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More evidence that boring enterprise IT is not so boring anymore: Ignition Partners has launched (and already closed) a new $150 million fund focused on technologies that businesses will buy and implement.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based early-stage VC firm will also open an office in Palo Alto, Calif. to better attack these opportunities, said Frank Artale, general partner who will run this new fund, informally dubbed Ignition V. The company brought on Nick Sturiale, a new partner, to run that office.

“We think that businesses and people who work in businesses have been largely underserved for the past 15 years,”  Artale said in a recent interview.

The goal of the dual offices is to promote cross-pollination and collaboration. ”We want to do real social networking here — not just Facebook stuff,” Artale added. “Palo Alto and the Bay Area are super important as great entrepreneurial engines — Cisco, Oracle and other companies down there spit out great entrepreneurs.”

Goal: Apps that combine consumer ease of use with enterprise utility

Ignition has some credibility in the enterprise. Several team members – including Artale, John Connors, and Cameron Myhrvold — are former Microsoft executives. And previous investments include Cloudera, Splunk, Zenprise, DocuSign, Opscode, Parse and Bromium.

New enterprise applications have to work well and look good on laptops and PCs, but also on tablets and phones as the consumerization of IT trend continues, he said.

Artale which described the new fund as “slightly oversubscribed”  took three months to fund. Investors include new and existing university endowments, pension funds and investment companies. Ignition V is smaller than the previous fund, which weighed in at $400 million but will also focus more — eschewing investments in telecom and consumer internet companies, Artale said.

The notion that enterprise IT is back as a hot category is cropping up all over. New vendors — large and small — are building consumer-grade products but for business use. Pivotal Initiative chief Paul Maritz spoke in depth about this at the recent Structure: Data conference in New York and the topic will doubtless crop up again at Structure in San Francisco in June.

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We all know based on M&A activity that marketing automation is big. Now, Marketo has filed for an initial public offering valued at $75 million, according to an SEC filing.

The news broke just hours after data visualization fan favorite Tableau filed for a $150 million IPO of its own. The public offerings are seen as validation that companies that build business-to-business software are hot right now.

In November, San Mateo, Calif.-based Marketo raised $50 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, bringing total funding to date for the 7-year-old company. And category leader Hubspot raked in $35 million in mezzanine funding to bring its total trove to $100 million.

In December, Oracle dropped $871 million to buy Eloqua; a month later InfusionSoft, which focuses on marketing automation for smaller companies, netted $54 million in new funding.

Marketing automation vendors aim to help customers find and qualify sales leads — gleaning attractive prospects from sources including online ads but also from Facebook, Twitter and other sources. The goal is to prequalify these prospects and convert them into actual sales.

Many companies now use an inefficient hodgepodge of processes and products for this purpose. Given that chief marketing officers are now seen as having huge influence on IT purchases, vendors are chasing that constituency.

Marketo’s ticker symbol will be “MKTO” and shares will trade on NASDAQ. VentureBeat has more on the offering.

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For many Toyota Tundra fans the 2014 re-design was a huge disappointment, what does that mean for the 2015 edition? The truck landscape is going to change dramatically in 2014, will Toyota respond? If so, here is our list of changes we see or would like to see.

Before we begin with our list, let’s understand that in the fall of 2014, we will see the GM Twins re-introduced with some impressive MPG and towing gains on Ford without a big price increase. Ram will release their diesel version of the 1500. Ford will undoubtedly counter this challengers in 2015, will Toyota follow suit. If they want to keep their market share, they had better. Plus, we are getting closer to those 2016 CAFE standards that will force all manufactures to implement new systems to get better MPG.

Let’s also be clear that there will probably not be any big changes in 2015 rather just modifications. However, who knows with the fast pace of changes coming from other manufactures.

Definite Changes:

1. Trim Packages Changes – some of the trim package offerings will probably be “re-evaluated” and we could see tires and navigation systems moved up and down trim offerings. Granted not a big change and at all, but very likely to happen.
2. Minor Aerodynamic Improvements – odds are high that after substantial real-world testing by 2014 owners, Toyota engineers will improve the truck’s aerodynamics. This will probably be accomplished by enhancing the benefits of the Aerofins and by improving the fit and finish of exterior pieces. This won’t be a substantial change, rather small changes.
3. Direct Injection – You know it has to come out at some point. Why not in 2015? Toyota is really falling behind by not offering it yet.
4. Engine stop-start. We thought this system would have been in the 2014 edition, but it wasn’t. Look this system is not without its critics, however, with the looming CAFE standards looming in 2016, Toyota is going to have to start doing something.

Likely Changes:

We thought these would come in 2014. They should be coming, is 2015 the year?

1. Variable valve lift. Variable valve timing (VVT) is commonplace, but variable valve lift is still a newer feature on most vehicles. Toyota, long a fan of VVT, currently has a couple of engines running a variable-valve lift system. This should make it’s way into all Toyota vehicles in by the middle of the decade.
2. Electric steering. Hydraulic steering pumps are less efficient than electric motors. GM and Ford both plan to move this into their full-size trucks soon, and Toyota will likely follow. In fact, this will be a common feature industry wide.

Possible Changes:

1. Future Powertrain Engine Announcement. We all know that Toyota is really tight-lipped on future plans, but with the rush from Ram and GM to offer diesels in the compact and ½ ton market, Toyota HAS to be planning something. Or well, we HOPE they are planning on something. Could they pull a Nissan and make a major announcement at the Chicago Auto Show?
2. Rock Warrior with a Rear Locking Differential. It is unlikely that all Toyota Tundra’s will get a locking rear differential, but it should be part of the Rock Warrior package. When is Toyota going to get serious about competing with the other off-road machines (Ford SVT Raptor or Ram Runner)? Adding a stock rear locking differential to a small package truck isn’t rock science and can be integrated into the assembly process. There are after-market suppliers waiting in droves to help Toyota get this accomplished. With the new “truck” guy in Mike Sweers directing the future of the truck, this should be on the table.

Unlikely Changes:

HD version. There are a host of reasons that there won’t be a HD version with a diesel fuel option. Among the biggest? Lack of infrastructure and incredible obstacles in this category with regards to brand loyalty.

6.5’ bed. No we don’t really understand why they don’t offer it either, but they don’t. Unless, the 6.5′ foot bed catches fire with other truck makers, it is highly unlikely Toyota will offer this.

* We didn’t mention a larger fuel tank because, well, we don’t really know for sure if it is or it isn’t in the 2014 edition. Trust us though that if it isn’t coming, we will hammer our Toyota contacts to know why.

That’s our list, what’s yours? What was missing in the 2014 announcement that you would like to see?

The post 2015 Toyota Tundra What to Expect – 2014 Shortfalls? appeared first on Tundra Headquarters Blog.

Sometimes we have to be shocked into seeing something that was there all along.

For a senior executive I’ll call Karen, one of those defining moments came most unexpectedly when her boss tried to give her a one-line performance review for the third year in a row.

Before Karen was promoted to vice president, her annual evaluations had included detailed comments that guided her professional growth. This year, she was determined to elicit specific feedback, especially since she had just endured a stressful year leading a major project that defined the company’s future.

But when she pressed for more specifics, the president simply said, “I trust you to continue doing what you do so well, and I expect you’ll ask for my help if you need it.”

In that moment, she realized something profound: He was telling her that she was free. She was in charge of her own considerable domain — and her own life. Somehow, amid the pressures to meet operational goals and balance budgets, she had failed to notice the full implications of that shift.

She wanted to make sure she understood correctly. “You mean to say that I can push the envelope as far as I want, as long as I believe it is in the best interest of the company, and you’ll tell me when I’ve gone too far?”

He nodded his agreement. She was buoyed by the possibilities that her newfound freedom presented, and at the same time, she felt the weight of the responsibility this change implied. Before she even made it to the door, Karen started thinking about how she could take ownership — and advantage — of this situation.

What opportunities are right in front of you that you’ve yet to notice? I had one of those “aha” moments a few years ago when my then eight-year-old son asked me to pour him a glass of milk. As usual, I reflexively rose to get it for him even though he was standing right next to the refrigerator. This time, however, I noticed that he could easily reach everything he needed to get it for himself and probably could have done so for a couple of years already. Now that I’d noticed, I told him he could get his own milk from now on. Emptying the dishwasher soon made its way onto his chore list too.

Once back in her office, Karen acknowledged to herself that she’d been getting little pleasure from her work in the past several months. An increase in regulatory scrutiny in her industry required her to spend a great deal of time on compliance matters that bored her. She thought about how she could experience more joy at work. It would clearly require spending more time on projects she enjoyed and less on efforts that left her feeling drained. But how could she pull that off?

As she considered her options, she remembered that one of her colleagues had once contemplated a legal career. She wondered if he would be interested in taking over her compliance work. To her delight, he was excited to take on this project, which would involve his working extensively with the firm’s in-house counsel. In exchange, Karen took on one of his projects, an initiative that played more to her strengths in operations and large-scale project management and involved working with a vendor to implement a new computerized business-support system.

Once she was aware of her freedom, she took full advantage of it. In the process of breaking free of her least-favorite responsibility, she helped a colleague find more pleasure in his own work. What’s more, this redistribution of responsibilities better matched their respective skill sets. Within a few short weeks, both initiatives had advanced much more quickly than they had in the previous months.

Like Karen, you probably have more latitude to define your work than you realize. If you were free to approach your work differently, what would you change in order to boost your satisfaction and effectiveness?

• Give yourself time to think about your professional experience. What can you do to increase the percentage of your time devoted to projects that bring you joy and fulfillment?

• Give careful consideration to what you and your teammates can do to boost your levels of engagement, enjoyment, and contribution.

A major reason Karen hadn’t recognized, until her moment of truth, how much freedom she had was that she had never received formal leadership training. She is not alone. That’s often the case for people who are promoted because they are great engineers or physicians, for example. But the qualities that made them exceptional individual contributors didn’t prepare them for the challenges they later faced leading teams or projects.

Along with the freedom that comes with being the boss is the obligation to know what you don’t know and secure the resources you need to excel in your role. Seek out the professional development opportunities that will give you the tools you need to lead effectively. Consider working with an executive coach if you don’t know where to start or if you feel that you would benefit from individual attention.

You may not have much latitude to define the kinds of tasks you do at work. But no matter what your role, it’s likely that you have great freedom to define how you accomplish your assigned responsibilities. It’s up to you to find those opportunities and make the most of them.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has clarified its rules on Regulation Fair Disclosure, saying that public companies can use social media outlets like Facebook or Twitter to announce key company information – just so long as the investors are made aware which social media accounts may be posting such information beforehand.

“The SEC’s report of investigation confirms that Regulation FD applies to social media and other emerging means of communication used by public companies the same way it applies to company websites,” says the SEC.

The SEC didn’t recognize company websites as proper disclosure channels until 2008.

“One set of shareholders should not be able to get a jump on other shareholders just because the company is selectively disclosing important information,” said George Canellos, Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Most social media are perfectly suitable methods for communicating with investors, but not if the access is restricted or if investors don’t know that’s where they need to turn to get the latest news.”

This ruling stems from an SEC investigation into the Facebook activities of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. Back in December of 2012, Hastings ran afoul of the SEC when he made a post on Facebook announcing that the company had topped 1 billion hours of streaming per month.

The SEC claimed the post violated Regulation FD, as the disclosure didn’t appear in an official filing or a press release. Hastings had not disclosed to investors that he would be using his Facebook page to report important information.

Just a couple of months ago, Hastings made it clear that he wouldn’t be backing down on this, as he felt that he did nothing wrong.

“I wasn’t setting out to set an example. I was sharing something to these 200,000 people,” Hastings said. “I’m not going to back down and say it’s inappropriate. I think it’s perfectly fine. Sometimes you’re just the example that triggers the debate.”

In clarifying these rules the SEC has also cleared Hastings, saying that they recognize that there had been market uncertainly about Regulation FD and social media. Thus the need for the clarifications.

“The report of investigation explains that although every case must be evaluated on its own facts, disclosure of material, nonpublic information on the personal social media site of an individual corporate officer — without advance notice to investors that the site may be used for this purpose — is unlikely to qualify as an acceptable method of disclosure under the securities laws. Personal social media sites of individuals employed by a public company would not ordinarily be assumed to be channels through which the company would disclose material corporate information.”

So, Reed Hastings and others like him can avoid all the hoopla if they simply make it clear to investors that their Facebook or Twitter profiles will be used for divulging key information. As long as that fact is known, companies, CEOs, COOs, or whoever have the right to post investor relations materials on social sites.

Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized to China this week in a letter posted to the company’s Chinese site. The apology is for the company’s lack of communication with regards to its warranty policies for the iPhone 4 and 4S.

The apology comes after customers in the country complained of not getting the same treatment as those in the U.S. who get full replacements from the company when they get a defective device. Chinese customers were only getting their devices repaired with replacement parts.

This is the second apology Apple’s CEO has had to issue in recent memory. Cook also apologized for the lackluster Apple Maps product that accompanied iOS 6. This was the subject of numerous complaints from users who were used to Apple’s previous Google Maps-based offering.

Here’s the full text of the new letter as translated by Google Translate (obviously it’s not perfect):

To our Chinese consumers:

In the past two weeks, we have received a lot of feedback about Apple in China repair and warranty policy. We are not only a profound reflection on these views, together with relevant departments to carefully study the “Three Guarantees”, and also look at our maintenance policy communication and combing our management specifications of Apple Authorized Service Provider. We are aware that, due to the lack of external communication in this process and lead to the speculation that Apple arrogance, do not care or do not attach importance to consumer feedback. We express our sincere apologies for any concerns or misunderstandings this gives consumers.

In order to further improve the level of service, we are implementing the following four major adjustment:

Improved iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S repair policy
Provide a concise and clear on the website of the official Apple repair and warranty policy statement
Increase the intensity of the supervision and training of Apple Authorized Service Provider
Related issues to ensure that consumers can easily contact Apple Feedback Service
At the same time, we also realize that operating in China, and communicate much we need to learn the place. Here, we assure you, Apple for the commitment and enthusiasm indistinguishable from other countries. Bring the best user experience for consumers and satisfactory service is our ideals, our commitment, and it has been deeply rooted in Apple’s corporate culture. We will make unremitting efforts to achieve this goal.

iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S repair policy improvements are as follows:
So far, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S repair this in one of three ways: as from the purchase date of 15 days found the problem, we will be entitled to a refund or replacement for consumers recalculated 1 year warranty period iPhone; 15 days after discovery problem, Apple will replace the part depending, such as camera modules or batteries; replacement parts also can not quickly repaired the iPhone, Apple will provide consumers with a part reassembled new parts, retaining only the consumers existing iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S back cover.

Nearly 90% of customers expressed satisfaction with our repair services, and consumer satisfaction is the most important criterion for Apple to measure its own success.

But others suggested that part of the re-assembly of repair almost replace the machine, so the direct replacement of a device will be more beneficial to consumers. Therefore, since April 2013, Apple iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S service pack upgrade for all 1-year warranty on new equipment replacement parts and replacement date recalculated.

Consumer iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider has been part of the re-assembly kit maintenance, we will replace them as whole and for maintenance after the iPhone recalculated from the date of repair year warranty. Apple’s warranty system has been updated for the information and, therefore, affected consumers do not need to take any additional action.

Now, all consumers can see on our site clear and comprehensive maintenance and warranty policy terms and conditions.
We are pleased to provide consumers with information who wish to learn more about the after-sales service. For example, we have been to provide 2 year warranty for the MacBook Air and Mac computer motherboards and other major components. Likewise, the the iPad main components has been entitled to a 2-year warranty period, and other components for 1 year warranty.

We realize that our site before this is not clearly stated policy. Hope the following will answer all the questions about Apple provides services.

Apple is to make greater efforts to ensure that Apple Authorized Service Provider to follow our policies, and make every effort to provide consumers with the highest quality service.
Week since March 18, 2013, we made a new training materials for all Apple Authorized Service Provider to ensure that each staff provide services for Apple products is not only familiar with our policies, but also to grasp three guarantees “provisions and related policies. The same time, we have taken the initiative through face-to-face meetings and other forms of verification and to ensure that each Apple Authorized Service Provider have opened training courses to update the knowledge of the staff for the maintenance and warranty policies. We will make unremitting efforts and continuous monitoring of the performance of the Apple Authorized Service Provider to ensure that consumers can get the highest quality service.

Now, the feedback service-related issues is also very convenient.
As the consumers of the services provided by any Apple Store retail store or an Apple authorized service provider doubt, to Welcome www.apple.com.cn/support/service/feedback/ directly get in touch with us. Our goal is to consumers where to buy Apple products or receive services, users can enjoy world-class experience.

Heartfelt thank you to give us valuable feedback, we always harbor immense respect to China, the Chinese consumer is always the top priority of our hearts.

Tim Cook
Apple CEO

[Hat tip: AppleInsider]

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which aims to “make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans,” will launch on April 18. The project is three years in the making.

In an article at the New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University library and a member of the DPLA’s committee, writes:

“To make it work, we must think big and begin small. At first, the DPLA’s offering will be limited to a rich variety of collections—books, manuscripts, and works of art—that have already been digitized in cultural institutions throughout the country. Around this core it will grow, gradually accumulating material of all kinds until it will function as a national digital library.”

The DPLA will interoperate with Europeana, a similar initiative in the European Union. At launch, the DPLA will contain two to three million items, Darnton writes, and describes some of them:

“For example, in serving as a hub, Harvard plans to make available to the DPLA by the time of its launch 243 medieval manuscripts; 5,741 rare Latin American pamphlets; 3,628 daguerreotypes, along with the first photographs of the moon and of African-born slaves; 502 chapbooks and “penny dreadfuls” about sensational crimes, a popular genre of literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and 420 trial narratives from cases involving marriage and sexuality. Harvard expects to provide a great deal more in the following months, notably in fields such as music, cartography, zoology, and colonial history. Other libraries, archives, and museums will contribute still more material from their collections.”

Many more details here.

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Final Book Now Available

Over the past several decades, new scientific tools and approaches for detecting microbial species have dramatically enhanced our appreciation of the diversity and abundance of the microbiota and its dynamic interactions with the environments within which these microorganisms reside. The first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995 and took more than 13 months of work to complete. Today, a microorganism’s entire genome can be sequenced in a few days. Much as our view of the cosmos was forever altered in the 17th century with the invention of the telescope, these genomic technologies, and the observations derived from them, have fundamentally transformed our appreciation of the microbial world around us.

On June 12 and 13, 2012, the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) Forum on Microbial Threats convened a public workshop in Washington, DC, to discuss the scientific tools and approaches being used for detecting and characterizing microbial species, and the roles of microbial genomics and metagenomics to better understand the culturable and unculturable microbial world around us. Through invited presentations and discussions, participants examined the use of microbial genomics to explore the diversity, evolution, and adaptation of microorganisms in a wide variety of environments; the molecular mechanisms of disease emergence and epidemiology; and the ways that genomic technologies are being applied to disease outbreak trace back and microbial surveillance. Points that were emphasized by many participants included the need to develop robust standardized sampling protocols, the importance of having the appropriate metadata, data analysis and data management challenges, and information sharing in real time. The Science and Applications of Microbial Genomics summarizes this workshop.

[Read the full report]

Topics: Biology and Life Sciences

Apple’s (AAPL) own-brand HDTV has reportedly been in the works for years now, and it will finally debut later this year according to a new report. Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White, who has reported accurate details about unannounced Apple products in the past, is currently meeting with supply chain sources in China and Taiwan. During his travels, the analyst gleaned information from unnamed sources that has him convinced that Apple will finally launch its “iTV” in the second half of 2013. And beyond the inevitable excitement among Apple fans as the company enters a new market, White says Apple’s HDTV will include some innovative new features that will make it a game-changer.

Continue reading…

BancVue, a provider of data-driven consulting services to community financial institutions, has acquired equipment leasing company BancLeasing. Terms were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE
BancVue, creator of Kasasa® and the leading provider of innovative products, dynamic marketing, and data-driven consulting services to community financial institutions, announced the strategic acquisition of BancLeasing, a pioneer in providing financial institutions with highly competitive equipment leasing programs.

“This is a win-win-win that will benefit both companies and, more importantly, the more than 700 community financial institutions that BancVue serves,” said BancVue founder & chief evangelist Don Shafer. “Our partner-clients have been asking for a proven means to expand their commercial lending businesses. BancLeasing’s CashFlow Lease Program will allow them to achieve this important goal while strengthening their competitive positions.”

BancVue’s long-standing mission is to enable community financial institutions to compete and win in the war against the megabanks. Toward that end, BancVue offers access to cost-effective banking products and services that might otherwise be time- or cost-prohibitive.

Shafer and BancLeasing President Mark Buchanan believe there is great synergy between the two companies and that BancLeasing’s CashFlow Lease Program will be a strong addition to the BancVue lineup.

“We are excited to join BancVue in its initiative on behalf of community banks and credit unions nationwide,” said Buchanan. “Equipment lease financing is a highly competitive market dominated by the biggest banks. For our community financial institution partners, being able to offer quality commercial and industrial equipment lease financing will partially level the playing field. Our CashFlow Lease Program can help them build stronger banking relationships with clients, and it promotes customer retention by preventing the megabanks from gaining a foothold with a local bank’s best customers via lease financing.”

BancVue started offering the CashFlow Lease program to its existing customers in March of 2013.

About BancVue
BancVue is the leading provider of innovative products, world-class marketing, and data-driven consulting solutions to community financial institutions across the U.S. Featuring offerings like Kasasa®, a national brand of superior products and marketing scale, BancVue products are designed to deliver controlled new account growth, higher profitability, and increased customer retention. Today serving over 700 community banks and credit unions across the country, BancVue is empowering its clients to compete in and win the war against megabanks.

The post BancVue Buys BancLeasing appeared first on peHUB.

We already reported that the next Nexus 7 will sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU instead of the current NVIDIA Tegra 3, and Reuters is now confirming it. Also unsurprisingly, they are reporting that it will have a better display. We expect the next generation Nexus 7 to be unveiled at Google I/O in May, but Reuters is saying that it won’t be available till July.

Pricing is going to be key now that Amazon has lowered their pricing. Google may choose to stick with the $199/$249 plan, but there is a rumor that they will drop to $149/$199. I believe they will opt for the latter, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they drop the price of the Nexus 10 around the same time.

source: Reuters

Come comment on this article: Updated Nexus 7 with Qualcomm Snapdragon and better display coming in July

BA Insight, a developer of advanced search technology, has added $4.5 million, bringing the total amount raised to date to $15.7 million. The company is backed by Milestone Venture Partners, Osage Venture Partners, Paladin Capital Group and Originate Ventures.

PRESS RELEASE
BA Insight today announced that it has secured its latest round of funding, raising $4.5 million, bringing the total amount raised to date to $15.7 million. All four of the company’s current venture capital investors participated in the round including Milestone Venture Partners, Osage Venture Partners, Paladin Capital Group and Originate Ventures. The funding supports the company’s growth as the market continues to drive demand for solutions that unlock data across the enterprise.

BA Insight’s advanced search technology redefines how people access siloed information and collaborate. Organizations are increasingly dealing with rapidly growing volumes of structured and unstructured data, the inability to integrate information from legacy systems, and the move of many organizational systems to the cloud. As a result they often lack insight into critical business information. BA Insight enables enterprises to bring this information together for users, giving them actionable insights into customers, products, projects, expertise and more.

“Enterprise search is broken,” said Philip Eliot, Principal at Paladin Capital Group, “and BA Insight is unique in its ability to deliver useful information to the enterprise regardless of where, when and how they need it. Their solutions revolutionize information access.”

“Our continued investment in BA Insight reflects our confidence in the ability of BA Insight’s platform to transform search into a powerful weapon for the enterprise,” said Todd Pietri, co-founder and General Partner of Milestone Venture Partners. “BA Insight delivers tools that enable organizations to leverage their investments in existing solutions and expose data in an actionable, relevant way.”

BA Insight customers include industry-leading companies across a variety of industries including the legal, oil and gas, and pharmaceutical/life sciences. For more information on products and services, visit www.bainsight.com.

About BA Insight

BA Insight(TM) is the leading provider of integrated search technologies that help organizations leverage the full power of Microsoft SharePoint(R) across the enterprise. BA Insight’s flagship Longitude Search and Longitude Connector products let organizations extend Microsoft’s enterprise search capabilities across dozens of CRM, ERP, ECM, messaging, and collaboration systems, and delivers rich document preview and assembly tools that empower knowledge workers to act upon search results with greater speed and effectiveness.

About Milestone Venture Partners

Milestone Venture Partners is a venture capital fund located in New York City with $100 million under management. Milestone specializes in early-stage software and data services investments in Greater New York. Areas of expertise include enterprise information technology, Digital Health, media, marketing services and FinTech. For more information, visit www.milestonevp.com.

About Originate Ventures

Originate Ventures is a venture capital investment firm, targeting early stage product and services companies located in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic region. The firm focuses on opportunities with medical devices, healthcare, consumer, information technology, Web-based and commercial products. Operating with an entrepreneurial spirit and vision, Originate’s investments range in size from $500,000 to $4,000,000. For more information, visit www.originateventures.com.

About Osage Venture Partners

Osage Venture Partners (OVP) is a venture capital firm located just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that invests in early-stage enterprise technology companies in the Mid-Atlantic region. OVP raised its first fund in 2005, and has invested almost exclusively in enterprise software companies since that time. With over $100M under management, OVP seeks to invest in determined and creative entrepreneurs and provide them with the assistance required to build high growth businesses. For more information, visit www.osagepartners.com.

About Paladin Capital Group

Paladin Capital Group is a leading multi-stage private equity firm providing capital and strategic guidance to growing companies in the IT, telecommunications and alternative energy sectors. The firm focuses on companies with products and services that are “dual use” in nature, serving both commercial and government customers. Paladin has over $950 million dollars of committed capital across multiple funds and has invested in over 50 portfolio companies. For more information, visit www.paladincapgroup.com.

The post BA Insight Adds $4.5M in Capital appeared first on peHUB.

Haiku Deck, which makes an iPad app to make it simple to create and share presentations, announced it has raised $3 million in a Series A round. Trilogy Partnership led the round, which included participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op and individual investors, such as Sarah Leary (co-founder of Nextdoor). Haiku Deck, which was previously known as Giant Inkwell, had prior to the Series A round raised less than $1 million in seed funding. The company says it will use the funding to expand to other platforms.

PRESS RELEASE

Haiku Deck Raises $3 Million in Series A Funding To Transform Presentation Creation

Trilogy, Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op and Angels Back Early Leader in Mobile Productivity

SEATTLE, WA–(April 3, 2013) – Haiku Deck, a Seattle-based company that aims to transform presentation creation and sharing, announced today that it has secured $3 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by Trilogy Partnership with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-op, tech entrepreneur Sarah Leary, and other angel investors.

Haiku Deck launched its iPad app to broad acclaim in August 2012 and has ranked #1 in productivity in 36 markets around the world. Last month Haiku Deck released version 2.0, with a powerful new set of business-focused features and functionality.

“We’ve gone from zero to half a million customers in just a few months, so it’s clear that Haiku Deck’s simple, fun approach to creating beautiful presentations is resonating,” said co-founder and CEO,Adam Tratt. “As mobile devices continue to change the way people work, we see a huge opportunity in helping everyone create the kind of presentation that used to require a design professional.”

Haiku Deck, hailed as the Instagram for Pitch Decks by Mashable, is gaining traction as a powerful, time-saving tool for traditional presentations and new formats including tablet-centric pitch decks, creative communication pieces, and rich content for blogs. Its innovative Creative Commons image search addresses a common pain point of finding and properly attributing free, high-quality images.

The new investment will allow Haiku Deck to expand its lead in mobile-first presentation tools by growing the team, expanding to other platforms, and developing a premium offering.

“We believe Haiku Deck is well positioned to disrupt an industry that’s seen surprisingly little innovation in the past two decades,” said Yuval Neeman, Partner at Trilogy. “The consumer response and product reviews have been extraordinary, and we’re excited about the potential for this next phase of growth.” Haiku Deck received seed funding from Madrona Venture Group and angels after completing the TechStars program in Seattle.

Haiku Deck has been embraced by business leaders, entrepreneurs, educators, realtors, salespeople, marketers, and creative thinkers worldwide. Recent examples from the Haiku Deck Gallery include:

• Tomorrow Ready CIO, by John Sheridan, Chief Technology Officer of Australia
• Elon Musk Quotes from #SXSWI, by Karen Budell, Chief Content Officer, Imagine
• Not Your Typical Graduate Job, by Andy Parker, founder of Incredibli
• 5 Sales Prospecting Techniques You Probably Never Tried, but Should, by Ago Cluytens
• Teaching Frameworks for Creative Collaboration, presented at Educon 2.5
• Visual Storytelling, by Ken Shelton

About Haiku Deck
Haiku Deck makes it simple and fun to create and share flawlessly beautiful presentations. Headquartered in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, Haiku Deck is a privately held company with the backing of prominent investors including Trilogy Partnership, Madrona Venture Group, Founder’s Co-op, and Techstars. The Seattle-based startup was founded by Adam Tratt and Kevin Leneway. For additional information and company images, visitwww.haikudeck.com/newsroom

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ProcessUnity, a risk management software company based in Concord, Mass., has raised $5 million in a Series C round led by Rose Park Advisors‘ Disruptive Innovation Fund. The money will be used to expand marketing and sales.

PRESS RELEASE
ProcessUnity, a privately-held risk management software company, today announced that it secured $5 million in a Series C round led by Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund. The funding will support the company’s rapid growth and expand marketing and sales of its SaaS solutions.

The company offers two distinct solutions: Risk Suite and Service Delivery Risk Management (SDRM). To address increased information security threats and regulatory mandates, ProcessUnity offers Risk Suite, focused on strong governance and control, vendor risk management, and compliance management. To address increased complexity, cost pressures, and delivery risk for financial service providers, ProcessUnity offers SDRM, focused on managing complex service offerings and the end-to-end client management process of what is offered and how it’s delivered.

“After three years of strong growth and validation from our customers, we are ready to expand our reach and deploy our solutions to broader markets,” said Todd Stone, president and CEO of ProcessUnity. “We are excited to work with Rose Park Advisors’ CEO Matt Christensen and Chairman Dr. Clayton Christensen, and extremely pleased that our existing stockholders also participated in this round.”

ProcessUnity’s customers range from large commercial enterprises to independent consultants all facing the same challenge of managing risk effectively. These organizations rely on the ease of use, instant global deployment, low cost of ownership, and highly responsive service associated with the company’s solutions.

“ProcessUnity’s platform and solutions represent a disruptive innovation for today’s service-based economy,” said Matt Christensen, CEO of Rose Park Advisors. “The company’s solutions automate critical jobs to be done around risk management and product and service management in a way that offers breakthrough cost savings and operating efficiencies. The resulting business improvements, reporting, and analytics allow ProcessUnity’s customers to capitalize on risk management for competitive advantage.”

About ProcessUnity, Inc.
ProcessUnity is a risk management software company headquartered in historic Concord, Massachusetts. ProcessUnity’s Software as a Service solutions provide financial services firms and other organizations with the visibility and control they need to assess, measure, and mitigate risk and to ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. Customers and partners benefit from the ease of use, fast deployment, and low total cost of ownership associated with ProcessUnity’s risk, compliance, and operational control solutions.

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BP has put its U.S. wind farm operation, one of the largest in the country, up for sale, marking the continued retreat of big oil companies from renewable energy investments while oil and gas projects offer them better returns, Reuters reported. The British oil company has already sold or earmarked for sale some $38 billion worth of assets, partly to raise funds to pay for its 2010 U.S. oil spill liabilities, but also to reposition itself as a smaller, leaner company with an emphasis on high-margin oil production and exploration. Reports said the sale could raise a further $1.5 billion.

(Reuters) – BP has put its U.S. wind farm operation, one of the largest in the country, up for sale, marking the continued retreat of big oil companies from renewable energy investments while oil and gas projects offer them better returns.

The British oil company has already sold or earmarked for sale some $38 billion worth of assets, partly to raise funds to pay for its 2010 U.S. oil spill liabilities, but also to reposition itself as a smaller, leaner company with an emphasis on high-margin oil production and exploration. Reports said the sale could raise a further $1.5 billion.

BP would not put a value on any sale, but said in a statement it expected “attractive offers” for the assets. They include interests in 16 operating wind farms in nine states with a combined generating capacity of around 2,600 megawatts of renewable power, as well as a portfolio of projects in various stages of development.

Over a decade ago, big oil companies including BP and Shell began to ramp up investment in renewable energy. But the uncertain outlook for government subsidies and prices in solar, wind and other clean energy areas, along with the re-emergence of strong prices for oil and opportunities to develop large gas fields, have since distracted their attention.

BP, which under former chief executive John Browne once named itself “Beyond Petroleum”, still has a substantial interest in Brazilian biofuels, but has invested only about $1 billion a year in renewables since 2005 from a total capital spending budget of well over $20 billion annually. It has no specific investment plans for the sector in the years ahead.

(Reporting by Andrew Callus; Editing by Mark Potter)

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Midokura, a network virtualization startup, has closed a $17.3 million Series A round. The money will be used for development and for the company’s “go-to-market” efforts. Innovation Network Corporation of Japan led the round. Other investors include NTT Investment Partners L.P. and Innovative Ventures Fund Investment L.P.

PRESS RELEASE
Midokura, a global startup focused on network virtualization, today announced it has raised $17.3M in Series A funding. The investment will be used toward furthering Midokura’s vision, product innovation and go-to-market strategy.

The round was led by Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ), a Japanese public-private partnership. Other investors who participated in the round include NTT Group’s Venture Fund: NTT Investment Partners, L.P. and NEC Group’s Venture Fund: Innovative Ventures Fund Investment L.P.

As part of today’s announcement, Midokura also named Dan Mihai Dumitriu CEO. Dan is a co-founder and previously served as CTO. Fellow co-founder Tatsuya Kato, who had been serving as CEO, is now Chairman of the Board.

Midokura offers an overlay-based network virtualization technology that allows cloud users to provision virtual network devices, including virtual switches, routers, firewalls and load balancers. Virtual network devices can then be connected to virtual machines, as well as other virtual network devices to create complex network topologies.

Midokura’s MidoNet offers the industry a key added network virtualization benefit, as it was designed to be fully distributed and can be scaled out incrementally as demand increases. It also integrates with cloud management solutions so that virtual network device provisioning is automated. With MidoNet, users can virtualize the network stack for popular cloud platforms and reduce associated costs of managing the network. This impacts the overall economics of cloud computing by simplifying network requirements.

Supporting Quotes

“As enterprises and carriers embrace and build out IaaS clouds, an overlay-based network virtualization platform will soon be a must-have technology. The financial support of Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, and other key backers, validates our strategy as well as the work we’ve done over the past three years developing our industry leading product MidoNet. This funding will enable us to accelerate our product engineering, the establishment of partnerships, and the growth of our customer base. We look forward to delivering the most preformant, scalable and fault tolerant network virtualization solution to the IaaS infrastructure market.”

– Dan Mihai Dumitriu, CEO of Midokura

“With funding from INCJ and other key investment firms, we are now entering a new stage of growth in the network virtualization landscape. With our new financial support and management structure we will be able to better serve the global market. I’m excited to be able to accelerate Midokura’s product development and expand our sales channel and customer base.”

– Tatsuya Kato, Chairman of Midokura

“We, INCJ, strongly admire Midokura’s extremely high-value of its innovative network virtualization technology and globally distributed team. We are certain that Midokura’s MidoNet software already leads the global community of Software-Defined Networking, which solves problems over network infrastructure while the cloud service market grows rapidly. We also believe that Midokura has become a role model among startups for innovative software development, in order to foster attractive core industries from Japan in addition to manufacturing businesses.”

– Mr. Kimikazu Noumi, President & CEO of INCJ

About Midokura

Midokura is a global startup focused on network virtualization. Founded in 2010, the team has a pedigree including Amazon and Google, and has spent more than two years building MidoNet, a complete overlay network virtualization solution that integrates with cloud platforms such as OpenStack. Midokura has offices in San Francisco, Tokyo, Lausanne and Barcelona, and is on the web at http://www.midokura.com.

About Innovation Network Corporation of Japan

INCJ was established in July 2009 as a public-private partnership that provides financial, technological and management support for next-generation businesses. INCJ specifically supports those projects that combine technologies and varied expertise across industries and materialize open innovation. INCJ has the capacity to invest up to ?2.0 trillion. To date, INCJ has invested approximately ?600 billion in a total of 38 projects and is currently focused on a broad range of areas from green energy, electronics, IT and biotechnology to infrastructure-related sectors such as water supply. INCJ maintains a hands-on approach to investment, engaging in the business development of cutting-edge core technologies through intellectual property funds, expansion of venture companies and aggressive overseas development through initiatives such as restructuring and mergers of tech businesses and acquisitions of foreign companies.

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MuleSoft, which provides enterprises with a cloud-based platform to integrate its mobile and on-premise data and applications, has raised $37 million in new funding. New Enterprise Associates lead the round, with participation from Salesforce.com, as well as returning investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAP Ventures and Bay Partners. The company has now raised about $81 million in capital since 2006.

PRESS RLEASE

MuleSoft Raises $37 Million to Connect the New Enterprise

NEA Leads Round, Fueling MuleSoft’s Aggressive Plan to Transform the Integration Market

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – April 3, 2013 – MuleSoft, provider of the world’s most widely used integration platform, today announced a $37 million investment led by NEA, bringing the company’s total financing to $81 million. Other investors include salesforce.com, as well as returning investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAP Ventures and Bay Partners. The funds will support MuleSoft’s aggressive growth plans across its SaaS and enterprise customer segments, further global expansion, and drive category-defining technology innovations for connecting the New Enterprise. The subject of a separate announcement today, MuleSoft launched its AnypointTM Platform, the first and only complete integration platform to enable connectivity to any application, data service or API, across the entire cloud and on-premise continuum.

The mega-trends of SaaS, mobile and Big Data are converging, generating a new wave of business opportunity for enterprises. Underpinning this movement is the rise of APIs, which leverage Web standards to create a common language for the New Enterprise. This convergence demands a new kind of platform – one that connects the explosion of endpoints and data generated by organizations each choosing a diverse set of best-of-breed applications to power their business. Companies that win by connecting their applications, data and APIs define the New Enterprise.

“The success of companies like salesforce.com and Workday shows the profound economic advantage of the cloud-based approach, but the move to the cloud creates a new set of challenges for enterprises,” said Scott Sandell, General Partner at NEA. “Companies that are enabling a more seamless transition from on-premise to cloud are among the most exciting investment opportunities right now, and MuleSoft is one of the breakout leaders in this category.”

Founded on the idea that connecting applications should not be hard, MuleSoft lets organizations harness the power of their applications through integration, without the need for custom point-to-point code. In the past year, MuleSoft experienced unprecedented customer growth worldwide and increased bookings 171 percent year-over-year, affirming the company’s leadership position in the $500 billion integration market. Building on this momentum, the growth round of funding will allow MuleSoft to fuel aggressive expansion and broader market reach.

“Today’s winning companies are reaching far beyond their four walls, into the cloud and onto mobile devices, to deliver the most connected products and most frictionless customer experience possible – we call this the New Enterprise,” said Greg Schott, president and CEO of MuleSoft. “The New Enterprise represents a once-in-a-generation shift in the way businesses operate, and MuleSoft has created the integration platform to make this vision possible. This round of funding helps us further cement our position as the definitive leader in the market.”

MuleSoft addresses all of the pains around connecting the New Enterprise. At the core is MuleSoft’s Anypoint™ technology, which provides instant API connectivity to hundreds of on-premise and cloud-based applications and systems. For companies anywhere along the continuum – from on-premise to the cloud – MuleSoft eliminates the pain of integration so companies can realize the full potential of the New Enterprise.

About MuleSoft
MuleSoft provides the most widely used integration platform for connecting SaaS and enterprise applications in the cloud and on-premise. With the rise of cloud and mobile, enterprises face a choice: become overwhelmed by the resulting explosion of endpoints or seize the opportunity to gain competitive advantage. Founded on the idea that connecting applications should not be hard, MuleSoft helps organizations harness the power of their applications through integration. MuleSoft’s Anypoint™ Platform eliminates costly, time-intensive point-to-point integration and creates business agility. Delivered as a packaged integration experience, MuleSoft’s products are built on proven open source technology for the fastest, most reliable integration without vendor lock-in. Supporting billions of transactions per day, MuleSoft is used in production by thousands of enterprises, including Walmart, MasterCard, Nokia, Nestlé and Honeywell, and powers integrations with leading SaaS vendors such as salesforce.com, NetSuite, Workday, Intuit and Box.

For more information:
•    Read about what’s new in the Anypoint Platform: www.mulesoft.com/unveils-next-generation-integration-platform-new-enterprise.
•    Learn more about the New Enterprise: www.mulesoft.com/connecting-new-enterprise.
•    Join MuleSoft’s growing team: www.mulesoft.com/careers.

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“Please make me a visualization.”

I get a lot of emails that say this or some variation of it. They tend to make me think of other requests that could be made in the same form, like:

“Please make me a roast beef sandwich.”

Or:

“Please make me a scale model of the Eiffel Tower.”

Roast beef sandwiches and scale models of the Eiffel Tower, in these sentences, are common nouns. Visualization, on the other hand, is a verbal noun. The word visualization encapsulates a process. And it’s really that process that’s the essential part, not the thing that results. A much more exciting e-mail — one that, sadly, I receive much more rarely — would be just use the verb. Something along the lines of:

“Please visualize our data.”

The nice thing about this sentence is that it may result in many things. When I set out to make a roast beef sandwich, I almost always end up with…a roast beef sandwich. If we set out to visualize, instead of making a visualization, we can end up with any number of outcomes. In fact, many of those outcomes may not even be visualizations, but rather solutions, new ideas, and better questions. Any good visualization process is iterative. And if we allow ourselves to think more about the value of the branching points of that process than we do a single result, we leave ourselves open to many more possibilities. A verb-based approach to visualization also lets us think of it as a tool that can be used in many different projects; not only those whose results involve charts and graphs, or sticks and balls.

In 2009, I was asked by Jake Barton to design an algorithm that would place the nearly 3,000 names of victims on the 9/11 memorial in Manhattan in specific places, so that certain names could be near each other, per the wishes of their next-of-kin. This was a novel and difficult challenge given the number of possible combinations and the complexity of the personalization required — when I started, I wasn’t even sure that it could be done.

The first step, then, was to get some idea of the scale and peculiarities of this particular problem. The data that I was sent was in a spreadsheet. Here’s something that I’ve learned about spreadsheets: no amount of staring at one is going to teach you about the data. In order to get a sense of the data, and therefore the problem, I created a visualization. This simple graphic, hand-rolled in a tool called Processing, shows the pools of the memorial as circles, with each name arranged on the edge of the ring. The lines between those names are the requested adjacencies &#8212 names which should, as per the wishes of family members, be placed together:

A visualization of the victim names and requested adjacencies for the 9/11 Memorial. Fall, 2009

I could have read the number of names and the number of requested connections from the spreadsheet. However, the key part of the problem ended up being in the physical distribution of those connections, which only showed up after sketching. This quick visualization also showed me that the connections were not evenly balanced between the two pools; indeed, they were heavily concentrated in one of the two pools. By building a bespoke visualization quickly, I put the data into a visual form that fit its structure specifically, and got to the core of the problem.

Getting this insight into the character of the data quickly changed my sense that developing an algorithm was impossible. I could now see that it seemed possible.

I think of these small visualization steps as ‘sketch points.’ I don’t have to put too much thought into their aesthetics, as they aren’t built for public consumption. I make my sketch points in some kind of expressive medium (like Processing) as opposed to a quicker but more constrained tool (like Excel or Tableau), in order to tailor them to the specifics of the data as closely as possible. In this fashion these stops along the way become low-investment testing grounds for new ideas and unusual approaches.

Here are a few sketch points from recent projects, each of which represented a turning
point in my thinking:

A sketchpoint from a 2011 visualization of 138 years of Popular Science

A sketchpoint from a the development of Cascade at the NYTimes R&D lab, 2009

A sketchpoint from the development of a new visualization of ad placement networks, 2013

None of these is meant for public consumption. You’re looking at my efforts to work out a problem, to see what I’m up against, and find in the sketches potential ways forward. By thinking about visualization as a process instead of an outcome, we arm ourselves with an incredibly powerful thinking tool. By splitting this process into small, bespoke sketch points, we can engage with the character of our data more specifically, and access a more broad and varied solution space. Data visualization becomes much more than just the end of a sentence.

Applied Micro Circuits, a chip firm that designs silicon parts for the computing and networking world, has spent the last three years making a big bet on the cloud computing market and the ARM architecture. The results began shipping last week, and the product essentially takes networking and computing and crams it all onto one system on a chip.

Dubbed the X-Gene server on a chip, the product has been touted by Applied as the first 64-bit-capable ARM-based server in existence, the ideal part for webscale users (check out the pic of Facebook’s Frank Frankovsky holding one up) and also the future of Applied Micro. It’s the first chip to contain a software-defined network (SDN) controller on the die that will offer network services such as load balancing and ensuring service-level agreements on the chip. It’s like shoving the networking and computing vision of the Cisco Unified Computing System on a chip.

This is a big deal. Although the first generation won’t have enough bandwidth to eliminate the need for a switch at the top of a rack, the following generation will.

Paramesh Gopi, president and CEO of Applied Micro, said that these new chips have now made it past the prototype stage (the board in the picture uses an FPGA instead of a production silicon) AND are now in the hands of several customers, including Dell and Red Hat. Gopi expects physical servers containing the X-Gene to hit the market by the end of this year.

Gopi’s big bet

The chip is manufactured at 40 nanometers and contains eight 2.4 GHz ARM cores that Applied has designed, four smaller ARM Cortex A5 cores running the SDN controller software (the pink bit on the block diagram below), four 10-gigabit ethernet ports, and various ports that can support more Ethernet, SSDs, accelerator cards such as those from Fusion-io or SATA drives. In short, this a chip that combines networking and computing in one package.

When about asked about the power consumption of the chip, Gopi said it will run at 50 percent of the total cost of ownership of a comparable x86 product, but wouldn’t discuss actual power consumption.

“We’ll be able to run your LAMP stack and SQL jobs on Xeon-class ARM cores, and the routing protocols and such will be running on the Atom-class ARMs,” Gopi said. “It’s the fundamentals of a rack on a single chip.”

Building this chip has taken four years. It required Gopi to visit ARM at its U.K. headquarters to convince them to give him an architecture license to build a chip for servers. In an interview with me at the Open Compute Summit in January, Gopi explained that he saw the flexibility and the architecture that ARM offered could become an asset for webscale computing, so he embarked on turning Applied Micro, a public company with a few hundred million in revenue, into a startup.

Like others, such as Barry Evans of Calxeda or Andrew Feldman of Sea Micro, he saw that power issues were raising the cost of operating data centers — and cutting into the bottom line at web businesses — and he thought he had a solution. His solution was to get an architectural license from ARM, so he could make a 64-bit-capable chip ahead of ARM’s plans to introduce that powerful a core. ARM introduced that core last year, and vendors of ARM-based server chips such as AMD and Calxeda expect to have 64-bit-capable chips next year. But Applied is shipping those machines today.

“We’ll end this wimpy core vs. brawny core debate once and for all,” Gopi said.

The new hardware mindset

Gopi has taken advantage of several different trends that are finally coming to fruition. The first trend is the use of the ARM core — ubiquitous in cell phones and tablets — for the enterprise and cloud computing market. But he’s also taking advantage of a more subtle shift happening in the chip world as it pertains to the data center — namely the opening up of the ecosystem.

The mobile industry has relied upon the common ARM architecture to build a wide variety of chips that give each vendor a slightly different set of features. Both Nvidia and Qualcomm start with ARM cores (hell, even Apple has an ARM architectural license) to build their application processors. This lowers the cost of designing chips, because engineers can start from a higher level when solving problems.

And the modularity of the ARM cores combined with an architecture license also means firms can customize their designs for a certain market without spending a huge amount of time or dollars. Gopi will actually address some of this at our Structure event June 19 and 20, in a presentation on designing hardware at the speed of software.

For Applied, this dynamic plays out in the existence of a new type of chip for the data center, but also in the fact that in nine or 12 months Applied plans to test the second-generation X-Gene chip, one that will support 100-Gigabit Ethernet and will obviate the need for a top-of-rack switch. Ironically, this architecture probably won’t be a welcome development for Applied’s existing networking clients like Cisco and Juniper.

But it’s clearly the direction that large webscale customers want to go. And the second-generation architecture is also important for the first-generation X-Gene products, because without it, Applied may not have a chance at getting technically savvy and forward-looking potential customers that need not just a single interesting product, but a real understanding of the roadmap before they commit to a new architecture.

So even as Applied ships these first products to customers for use in devices that hit the market at the end of this year, it’s already developing its production of the next generation 28-nanometer versions of the heavy-duty ARM cores and 100-Gigabit-capable networking while prepping for later versions that may include photonics and other elements that data center customers are already discussing as tomorrow’s technology.

It took a bold vision — and that trip to ARM — for Gopi to get Applied Micro to the table as these discussions about the next generation data center are playing out. But with this design, it has earned a seat. Now all it has to do is earn the business.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Really Simple Software Inc., maker of the streaming DVR “Simple.TV” platform, has raised $5 million in Series A financing from New World Ventures. New World Ventures, a member of The Pritzker Group, is a multi-stage venture capital firm.

PRESS RELEASE
Really Simple Software Inc., makers of the award-winning Simple.TV platform, announced it closed $5 million in Series A funding from New World Ventures.

Launched to critical acclaim in 2012 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Simple.TV bridges the gap between streaming video and broadcast TV, giving connected consumers the shows they love anywhere they are, anytime. Winner of “Best of CES 2012”, TIME magazine’s “Top 10 Gadgets of 2012”, and Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New”, Simple.TV is the perfect TV companion for consumers who love Netflix and other online streaming services but want access to live TV.

“The explosion of Internet-connected consumer electronics is rapidly changing television distribution and consumption. This phenomenon delivers tremendous benefits to consumers while also holding great promise for content owners and distributors,” said Matt McCall, New World Ventures partner. “Simple.TV serves the needs of both audiences and we look forward to partnering with its leadership team as they continue to expand their innovative platform for TV everywhere.”

Simple.TV is the world’s first streaming DVR, making it possible for consumers to instantly access live and recorded TV shows on their favorite tablet, phone, or connected TV screen, anywhere, anytime. The New World Ventures funding will be used to expand Simple.TV’s platform, enhance its cloud services, add new client applications across CE devices and expand its service beyond North America.

Simple.TV founder Mark Ely previously served as President of Strategy at Sonic Solutions. While at Sonic in the mid-1990′s, Mark and Simple.TV co-founder Bruce Randall developed the first commercial DVD authoring system for Hollywood studios. Sonic subsequently went on to become a dominant digital media technology provider to premium content owners, PC and CE manufactures and retailers through its Roxio, DivX and CinemaNow brands prior to its sale to Rovi Corp in 2010.

About Simple.TV

Simple.TV is on a mission to bring great TV and movie content to connected devices anywhere, anytime on any device. Simple.TV was launched in 2011 with seed capital from Accanto Partners, a super angel fund based in Tiburon, CA. For more information about Simple.TV, visit http://www.simple.tv.

About New World Ventures

New World Ventures, a member of The Pritzker Group, is a multi-stage venture capital firm helping entrepreneurs build market-leading information technology companies. Since its founding in 1996, the firm has worked side-by-side with entrepreneurs at more than 70 companies by providing a broad network of strategic relationships, advice based on several decades of experience, and capital with tremendous flexibility. Recent successes include Fleetmatics (NYSE: FLTX), SinglePlatform (acquired by Constant Contact), Zinch (acquired by Chegg), Playdom (acquired by Disney), LeftHand Networks (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), and TicketsNow (acquired by Ticketmaster).

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