages and wholesale suites, is among a growing number of companies seeking to create more comfortable working environments for data center staff.

    • At Vantage Data Centers, office space and other customer amenities account for about about 20 percent of the space in its new 60,000 square-foot facility in Santa Clara, Calif. In addition to two 20,000 square foot (3 megawatt) data halls, the building includes 12,000 square feet of conference rooms, kitchenettes, locker rooms with showers and Class A office space.
    • The hallways of the RagingWire Enterprise facility in Ashburn, Virginia, are lined with original artwork, including some pieces created by RagingWire staffer Julie Bjorgum from recycled materials from the construction of the facility. The data center also features abundant office space and conference rooms, as well as a colorful break area and dining space, and a separate area for gaming and video.
    • The SuperNAP in Las Vegas also features many visual flourishes usually seen in enterprise office space and includes a plush theater that is available for customer events.
    •  IO has nearly 80,000 square feet of office space at its huge IO Phoenix data center, which also includes meeting rooms and several amphitheaters.

    CyrusOne’s Timmons says the focus on amenities was driven by demand from customers, who have quickly snapped up all the available office space in the company’s Texas facilities. When Timmons and his team set out to design new facilities in Phoenix and Dallas, they included a generous office component in each project.

    The Phoenix facility features 96,000 square feet of Class A office space and conference rooms, complete with a glass atrium and facade. In Dallas, CyrusOne has 30,000 square feet of office space for its headquarters operations, and another 30,000 square feet of office space for customers, plus the cafeteria, conference rooms and recreation areas.

    These customer-friendly flourishes have their greatest value in the premier data center markets – including Silicon Valley, northern Virginia and Dallas – where customers can choose between a number of service providers. But they also hold appeal for enterprises that operate data centers at their headquarters buildings or on a corporate campus, where the servers are within walking distance of office space for IT staff. These companies with on-premises data centers are a key target audience for multi-tenant data centers, and the availability of office space and amenities could ease the decision to shift gear to third-party facilities.

    Here’s a look at some of the other amenities at the CyrusOne Dallas facility:

    cyrusone-carrollton-cafeter

    The data center features a cafeteria and dining area with a sleek modern design. (Photo: Rich Miller)

    A vending machine is fully stocked with a variety of cables and connectors that customers may need, provided at cost by CyrusOne. (Photo: Rich Miller)

    Not your ordinary vending machine: This unit is fully stocked with a variety of cables and connectors that customers may need, provided at cost by CyrusOne. (Photo: Rich Miller)

  • Why a Dish takeover of Sprint would be fascinating

    Why a Dish takeover of Sprint would be fascinating
    Pay-TV operator Dish has made a dramatic bid for Sprint in an effort to elbow SoftBank aside. The company’s $25.5 billion bid is 13% above the offer SoftBank had made previously. What makes the situation so fascinating is the strong growth of mobile video consumption over the past year. In a recent interview with AdGent, the advertising platform company pointed out that browser-based video viewing is now the No.1 activity on tablets, growing faster than app usage. In a separate interview, David Steinberg from XL Marketing remarked that mobile video ads now have roughly three times higher CPM than app ads.

    Continue reading…

  • Facebook Partners with State Attorneys General for New Privacy Initiative

    Facebook, who is always fighting an uphill battle to when it comes to privacy and users’ trust, has just announced a joint initiative with the National Association of Attorneys General that they say will “provide teens and their parents with tools and tips to manage their privacy and visibility both on Facebook and more broadly on the Internet.”

    The consumer safety education initiative will see Facebook and the NAAG partner for a series of instructional videos and other privacy tips.

    For instance, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg will be featured in 19 different state-specific PSAs. She will stand alongside 19 state Attorneys General in the videos, which will be released on Tuesday.

    “At Facebook, we work hard to make sure people understand how to control their information and stay safe online. We’re always looking for new partners in that endeavor – that’s why we’re thrilled to collaborate with the National Association of Attorneys General,” said Sandberg.

    The privacy education initiative will also consists of a “What you Can Do to Control Your Information” video that will look to provide basic tips on Facebook privacy, bully prevention, and internet safety in general. Facebook will also provide a new privacy tip sheet. At of this info will be posted on Facebook’s Safety page, as well as the official websites and pages of all the Attorneys General.

    “Teenagers and adults should know there are tools to help protect their online privacy when they go on Facebook and other digital platforms,” Gansler said. “We hope this campaign will encourage consumers to closely manage their privacy and these tools and tips will help provide a safer online experience. Of course, attorneys general will continue to actively protect consumers’ online privacy as well,” said NAAG President and Maryland AG Douglas Gansler.

  • Pinterest Is Now Available On Nook, Will Come Preloaded On New Devices

    Nook isn’t doing that well for itself these days, but the Barnes & Noble subsidiary isn’t giving up. In fact, it’s pushing for more content than ever before to establish itself as a viable competitor in the cheap tablet space.

    Nook announced today that Pinterest is now available on Nook HD, Nook HD+, Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices. The app is available from the Nook store, but it will also come preloaded with any new Nook device sold.

    “Pinterest has long been one of our most requested apps and we are thrilled to bring it to Nook, along with the Twitter and Facebook for NOOK apps,” said Claudia Romanini, Vice President of Nook Apps, Nook Media LLC. “Our goal is to bring Nook users the very best in social media and these apps will bring to life the rich sharing experiences that Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter offer.”

    Alongside Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter will also come preloaded on all new Nook devices. The Facebook app received an update that overhauls the experience to mimic what users expect out of a Facebook app on other mobile devices. With the new app, users can “see what their friends are up to, share updates, photos and videos, chat and have group conversations, play games and much more.”

    The addition of Pinterest is just the latest move from Nook to make its platform more desirable to consumers. It recently launched Nook Press, a new version of Barnes & Noble’s popular PubIt! platform that allows independent authors to self-publish their titles on Nook. If it takes off, we could see Nook devices starting to sell well again as people clamor for exclusive content from up-and-coming authors.

  • Signal Ops Review (PC)

    Signal Ops is a unique video game experience created by Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation, which aims to take the first-person shooter mechanics and radically innovate it by giving players a chance to indirectly control a team of four members using monitors and mediated commands.

    The official description from the developers says Signal Ops is a multi-perspectiv… (read more)

  • HP Converged Infrastructure Reference Architecture Design Guide

    The modern data center environment has become the heart of almost any organization. Because of this, there has become a greater emphasis on creating efficiency around data center systems. This means eliminating complex distributed resource platforms in favor of optimized converged infrastructures.

    In HP’s Architecture Design Guide, you are able to see how information technology as a “service” has moved from concept to reality. Early adopters have already deployed major solutions, and it has become a standard objective for mainstream Information Technology (IT) architects and planners. HP has adopted the term “Converged Infrastructure” to describe how HP products and services can address this approach. This Reference Architecture guide provides a business and technical view of the adoption process.

    Today’s IT demands span the data center, from capacity to technology, processes, people, and governance. In this technical guide, HP outlines how its Converged Infrastructure opens the door to new approaches, and can enable IT management to defer or avoid costly data center expansions. For example:

    • Simplification: Collapse siloed, hierarchical, point-to-point infrastructure into an easily managed, energy-efficient, and re-usable set of resources.
    • Enabling growth: Efficiently deploy new applications and services, with optimum utilization across servers, storage, networking, and power.
    • On-demand delivery: Deliver applications and services through a common framework that can leverage on-premise, private cloud, and off-premise resources.
    • Employee productivity: Move resources from operations to innovation by increasing automation of application, infrastructure, and facility management.

    HP Converged Infrastructure enables organizations to achieve these goals while getting ahead of the growth curve and the cost curve. In working with data centers today, administrators must design environments capable of high density and efficient scalability.

    hpconverged2

    [Image source: HP: The transformation to HP Converged Infrastructure]

    This Reference Architecture Design Guide will outline all of the major components which fall into the HP Converged Infrastructure design. This includes:

    • Virtual resource pools
    • Working with FlexFabric
    • Using the Matrix Operating Environment

    Download HP’s Architecture Design Guide to learn how to create a more efficient data center platform. As the need for user density grows, it’s important to ensure that the right technologies are in place to help facilitate that expansion.

  • Cloudscaling, HP update their OpenStack clouds

    In dueling announcements Monday, Cloudscaling and Hewlett-Packard outlined advances to their respective OpenStack offerings.

    San Francisco-based Cloudscaling is one of the new-look OpenStack cloud providers. Unlike HP, IBM, Red Hat and even Rackspace, it doesn’t have to retrofit OpenStack into its legacy hardware or software and instead can focus on new applications and workloads.

    On Monday, Cloudscaling said it’s teaming up with Juniper Networks and will use that company’s Virtual Network Control to enable a new Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) feature that maps to VPCs in Amazon’s public cloud. Cloudscaling said its VPC can isolate elastic cloud resources from the outside world “without sacrificing the core benefits of elastic clouds.” Juniper and Cloudscaling will also work together to deploy Cloudscaling’s Open Cloud System 2.5 in customer accounts.

    Cloudscaling CEO Michael Grant.

    Cloudscaling CEO Michael Grant.

    The advantage of partnering with Juniper is that the company — by virtue of its acquisition of Contrail Networks — is moving into the software-defined networking market, Cloudscaling CEO Michael Grant said in an interview. SDN support means companies can rely on standard, inexpensive hardware and reconfigure it as needed in software.

    Cloudscaling is much smaller than many of its OpenStack colleagues/competitors and it made waves by announcing support for not only AWS APIs but with Google Compute Engine APIs as well — a bet that GCE, when it comes out of preview mode, will become the second largest public cloud available, Grant said. Fidelity with key AWS services is crucial — hence the new VPC capability — because the goal is to let customers move workloads and data up into the biggest of the big public cloud infrastructure with minimal muss and fuss. Oh, and bring it back down again, as needed.

    Hewlett-Packard has likewise made a big bet on OpenStack and this week said it has enabled HP CloudSystem, its private cloud, to “burst” workloads into other clouds. The Register has a more in-depth look here. Also by virtue of its support for the latest Openstack’s “Grizzly” release, OpenStack customers can use HP’s 3Par virtual storage. One key benefit of Grizzly is that it lets companies  mix and match storage subsystems from different vendors and manage them from one console.

    With so many OpenStack clouds, what about interop?

    Now that there are so many OpenStack clouds coming on line, the OpenStack Foundation and its members will have to address nagging concerns about interoperability between the various open source clouds.

    The OpenStack challenge is to offer a common denominator of interoperable technology that also acts as a foundation for higher-level services that vendors can provide.

    As Cloudscaling CTO (and OpenStack Foundation board member) Randy Bias explained recently: “The foundation needs to put a stamp on OpenStack — something like SQL 92  in the database world. Every [major relational] database — SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, runs that set of commands but then they diverge.The foundation’s intention in the short term is to put a stake in the ground around that baseline interop.”

    .

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • 3 talks to help you celebrate mathematician Leonhard Euler’s birthday

    Google-Doodle-Leonhard-EulerIf you’ve Googled anything this morning, you’ve probably noticed that the site’s logo features an orb-shaped graph instead of a second ‘o,’ plus all sorts of equations like “V –E + F = 2.” The doodle is an homage to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler, who was born on this day in 1707. The man responsible for geometry, trigonometry, algebra, number theory and infinitesimal calculus, he also made significant contributions to the world of physics, mechanics, fluid dynamics and astronomy. He’s considered one of the most game-changing mathematicians ever.

    Here, three great TED Talks about math to help you celebrate his birthday.

    And below, a painting of the man himself:

    Leonhard-Euler-main

  • Foxconn nearing new iPhone production, reports point to summer launch

    Reports are coming in that Apple’s chief manufacturing partner in China is hiring like crazy to start producing a new iPhone. On Monday the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both reported Foxconn is ramping up by recruiting thousands of workers in one of its main Chinese facilities.

    Bloomberg says the hiring began in mid-March at a Zhengzhou factory, that already has 250,000 to 300,000 people, for working on a new Apple device as well as older model iPhones. The Journal says Foxconn has been hiring 10,000 new workers for assembly line production each week since then.

    The Wall Street Journal got a quote from one unnamed Foxconn executive that works at the factory to corroborate the story:

    “We have been very busy recently as we will start mass-producing the new iPhone soon,” said a Zhengzhou-based executive who has direct knowledge of production plans.

    The timing of a prepping a new device for production would point to an earlier introduction than the fall, which the iPhone has seen for the past two years. And that does line up with other reports from earlier this month that Apple is planning on a summer iPhone launch.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • Matt Cutts Thinks You Should Consider Giving Up News

    An interesting Twitter exchange between Googlers Matt Cutts and Tim Bray:

     
     

    If you follow the adventures of Matt Cutts, you no doubt know that he regularly engages in “30 day challenges,” in which he spends a month focusing on some goal. For January, his challenge was “no news, no Twitter, fewer emails, and no social media in general”). It was a quiet time for Google algorithm update news to say the least.

    “In general, when I wanted to hop onto Techmeme or Google News or Hacker News or Twitter/Nuzzel, instead I opened up my to-do list,” Cutts wrote of his experience. “As a result, I got a ton of stuff done in January. I quickly learned that if something important was happening, I’d hear about it from someone else.”

    The article Cutts points to in the tweet above comes from The Guardian, and is called, “News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier”.

    According to that, news: misleads, is irrelevant, has no explanatory power, is toxic to your body, increases cognitive errors, inhibits thinking, works like a drug, wastes time, makes us passive, and kills creativity.

    It’s an interesting read. I’ll give it that.

  • Kevin Hart Arrested For Drunk Driving

    Comedian Kevin Hart was arrested this weekend on suspicion of DUI.

    According to a TMZ report, the comedian was stopped by the California Highway Patrol early on Sunday morning. The CHP claims that Hart was driving erratically and over the speed limit on the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles. The report also states that Hart was “unable to perform field sobriety tests.”

    Though most celebrities prefer to remain publicly silent about their arrests, or brush them aside as being inaccurately reported in the media, Hart has chosen to confront his DUI arrest head-on. Using his Twitter feed, Hart recalled his short stay in jail and even recounted his own version of the arrest, which includes him admitting to the CHP officer who pulled him over that he was drunk. He also stated that the incident is a “wake up call” for him and admitted that drinking & driving is “stupid.”

    Kevin Hart — Yup, I Was Drunk

    (Image courtesy Daijhnai Ragguette/Wikimedia Commons)

  • Samsung Galaxy S4 said to launch on April 26th at AT&T, May 30th at Verizon

    Samsung Galaxy S4 said to launch on April 26th at AT&T, May 30th at Verizon
    The delayed launch of HTC’s new flagship phone was obviously going to be a huge problem for the vendor, and now it looks as though the HTC One might only have a week at AT&T before the Samsung marketing machine looks to swoop in an steamroll it. Engadget reports that tentative launch dates have been set according to a leaked internal document from nationwide retailer Staples, which points to an April 26th launch for the flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone at AT&T. The document also pegs May 1st as the Galaxy S4’s tentative launch date at T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless seemingly plans to release the phone a month later on May 30th. The U.S. version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 features a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with full HD 1080p resolution, a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, up to 64GB of internal storage and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. An image of the purported leaked Staples document follows below.

    Continue reading…

  • Harvest Partners Buys AxelaCare

    Harvest Partners has completed the acquisition of AxelaCare Holdings Inc., buying the company from Denver-based buyout shop Excellere Partners. Terms were not disclosed. Harvest Partners is based in New York.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Harvest Partners, LP (“Harvest”), a New York-based private equity firm, and the management team of AxelaCare Holdings, Inc. (“AxelaCare” or the “Company”) have completed the acquisition of the Company from Excellere Partners, a Denver, CO-based private equity firm. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    Based in Lenexa, Kansas, AxelaCare is a full-service home infusion therapy provider. Therapies provided range from immune globulin (IG) therapy to antibiotics and nutrition therapy for patients across the United States. The Company also provides real value to practitioners, insurers and manufacturers through its proprietary outcomes management technology called CareLogix that monitors and measures the efficacy of IG therapy based on real-time outcomes and therapy response data.

    AxelaCare’s management team, including CEO Ted Kramm and President Kathee Kramm, will continue to lead the Company.

    “Healthcare is a key area of interest for Harvest and we have been impressed by AxelaCare’s rapid rise to become the fifth largest provider of IG therapy in the U.S. in just four years,” said Ira Kleinman, Senior Managing Director at Harvest Partners. “The company’s investment in processes, technology and people has led to an efficient, scaleable model with opportunity for continued growth as a larger share of the population seeks access to these vital services.”

    “We are pleased to partner with Ted and his team to guide the company’s organic growth as well as to pursue strategic acquisitions that will build on AxelaCare’s success,” added Jay Wilkins, Managing Director at Harvest.

    “We are proud of our proprietary technology, CareLogix, which will ensure a positive patient experience and superior medical outcome in a home setting. CareLogix has been a key factor in our ability to attract new referral sources, manufacturers, insurers and patients, and we look forward to further developing the technology in conjunction with our partners at Harvest,” said Ted Kramm, Chief Executive Officer.

    Senior debt was arranged by GE Capital, Ares Capital Corporation and BMO Capital Markets. Oaktree Capital Management and Northwestern Mutual Capital provided mezzanine debt financing. Jefferies and White & Case LLP advised Harvest. Houlihan Lokey and Greenberg Traurig LLP advised the Company.

    Ira D. Kleinman (Senior Managing Director), Jay Wilkins (Managing Director) and Paige Daly (Principal) of Harvest will be joining AxelaCare’s Board of Directors.

    About AxelaCare
    Founded in 2008, AxelaCare is a leading high-growth technology-enabled provider of home infusion services for chronic and acute conditions. The Company, based in Lenexa, Kansas, is the fifth largest and one of the fastest growing national providers of immune globulin (IG) treatment, supported by its patient-centric approach and clinical leadership. AxelaCare has leveraged its expertise to develop CareLogix, an innovative and proprietary outcomes technology to assess the impact of IG treatment, which helps optimize therapy management for patients and provides value to practitioners, insurers and manufacturers.

    About Harvest Partners
    Founded in 1981, Harvest Partners, LP (www.harvpart.com) is a leading New York-based private equity investment firm pursuing management buyouts and recapitalizations of middle market companies in North America. Harvest focuses on acquiring profitable companies in the business and industrial services, manufacturing and distribution, healthcare, midstream energy, and consumer products and retail sectors. This strategy leverages Harvest’s 31 years of experience in financing organic and acquisition-oriented growth companies.

    The post Harvest Partners Buys AxelaCare appeared first on peHUB.

  • GAO Report: Government Redundancy Could Easily Pay for Sequester

    The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued its third annual report exposing unnecessary duplication and overlapping programs throughout the federal government.[i] The report outlines more than $95 billion spent per year on duplicative programs and inefficient practices that is …

  • Facebook Home Has 47% 1-Star Reviews in the Google Play Store

    Well the reviews are in for Facebook’s OS-lite “app family” Android takeover, Home, and it’s not looking great – to say the least.

    Since hitting the Google Play store on Friday, nearly 4,000 users reviews have been logged (3.955). And out of those nearly 4,000 reviews, nearly half of them have given the app group a 1-star rating.

    Just over 47%, actually. There are nearly three times as many 1-star ratings as 5-star ratings.

    Let’s take a look at some of the 1-star reviews, shall we?

    Not an intuitive app. Made my phone so frustratingly complicated to use that I uninstalled after just four or five hours. Unless major changes are made including an easy way to get to my home screen I will not reinstall.

    Cool way to use facebook, but with no support for my other widgets, it limits my phone. If I wanted a single company to take over my homescreen appearance, I could use an iphone.

    This home app is garbage! Sucks your battery down. Doesn’t let other widgets run. And, to much stuff from people’s profile in your face 24/7.

    What the hell is facebook home doing? It’s a homescreen that invades your phone. There s no way at all to access your widgets…can’t see weather, time, nothing…what a big dud!

    So, it looks like the major complaints are that it’s invasive, doesn’t play well with others, and drains battery. To be fair, there are plenty of good and even great reviews for Facebook Home – but the negative outweighs the positive in a big way.

    As of right now, the average rating is a lackluster 2.4 out of 5.

    The way the Google Play operates, reviews are only accepted by people wo have actually downloaded the app in question. So we can assume that the majority of the nearly 1,900 1-star reviews are from people who are legitimately unimpressed with the app. By comparison, the basic Facebook app has a 3.6 average rating, Facebook Messenger sports a 4.4 average rating, and Facebook Pages Manager has a 3.8 average rating. So far, Facebook Home is the bad apple of the group.

  • Driving Front Line Innovation in Health Care

    Jennifer Stinson was a nurse at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto who enjoyed brainstorming new ideas for improving care, especially for the kids with cancer she treats. But even as she gained status by getting her PhD and becoming a clinician scientist, she came up against persistent bureaucratic and organizational barriers to innovation.

    Stinson’s challenge is common at big organizations, but overcoming bureaucracy and breaking down silos is especially critical in healthcare. To tackle these obstacles at SickKids, CEO Mary Jo Haddad in 2010 elevated innovation to a “strategic direction,” and engaged Innosight to help devise a full system needed to spur innovation. The resulting system has three major components:

    1. An Innovation blueprint detailing the types of innovations the organization wants to encourage. SickKids prioritized encouraging doctors, nurses and clinicians to look for unmet needs they could address, rather than wait for solutions from IT or top management. That required creating a focus group with 25 front-line healthcare workers to discover and catalog key “jobs to be done” (like reducing the length of hospital visits), surveying all 5,000 employees, and training most of them on how to integrate the innovation system into their daily practices.
    2. An innovation pipeline to reliably take ideas from concept to reality. This involved establishing a new 18-member Central Innovation Group of leaders from different areas of the hospital, a team that was tasked with prioritizing and advancing ideas and projects through various stages. The team helped innovators test prototypes, make adjustments, and then scale to a wider population.
    3. An innovation culture that features the right people, in the right roles, speaking a common language of innovation. A key enabler of this culture was the establishment of a $250,000 Innovation Fund to provide seed money for promising ideas. Now, instead of being stalled by permission hurdles that suppress initiative, promising new ideas could be funded, fast-tracked and prototyped.

    Consider how the new system helped Stinson bring a transformative innovation to life. Every year at SickKids, thousands of children are battling various forms of cancer. It’s vital that they keep accurate diaries tracking their pain, but if it’s not done daily the data are virtually worthless. Typically these diaries must be filled out by hand, an annoying task that children with cancer aren’t motivated to do. The result is poor reporting and suboptimal pain management.

    Stinson had the spark of a solution: use technology that kids love to turn the pain-reporting chore into a game. Her idea went into the pipeline before the hospital’s own innovation fund was set up, but with outside funding she set out to develop and test an iPhone/iPad-based pain diary. A design firm called Cundari contributed $80,000 in-kind services to develop the app. To motivate patients to complete the diary, Cundari and Stinson recruited support from two of Canada’s most popular police detective shows, Rookie Blue and Flashpoint, to provide actors and visuals for the reward system in the app. She called the app The Pain Squad. The numbers so far are impressive. Whereas pain reporting with paper diaries yielded compliance rates below 50%, and Web-based diaries yielded 70%, Pain Squad has boosted rates to more than 90%.

    The hospital is now scaling the innovation by making the app a standard part of care, and other hospitals in Canada are adopting it too. This spring, SickKids will launch it for free on the Apple AppStore for hospitals all over the world.

    A different kind of idea came from Dr. Darius Bagli, a senior urologist who was frustrated with a patient billing system based on “paper, paper, paper.” Although Canada is a single-payer system, hospitals must still track all procedures so that the hospital and its doctors are properly paid. At SickKids, only 30% of procedures were being filed accurately and on time. “We were doing the worst job imaginable,” Bagli says.

    The traditional route to solving such a problem would be to mandate that IT develop a solution over a period of perhaps a year or two. Bagli believed billing could be done better and a solution implemented more quickly by creating a simple one-screen billing app for the iPad. With a $10,000 grant from the new innovation fund, Bagli went from idea to pilot in three months. His App is now in used throughout several departments in the hospital. In urology, billing compliance rates went from below 50% to higher than 99%. “The thing practically paid for itself during the three month urology pilot alone, and will generate ten times, maybe twenty times that in one year,” Bagli says. “The funds we bring in will easily buy tablets for every department, with plenty recovered to fund other initiatives.”

    The mobile billing and Pain Squad apps are just two of dozens of innovation projects that are making their way through the SickKids pipeline. By unleashing the creativity of front-line providers, SickKids has rapidly introduced low-cost innovations with big impacts. It’s a model that should be widely adopted.

  • Razorsight Inks $3M Debt Financing

    Razorsight, a provider of cloud-based analytics for the communications industry, has sealed a $3 million loan facility from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation. The money will be used for expansion.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Razorsight, the global leader in cloud-based analytics for the communications industry, announced that the company has closed a $3 million loan facility from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation HRZN -0.90% (“Horizon”). The new financing will support Razorsight’s continued product and market expansion.

    “In response to increasing demand by the world’s leading communications providers, Razorsight is accelerating our global expansion and product roadmap,” said Razorsight CEO Charlie Thomas. “This new funding will help extend Razorsight’s leadership in developing cutting edge analytics capabilities that improve our customers’ financial performance.”

    “Razorsight is the pioneer and market leader in cloud-based business intelligence and analytics solutions for the communications industry,” said Gerald A. Michaud, President of Horizon. “The company’s platform technology is the industry benchmark for telecom, mobile and cable companies that seek to drive measurable value from their big data. We are pleased to provide Razorsight with capital to further accelerate their strong market momentum worldwide.”

    About Razorsight Razorsight’s cloud-based analytics software is used by the world’s largest communications providers to improve profits. Razorsight monitors network and subscriber activities to control costs, predict churn, gain insight into M2M and OTT activity, and measure profitability by customer, service type, or region. Customers benefit from unlocking key strategic insights to increase customer lifetime value (CLV). Razorsight’s highly scalable, cloud applications are non-intrusive, easy to install, require no capital investment, and have delivered millions of dollars in profit gains at industry leaders including AT&T, Verizon, Telus, Comcast, Cbeyond, CenturyLink, Facebook, Windstream, T-Mobile, Telekomunikacja Polska (TP Group), Tata and IBM.

    About Horizon Technology Finance Horizon Technology Finance Corporation is a business development company that provides secured loans to development-stage companies backed by established venture capital and private equity firms within the technology, life science, healthcare information and services, and clean-tech industries. The investment objective of Horizon Technology Finance is to maximize total risk-adjusted returns by generating current income from a portfolio of directly originated secured loans as well as capital appreciation from warrants to purchase the equity of portfolio companies. Headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut, with regional offices in Walnut Creek, California and Reston, Virginia, the Company is externally managed by its investment advisor, Horizon Technology Finance Management LLC. Horizon’s common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol, “HRZN.” In addition, the Company’s 7.375% Senior Notes due 2019 trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “HTF.” To learn more, please visit www.horizontechnologyfinancecorp.com.

    The post Razorsight Inks $3M Debt Financing appeared first on peHUB.

  • Suppliers say Microsoft planning a smartwatch: It’s almost past time

    Microsoft is considering a smartwatch device, reportedly having asked parts suppliers to provide suitable hardware earlier in the year. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft hasn’t yet committed to the project, which will use a small touchscreen for the watch face. Time may be against the company if it waits too long.

    Image 4 for post Channel 9 shows the SPOT watch( 2004-09-22 20:35:11) As someone who bought a Microsoft smartwatch in 2004 — did anyone else purchase a SPOT Watch? — I’m confident the company has the know-how to build a wearable gadget. My SPOT Watch offered news, weather, calendar notifications and other useful data on my wrist.

    The idea was sound, but Microsoft made a fatal mistake: It used FM radio signals for the watch’s connectivity, right as mobile broadband technology was getting off the ground. As a result, the limited, one-way network technology for SPOT Watches was quickly outdated.

    That issue was one of market timing and I can’t help but wonder as to the timing of this report. From the Zune music player to the new Surface RT hardware and now a potential smartwatch, it seems like Microsoft is chasing form factors instead of leading innovation.

    It’s been clear, for example, that the PC industry has been undergoing a radical shift in both sales and demand for the past few years. Why? There are many reasons — economic and hardware longevity, for example — but a new market for consumer tablets in early 2010 is a key one. Yet, Microsoft couldn’t react quickly enough: Surface RT, with its touch-friendly interface, didn’t hit the market until late 2012.

    The wearable gadget market started gaining attention last year — see the Pebble, MetaWatch and others — so if Microsoft wants to be a serious contender here, it needs to pick up the pace. It’s not too late yet; the market for wearable gadgets is just getting started. The last thing Microsoft needs right now, however, is for an Apple iWatch or Google Now timepiece to hit the market sooner rather than later.

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  • Fredrick Scott Launches Firm

    Fredrick D. Scott, formerly the head of ACI Capital Group, has launched a venture capital and private equity firm, FDS. The firm will focus on minority-focused financial and banking institutions.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Fredrick D. Scott announced today that he has launched Fredrick D. Scott, LLC (FDS). FDS is a venture capital and private equity firm that will principally invest in and acquire minority-focused financial and banking institutions.

    Scott was formerly the head of ACI Capital Group, LLC (ACI). Founded in August 2009 and registered as an Investment Advisor with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, ACI was a privately held investment banking and advisory firm that managed $3.7 billion in assets.

    “My goal is to redefine and advocate for economic sustainability and wealth creation in our community,” said Scott. “The minority banking industry, more specifically the African American owned banking segment, is fragmented and under tremendous pressure from larger and more robustly capitalized mainstream competitors who have embraced the growing diversity of the marketplace. I believe that, in addition to capital, I can contribute fresh energy and new strategies that would improve the competitive posture of African-American owned banking and financial services businesses, as well as advance the mission of multi-generational economic strength and wealth creation in our community.”

    The number of African-American owned banks across the United States has dwindled. In 1994, 54 such banks were identified by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). At the end of 2012, there were just 28, leaving huge swaths of the African-American community without advocates and access to these traditionally “mission-based” institutions. Most, had close ties to the local churches, families and businesses, had historically served as a boon to black businesses, and offered African-Americans resources they had been previously denied.

    Named one of Ebony magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30″ in May 2010 at the age of 26, Scott was, at the time, the youngest African American hedge fund founder in history. For more about Scott, go to www.fredrickdscott.com and follow him on Twitter @fredrickdscott.

    SOURCE Fredrick D. Scott, LLC

    The post Fredrick Scott Launches Firm appeared first on peHUB.

  • John Galardi Dies; Wienerschnitzel Founder Was 75

    John Galardi, the founder of restaurants such as Wienerschnitzel, has died at the age of 75.

    According to the Galardi Group, Galardi died on Saturday after battling pancreatic cancer. He is survived by his wife, Judane, and four children.

    Galardi founded his first restaurant, Der Wienerschnitzel, in 1961 at the age of 23. The business began as a stand in Wilmington, Los Angeles. The hotdog-based chain grew, and now has over 350 franchise restaurants located in California and the Southwestern U.S.

    In 1979, Galardi founded The Original Hamburger Stand restaurants, which competed with other burger-based fast food restaurants in the U.S. Southwest. In 2003, the Galardi Group also acquired the Tastee-Freez company and has begun serving Tastee-Freez soft serve ice cream in Wienerschnitzel restaurants.

    Galardi handed over leadership of his company in 1993, though he remained chairman of the Galardi Group until his death.