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Another player looking to redefine networking in the cloud era has raised a nice chunk of change. SDN-powered cloud networking player Pertino has raised $20 million in Series B funding. The company will use the funds to expand its platform and market strategy. The company previously raised an $8.85 million Series A round in April of 2012.

Pertino looks to bring SDN-powered wide-area networks to the masses. There is a demand for this thanks to increasing globalization and rise of cloud computing, as well as an increasingly mobile workforce. The proliferation of mobile usage and remote employees means companies are becoming more dependent on wide-area networks (WANs) and Pertino wants to bring these capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) by cutting out the barriers of cost and complexity. Pertino has something it calls “cloud network engine” which allows the creation of a cloud-based network in minutes with no hardware, expertise, or upfront investment required. Basically, it looks to bring a previously cost-prohibitive capability to the world of SMB, hence the bringing it “to the masses.”

“SMBs comprise almost half of IT spending worldwide, yet a significant number of these organizations struggle with having the resources to deploy new technology and applications,” said Craig Elliott, Pertino co-founder and CEO. “By leveraging the cloud and SDN technology to radically simplify networking, Pertino is poised to unlock a massive opportunity and Jafco’s SMB and business development experience in Asia will help us realize it.”

Priced for the SMB Market

The company is going after the home office or SMB here with the pricing as well. Pertino allows customers to build a free network for up to three members with three devices each, and then pay $10 per member per month as they grow.

The Series B round was led by new investor Jafco Ventures with existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participating. Jafco’s portfolio consists of several cloud and network security companies including Reputation.com, Huddle, FireEye, and Palo Alto Networks.

“One of the things that attracted us to Pertino is the fact they have built a cloud-based solution leveraging the most innovative and disruptive technology to hit networking in a decade – SDN, and they’re delivering it in a practical and consumable way to an underserved global market,” said Jeb Miller, general partner at Jafco. “Disruptive technology and a massive global market opportunity, coupled with the pedigree and experience of the executive team makes Pertino an ideal portfolio company for us.”

The company launched into limited availability last month and says it saw significant demand. The limited launch came after concluding a successful beta program within the Spiceworks IT community that resulted in over 250 customers deploying and testing their own Pertino cloud network. Since then, the number of deployed customers has grown to over 700.

When Microsoft got fined $732 million by the European Commission on Wednesday for reneging on an agreement to give Windows users a clearer choice of browser, an interesting question in the back of many people’s minds was how on earth no-one noticed the browser choice screen’s omission for more than a year.

After all, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 came out in February 2011 and it was only in mid-2012 that the Commission woke up and realized the fact that it was missing the screen in question. Microsoft claimed it was itself unaware of the omission until the Commission brought it up.

Well, we’re still fuzzy on how both Microsoft and the Commission stayed oblivious for so long, but we do now have a better idea of how the company got busted: according to anonymous sources quoted in a Financial Times piece (registration required) that went up a few hours ago, the tip-off came from Google and Opera.

Opera is certainly no surprise – the Norwegian browser vendor was after all the original complainant that led the Commission to wring promises of good behavior from Microsoft back in 2009. But Google’s involvement, if the report is correct, shows this to be just one stage in an increasingly bitter war.

Remember that Chrome vendor Google is also embroiled in an EU antitrust investigation, in this case regarding allegations of search result manipulation and various other anticompetitive practices. And who kicked off that investigation? Why, Microsoft of course, along with various others subsequently involved in its faux-grassroots “Fair Search” organization.

Then we have Microsoft’s recent Scroogled anti-Google smear campaign, and Google’s decision to suddenly yank Exchange ActiveSync support for Windows Phone owners who use Gmail services, which threatened a serious hit on that smartphone platform’s usability.

In isolation, each one of these moves can be explained and perhaps justified on its own merits. Together, though, they paint a picture of escalating nastiness. Sure, companies fight all the time — it’s part of healthy competition. But right now the goings-on between Google and Microsoft risk appearing as petty and destructive as those between Apple and Samsung.

This article was updated at 5:45am PT to make it more explicit that Google makes the Chrome browser and therefore has an interest in browser choice.

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There are many reasons why you’d want to hide your internet IP address. The most common one is that you’re trying to access services or web sites restricted to a specific country or territory — this might be to catch up with UK BBC TV’s shows via iPlayer or for more fundamental reasons, such as bypassing a country’s censorship restrictions.

Spoofing your IP address so you appear to come from another country than the one you’re residing in isn’t by itself a difficult task — all you need is a decent VPN service. But when it comes to simplicity and decent performance, you can’t beat a service called Hideman, available on Windows and Mac via the free Hideman 2.0 tool, and Hideman VPN 1.9.7 for Android.

Hideman isn’t new — version 2.0 has just been released sporting a brand new user interface — but it’s built a reputation as one of the better VPN services out there. Aside from providing you with the opportunity to spoof your own IP address, it also provides 256-bit encryption for all data received and transmitted, adding an extra layer of protection to your web browsing while also allowing you to surf safely via open public Wi-Fi hotspots.

The software is ridiculously easy to use. Fire it up, click the > button to choose the country you wish to appear to be in, and let the software do the rest. Suddenly services restricted to your country of choice are available to you wherever you happen to be.

The service — like most good VPN services — isn’t completely free. However, for occasional use and testing purposes you can use the service for up to five hours per week — note, however, that once you trigger one of your free hours, it will count down relentlessly in the background whether or not you use the service, and shutting down the program has no effect.

You can subsequently leave the program running in the background and trigger a fresh hour by clicking the Hours button, or completely close it from its Notification area icon, knowing the next time you launch it, the next hour’s countdown will begin.

There are other restrictions for free users to be aware of: first, you can only connect through six countries: the US, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Panama and Singapore (four of which permit the use of P2P). Second, you can only download 2GB per month, and the connection speed may be limited to 512Kbps.

It’s also worth noting that free users’ access logs are stored encrypted for 14 days, and will be used in exceptional circumstances (see the FAQ for full details).

Should you want unlimited access with no logging to more than 20 countries (including Australia, the UK, Canada and Japan), support for port forwarding and changing IP on the fly, then invest in a paid-for account. Prices start from $3 for one week’s access from your computer, or $2.90 for one month’s access from your mobile (either through the Android app or by logging on through the Hideman website on your iPhone or iPad). Pricing plans go all the way up to a year’s access — $69 for computers, $24.90 for mobiles.

Hideman 2.0 is available as a free, function-limited download for Macs and Windows. Hideman VPN 1.9.7 is a free app for Android users. Up to three devices can connect at one time through a single account.

Here’s a neat new Kickstarter project: a tiny ambient thermometer that you can plug into your smartphone or tablet. Because your mobile device doesn’t have enough sensors already.

The device is called Thermodo and, appropriately, it comes from Danish software firm Robocat, which was responsible for the graphically intriguing Haze weather app. Smartphones do already have thermometers in them, but those are for keeping an eye on the handset’s internals: this would be for checking the temperature around you.

The interface with the mobile device is quite interesting: unlike iCelsius, a range of iOS-compatible thermometers designed for cooking and educational purposes, Thermodo doesn’t plug into the dock connector. From the Kickstarter blurb:

“Thermodo consists of a passive temperature sensor built into a standard 4 pole audio jack enclosed by a sturdy housing. This allows your mobile device to read Thermodo’s temperature straight from the audio input. Thermodo sends an audio signal through the temperature sensor. This sensor will then attenuate the signal amplitude depending on the actual temperature. This attenuation can now be detected on the microphone input and through software we calculate the corresponding temperature. Easy peasy!”

Because all mobile devices have headphone jacks, Thermodo should theoretically work on all smartphones and tablets. Robocat founder Willi Wu told me a companion app will be made available for iOS first, although it will also work with the company’s existing Thermo app on Android.

If it works as advertised, then Thermodo might be quite useful for budding meteorologists. “Thermometer” apps (including Robocat’s Thermo) tend to simply use location-based weather data, whereas this seems to be the real deal — think users being able to feed weather data to the cloud, rather than simply drawing data from it. What’s more, Robocat will also release a software development kit for Android, so the device may find itself being used in a new generation of temperature-aware apps.

However, one of the most immediate problems that springs to mind with the Thermodo concept has to do with heat sources that might distort the device’s readings. The first of those heat sources is the smartphone or tablet itself: here, Wu told me the software compensates, plus “we improved the design of Thermodo in a way that we could thermally decouple the sensor from the mini jack”. And then there’s the pocket problem. Thermodo will generally be carried around in a pocket — as this is a much more unpredictable heat source than the mobile device, how does the team get round it?

“When you plug Thermodo into your device you will read Thermodo’s temperature in its environment. Hence, if you have it in your pocket you will get the temperature of your pocket,” Wu said. “However, we are trying to detect rapid changes in temperature and make the user aware of it. We are even experimenting with some prediction algorithms in order to reduce the effect of this.”

According to Robocat’s timetable, the company hopes to ship units in August. The cost is likely to be around the $30 mark, and it will come in black, white, and anodyzed aluminum. They’re looking for $35,000 in funding, and here’s the pitch:

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Johnson Controls is exploring a potential sale of its automotive electronics unit, writes Reuters. The company has no intention of selling its automotive interiors business.

Reuters – Johnson Controls Inc (JCI.N) is exploring a potential sale of its automotive electronics unit, but has no intention of selling its automotive interiors business, the company said on Wednesday.
Three people familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier on Wednesday that the diversified conglomerate was looking to sell its automotive interiors division.
Two of them later corrected the statement, saying they were referring to the electronics part of the automotive interiors and electronics segment, which accounts for a quarter of the division’s sales.
Johnson Controls, the largest U.S. auto supplier with 2012 sales of more than $4 billion in car interiors, has grappled with industry-wide pressure on margins, low vehicle production in Europe and increased competition from China.
A successful sale of the electronics unit would leave JCI with the interiors unit as well as three other major businesses: automotive seating, building controls and car batteries.
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company is being advised by investment bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) on the potential electronics divestiture, the company said.
(This story is corrected throughout to show JCI intends to sell its automotive electronics business, not its automotive interiors business)
(Reporting by Soyoung Kim in New York and Bernie Woodall in Detroit; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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Ziggo is to appoint René Obermann as its new CEO starting January 1, 2014. Obermann is currently CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG.

PRESS RELEASE

The Supervisory Board of Ziggo is pleased to announce that it intends to appoint René Obermann as the new CEO of Ziggo effective 1st of January 2014. René Obermann is currently CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG. This planned transition coincides with the previously disclosed retirement of the current CEO, Bernard Dijkhuizen in January 2014, and assures continued strong leadership of Ziggo in future.
Andy Sukawaty, Chairman of the Supervisory Board:
“We are very excited to have Rene Obermann join Ziggo. His leadership skills and broad global experience in fixed and mobile telecoms will help to drive continued long term growth and service innovation at Ziggo. Bernard Dijkhuizen, who as previously announced, will retire next year, will continue to lead Ziggo through this year and will work with René Obermann to ensure a smooth transition. Under Bernard’s leadership, Ziggo has realised great success in delivering world leading services to consumers in the Netherlands. René Obermann is a perfect successor to lead the company through a new phase of growth, innovation and market leadership.”

René Obermann
After 15 happy years at Deutsche Telekom, I am very pleased to join Ziggo. This opportunity fulfills my strong wish as an entrepreneur to move closer to operational activities and to be involved in a fast changing world of offering products and services in media and entertainment. Ziggo therefore makes an ideal match and I look forward to starting as CEO of Ziggo as of January 1, 2014.

Further information
For information purposes the intended appointment will be put on the agenda of the upcoming Annual General Meeting of shareholders of Ziggo, which will take place on April 18, 2013. The agenda and the explanatory notes to the agenda, with all relevant information, will be published tomorrow on the corporate website of Ziggo: www.ziggo.com. The works council of Ziggo will be requested to give advice in respect of the intended appointment of René Obermann.

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Slate Science, an educational technology company has closed a $1.1 million angel round of funding led by private investors. The funds will be used for continued product innovation, marketing and operational costs.

PRESS RELEASE

Slate Science, an educational technology company offering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education products for tablets, today launched SlateMath, a series of educational apps the company will bring to market during 2013. SlateMath can be downloaded for free in multiple languages and is immediately available in Apple’s App Store .
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130306/CG67125)
In conjunction with the launch, Slate Science announced the closing of a $1.1 Million angel round of funding led by private investors. The funds will be used for continued product innovation, marketing and operational costs.
Slate Science was founded by an A-team of educators and engineers with more than 100 years of combined experience in science education, instructional software development, and mobile platforms. The company developed a proprietary technology and a field-proven methodology for teaching STEM fields. Rather than oferring frontal videos and drill and skill practice, the company is focusing on crafting constructive learning environments that guide children through a rewarding process of self-discovery and intuitive exploration. The company’s proprietary authoring technology enables it to develop and deploy its learning apps in a remarkably efficient and timely manner.
The company’s first launched product – SlateMath K-1 – takes children on a journey of playful explorations that guide them through the process of intuitively acquiring seven kindergarten and first grade math fundamentals: Counting, Writing Digits, Addition, Comparison and Order, Parity, Patterns, and Problem Solving. These topics are learned through a progression of 30 engaging activities, each designed to endow a well-defined mathematical concept, skill, or insight. The SlateMath methodology offers fun and interactive ways to learn math and develop analytic skills, and is driven by the Common Core Mathematics Standards adopted by 45 U.S. states.
TheSlateMath series was conceived to address a global frustration with math learning. The company’s breakthrough learning methodologies tap into children’s natural and intuitive learning processes, and help them acquire knowledge and competence constructively, using self-guided as well as teacher-guided exploration. “SlateMath has two purposes,” said Prof. Shimon Schocken , one of the company’s co-founders, “to teach math proper through self-paced and engaging discovery, and to expose children to the ways mathematicians think and reason about the world. We see a tremendous opportunity to use tablet technology and constructive pedagogy to endear math to children, and to help them develop into confident and competent thinkers.”
The SlateMath series was designed from the ground up for an environment consisting of tablets, cloud computing, and standardized curricula. The series is based on a huge portfolio of modular, richly-indexed, and recombinant educational apps that Slate Science is now developing. Subsets of the SlateMath portfolio can be assembled to support existing textbooks and learning programs as well as the new wave of emerging digital textbooks. The software also adapts the contents dynamically, to address the learner’s revealed strengths and weaknesses in real time.
“SlateMath is a game changer because it offers a new and innovative approach to teach math. The product is based on an experiential context, hands-on learning, and self-discovery, making the best utilization of the tablet’s touch interface I’ve seen thus far in educational apps. This approach allows children to acquire and understand math ‘in their bones’. The Slate Science technology and learning methodologies are applicable not only to math, but to many other STEM subjects as well,” said Robert Scoble .
About Slate Science
Slate Science builds portfolios of educational apps designed to support standard STEM curricula while allowing students to develop, deeply understand, and experience hands-on conceptual learning. The company’s first series of products is SlateMath, intended for the consumer market and aimed to support math instruction according to the Common Core Standards. A school version of SlateMath, intended for classroom use and equipped with a suite of teaching aids, will be released soon. Headquartered in New York, Slate Science has R&D facilities in Israel. The company’s mission is to help students, teachers, and schools reach their highest potential using advanced technology and constructive, hands-on pedagogy.

Media Contact: Victoria Osorio Indicate Media, 646-396-6091, [email protected]
News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Slate Science

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Consumer Portfolio Services has renewed its $100 million revolving credit facility with affiliates of Goldman, Sachs & Co and Fortress Investment Group. Under the amended terms, the facility will revolve during the first two years and will amortize during years three and four.

PRESS RELEASE

Consumer Portfolio
Services, Inc. (Nasdaq:CPSS) (“CPS” or the “Company”) today announced
that yesterday it renewed its $100 million revolving credit facility
with affiliates of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Fortress Investment Group.
Under the amended terms, the facility will revolve during the first two
years and will amortize during years three and four. Loans under the
facility will be secured by automobile receivables that CPS now holds
or will purchase from dealers.

“We are pleased to continue our relationship with Goldman, Sachs and
Fortress, which we have built upon over the last four years,” said
Charles E. Bradley, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer. “This
transaction provides a multi-year funding commitment and an extended
amortization period thereafter. These features improve our financial
flexibility across a variety of capital markets’ environments.”

About Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc.

Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc. is an independent specialty finance
company that provides indirect automobile financing to individuals with
past credit problems, low incomes or limited credit histories. We
purchase retail installment sales contracts primarily from franchised
automobile dealerships secured by late model used vehicles and, to a
lesser extent, new vehicles. We fund these contract purchases on a
long-term basis primarily through the securitization markets and
service the contracts over their lives.

CONTACT: Investor Relations Contact
Robert E. Riedl, Chief Investment Officer
949 753-6800

The post CPS Renews Credit Facility appeared first on peHUB.

Nashville-based healthcare investment firm Heritage Group has backed Aviacode. Based in Salt Lake City, Aviacode provides remote medical coding services and software to hospitals and physician offices.

PRESS RELEASE

Heritage Group, a Nashville-based healthcare investment firm, today announced a strategic investment in Aviacode, an innovative provider of technology-enabled medical coding services and software. This investment adds to the portfolio of companies for the Heritage Healthcare Innovation Fund (HHIF) and furthers Heritage Group’s mission to fund solutions that meet the needs of its strategic investors.

Based in Salt Lake City, Aviacode provides remote medical coding services and software to hospitals and physician offices across several settings and specialties. A number of forces currently facing healthcare providers—including the looming ICD-10 transition, persistent reimbursement pressure, and a national shortage of qualified coders—have created a growing need for accurate, high-quality coding. Through its cloud-based platform, Aviacode offers access to a national network of certified coders and provides enhanced productivity, compliance and quality.

“We are very pleased to partner with Aviacode, which has developed a differentiating technology platform and built a leading medical coding operation over the last decade,” said Rock Morphis, managing director of Heritage Group. “This funding will enable Aviacode to further accelerate its record growth trajectory and increase its capacity to deliver innovative medical coding solutions to new customers. We are proud to be part of that effort.”

Heritage Group’s strategic investors represent the entire continuum of healthcare delivery, including health systems, payors, post-acute providers, and medical distributors. HHIF’s limited partner base is comprised of Amedisys, Inc., Cardinal Health, Inc., Community Health Systems, Health Care Service Corporation, Intermountain Healthcare, Iowa Health System, LifePoint Hospitals, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Trinity Health and Vanguard Health Systems.

“The Heritage investment is significant to us as a company. It represents not only a financial opportunity to expand our cloud-based technology and coding solutions in the revenue cycle management markets, but also a strategic opportunity to collaborate with experts from within the Heritage limited partnership base. We are already seeing strategic value in those relationships,” said Dave Jensen, CEO of Aviacode.

Brentwood Capital Advisors served as the financial advisor to Aviacode in this transaction. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Heritage Group
Heritage Group is a Nashville-based, venture capital firm with over 25 years of experience financing, operating and advising companies at all stages. Created by a diverse group of the nation’s leading healthcare services firms, the Heritage Healthcare Innovation Fund is a $167M strategic initiative focused on investments in businesses that improve the delivery of healthcare services. For more information, go to www.heritagegroupusa.com.

About Aviacode
Aviacode is the industry leader in technology-enabled medical coding services since 1999. Aviacode’s cloud-delivered coding applications, ProCoder™ and ProAuditor™, enable professional medical coders and coding auditors to create consistent, reliable and predictable coding results and document reviews. Aviacode’s proprietary technology and workflow improves the accuracy and efficiency of medical coding, which is the process of translating clinical documentation into diagnosis and procedure codes, which is at the heart of healthcare revenue cycle. These improvements impact hospitals and physician groups profoundly through improved efficiency, increased revenue and strengthened cash flow. For more information, visit www.aviacode.com.

# # #
Morgan Ribeiro
Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock, Inc.
The Horse Barn @ Maryland Farms
219 Ward Circle, Suite 3
Brentwood, Tennessee 37027
p: 615.254.0575
f: 615.843.8431
Check out our healthcare leadership blog, High Stakes
Check out our healthcare marketing blog, Jack of All Trades

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Launch Windows, open a folder or file, install, remove or run a program — just about everything you do on a PC results in Windows writing to the Registry. And over time that means the Registry files will grow, as they contain more and more “slack space”, gaps where old entries used to be.

This isn’t particularly harmful, but it does waste a little memory and hard drive space. And so you might like to try Tweaking.com’s Registry Compressor, a small and simple tool which can defragment your Registry, removing this slack space (nothing else — this isn’t a Registry cleaner) and cutting the files down to size.

The defragmentation process isn’t particularly difficult or dangerous, but plainly if there is a problem, and the Registry is corrupted, then it could trash your PC. And so we’d recommend caution. Only run Registry Compressor on a system which has been fully backed up. And close down all running programs before you launch it, too (you’ll want to minimize Registry activity while the program runs).

With that done, fire up Registry Compressor, click Analyze, and after a few seconds it’ll present some figures on how bloated your Registry files might be. This can deliver some apparently dramatic results, with for instance some of the smaller files on our test PC being anything up to 9 times larger than necessary. Overall, though, fragmentation wasn’t a major problem: the total size of our Registry was currently 172MB, and Registry Compressor claimed it could reduce this to 168.99MB, a 1.75 percent saving.

Still, if your system shows a larger figure — or you’re just thinking that “every little helps” — then all you have to do is click “Compress”. After a second or two (it’s very quick) the program will tell you it’s done, and recommend you reboot. And as we’re not quite sure how this defragmentation will affect processes which are currently accessing the Registry, it’s probably a good idea to do this right away.

Once our system had restarted, we ran Registry Compressor again, just to see what its analysis revealed now. And sure enough, it seemed to have worked, as our fragmentation had dropped to 0.1MB, or about 0.06 percent.

Is this worth the effort? We saw no obvious performance improvement, but perhaps that’s because our test system wasn’t too badly fragmented in the first place.

If you’d like to try Registry Compressor on your own system, though, it’s very quick and easy (a 335KB download, no installation required, no adware), and simply seeing a report on the degree of Registry fragmentation could be interesting. Just be sure you use it with care; backup your system and close programs beforehand, and reboot your system immediately afterwards.

Photo Credit: Andrew Park /Shutterstock

Riverstone Holdings is to acquire Utex from investment funds affiliated with Rhône Capital. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE

Riverstone Holdings LLC (“Riverstone”), a leading energy and power-focused private equity firm, and Utex Industries, Inc (“Utex”), based in Houston, Texas, announced today the signing of a definitive agreement pursuant to which Riverstone Global Energy and Power Fund V, L.P., in partnership with Utex management, have agreed to acquire Utex from investment funds affiliated with Rhône Capital L.L.C. (“Rhône”). Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to certain regulatory approvals and is expected to close in April.

Founded in 1940, Utex is a leading manufacturer of engineered sealing and other specialty products used in a variety of applications and equipment related to onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling and production, power, mining, water treatment, and other industrial sectors. Many of the company’s products are used in severe operating environments, where high pressures and temperatures present particular challenges that require unique and customized solutions. A majority of the company’s products are “consumables” with short life-cycles requiring replacement at regular intervals to avoid failure in critical, capital-intensive applications. For more information, please visit www.utexind.com.

Mike Balas, CEO of Utex commented, “The management team at Utex is excited to establish this new partnership with Riverstone. We have great respect for the management team of Riverstone who clearly understands Utex’ end markets and long history of providing quality sealing and other engineered products for its customers’ most critical applications. I’d also like to thank the Rhône team for being great partners to Utex over the past few years, fully supporting our business plan and helping us select the perfect partner for the next phase of our growth and development as a company. We look forward to the next phase of Utex’s development with Riverstone as our partner.” Mr. Balas will continue as CEO of Utex following the closing of the transaction.

John Lancaster, a Partner at Riverstone added, “This investment is consistent with Riverstone’s prior investments in niche manufacturing companies that provide engineered consumable products for which demand is driven by the increasing challenges of deeper, higher-pressure, and more service-intensive oil and gas drilling and production operations. Mike and his talented team have amassed an impressive track record of success and we look forward to partnering with him and the company to build on that record.”

About Riverstone Holdings LLC

Riverstone is an energy and power-focused private equity firm founded in 2000 with approximately $24 billion of equity capital raised across seven investment funds, including the world’s largest renewable energy fund. Riverstone conducts buyout and growth capital investments in the midstream, exploration & production, oilfield services, power and renewable sectors of the energy industry. With offices in New York, London and Houston, the firm has committed approximately $21.3 billion to 96 investments in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

About Rhône

Rhône, established in 1996, is a global private equity firm with more than €3 billion under management and a focus on private equity investments in market leading businesses with a pan-European or transatlantic presence and expansion prospects. Rhône’s investment philosophy includes the development of strong, strategic partnerships with the companies in which it invests. Rhône has offices in London and New York and currently holds investments in a diversified portfolio of companies including investments in the consumer, chemical & material, energy, industrial, and shipping industries.

Contacts:

For Riverstone Holdings LLC:
Jeffrey Taufield – Kekst and Company
212-521-4800

For Utex Industries, Inc.:
Mike Balas
Chief Executive Officer
281 352-3803

The post Riverstone to Acquire Utex appeared first on peHUB.

Looker Data Sciences has launched its new query-based business intelligence software platform, Looker, with $2 million in funding. The financing was led by First Round Capital and PivotNorth Capital.

PRESS RELEASE

Looker Data Sciences, Inc., announced today the launch of their new query-based Business Intelligence software platform, Looker, with $2M in funding led by First Round Capital and PivotNorth Capital. Lloyd Tabb, a programming languages innovator, Netscape browser war veteran and crowdsourcing pioneer founded Looker.

“The Looker BI Platform™ is the first solution to simplify the advanced functionality of traditional Business Intelligence once available only to Fortune 500 companies into a single application that can be easily accessed by all,” said Lloyd Tabb, Founder and CEO of Looker.

The Looker BI Platform is a Business Intelligence tool built for extending data discovery functionality to everyone in the organization to make decisions based on real-time facts. Looker has created a new approach to Business Intelligence called query-based BI. Query-based BI empowers users to be curious, and perform deep analytics across their organization’s entire set of data. From the CEO to the Senior Data Analyst to an Account Manager, everyone can and should use Looker. On the backend, Looker’s approach uses a new modeling language, LookML, which enhances SQL for analytics so end-users can perform powerful analytics without needing to know how a query is written.

“Previous BI tools are like trying to navigate SQL with a compass and sextant – Looker is the GPS,” continued Mr. Tabb. “We’re huge believers in the power of SQL for analytics, but current Business Intelligence tools don’t empower it to be great. They are either too focused on static or parameterized dashboards, or are complex and laborious, requiring an army of engineers to implement.”

While operating in stealth mode over much of 2012, Looker has signed more than twenty clients who use its Business Intelligence platform to drive better analytics and improve business operations; one such customer is Simply Hired.

“As one of the world’s largest job search engines, Simply Hired houses a tremendous volume of data. Looker provides us with the ability to access this data across business functions – from sales to engineering to customer engagement,” said Suresh ‘DP’ Duddi, Vice President of Engineering for Simply Hired. “The Looker BI Platform allows our entire organization to easily dig deep into our data and collaborate on insights that are actionable and critical to our success.”

Looker is focused on delivering a data discovery platform that is active, agile, and collaborative. This means that company data is available to all employees at the moment of decision, that insights can occur through curiosity and exploration rather than a passive dashboard experience, and all insights reside in a central repository, making cross-functional data accessible to the entire organization via a single tool.

About Looker

Looker is a Business Intelligence software company that focuses on the intersection of economics and engineering, helping customers use data to achieve success. Looker is enabling true discovery-driven businesses, one customer at a time. Looker was founded by Lloyd Tabb, Principal Engineer at Netscape and former CTO of LiveOps. Investors in Looker include First Round Capital and PivotNorth. The company is based in Santa Cruz, CA.

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Adcade, an NYC-based startup in the mobile advertising market, has closed over $1.5 million in seed stage funding led by ff Venture Capital. Other participants in the round include Quotidian Ventures, BHV, Great Oaks VC and a handful of angel investors.

PRESS RELEASE

Adcade, an NYC-based startup in the mobile advertising market, today announced that it has closed over $1.5 million in seed stage funding led by ff Venture Capital (http://ffvc.com/). Founded in 2012, Adcade is developing mobile advertising solutions aimed at creating a more interactive, immersive and engaging experience. The company will begin testing its first product, a new mobile/tablet premium rich media ad unit that never takes a user away from a publisher’s site, this month.

Other participants in the round include Quotidian Ventures, BHV, Great Oaks VC and a handful of angel investors chosen for their expertise in ad tech and proven business acumen. The financing will be used to accelerate business and development of other innovative mobile ad products, including a robust self-service platform, which the company plans to launch later this year.

“The mobile ad space is primed for innovation,” said Rob Cromer, CEO, Adcade. “It’s painfully clear that desktop ads don’t translate well to mobile devices, and, as mobile continues to grow, publishers need new solutions to monetize. We have built one of the most comprehensive HTML5 Canvas frameworks to-date and, in turn, we believe our ad technology is leaps and bounds ahead of what is currently available in the market.”

“The simplicity and effectiveness of what Adcade is designing shows great potential, and the management team has done an excellent job creating a scalable product,” said John Frankel, Partner, ff Venture Capital. “We think they are positioning themselves to disrupt a big market.”

About Adcade

Adcade aims to bring simplicity, fun and creativity to mobile advertising through engaging, innovative ad units and platforms. Adcade provides publishers with new ways to monetize content, advertisers with new means of cross-platform engagement, and users with intuitive, interactive mobile products. Based in New York City, Adcade was founded in 2012 by CEO Rob Cromer (formerly with Barclay’s Capital); CTO Buzz Wiggins (formerly with Google Inc. Ad Innovations); and COO Rob Prentice (formerly with Perry Ellis).

Media Contact:
Karl Pawlewicz
Director of Communications, Adcade
[email protected]
(347) 775.9915
@Adcade

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Handshakez has closed $3.6 million in venture capital financing. The Series A round was led by Austin Ventures with additional investment by First Round Capital, FLOODGATE, CrunchFund, Valhalla Partners and Thinktiv.

PRESS RELEASE

Handshakez today announced that it has closed $3.6 million in venture capital financing. The Series A round was led by Austin Ventures with additional investment by First Round Capital, FLOODGATE, CrunchFund, Valhalla Partners and Thinktiv. Handshakez uniquely brings business relationships out of email and into private, collaborative spaces that foster transparency and engagement — and debuts a new class of analytics to predict and drive customer success. Led by Jason Wesbecher, previously VP of Strategic Accounts at Jive Software; Scott Brittain, previously VP Engineering at Solarwinds; and Michael Osborne, previously Chief Revenue Officer at Bazaarvoice, the company is launching with 50 clients live on its collaboration and analytics platform.
“The act of shaking hands is as old as commerce itself — and signals engagement, trust and balance between two people,” said Handshakez co-founder and CEO Jason Wesbecher. “This engagement has been under enormous strain in the last two decades by CRM technologies that have not kept up with the needs of the modern customer. The term CRM itself is wildly out of touch: customers don’t want to be managed, they want to be engaged. Handshakez is solving this today by humanizing and simplifying front end processes to put the customer at the center of the relationship.”
Modernizing the Enterprise
The simultaneous emergence of mobile, social, cloud and big data trends are re-shaping the enterprise and disrupting traditional systems of record. For B2B sales teams, where selling involves a complex maze of people and processes, these systems have not only failed to effectively engage customers, they have created a culture of one-to-one email and time consuming data entry. Handshakez transforms the enterprise front office and leapfrogs systems of record with a collaborative approach that engages clients directly and opens up new vistas for measurement.
“There is a tremendous opportunity to take customer relationships out of email and bring new levels of collaboration to an age old sales process,” said Thomas Ball, General Partner at Austin Ventures. “Successful enterprise companies like Jive and Yammer have proven that engagement, not record keeping, is the future. Handshakez has what it takes to build an industry-leading company in this space: seasoned leadership, an insider’s understanding of the market, and the vision to re-shape front-end enterprise applications around the customer.”
Collaboration and Analytics Platform Delivers Results
The HandShakez collaboration and analytics platform reaches across the enterprise firewall to create private, user-friendly spaces that encourage participation, facilitate interaction and deliver measurable insight into the engagement. Clients using HandShakez can now go far beyond traditional CRM workflows or document sharing solutions to foster engagement and transparency for business relationships with:
Curated Rich Media Assets: Presentations, financial models, whitepapers, videos and news items are all easily uploaded and organized.
Highly Social Interactions: Activity streams, @mentions, comments, polls, and LinkedIn integration provide a delightful, collaborative experience.
Seamless Integration: Pre-built integration with popular enterprise tools including Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com to bring new intelligence into traditional reporting.
Intuitive, Actionable Analytics: Behind the scenes, complex algorithms determine levels of engagement, which is presented as a user-friendly room temperature.
Handshakez is already delivering measurable success to nearly 50 customers live on its collaboration and analytics platform. Results include:
Corel, one of the largest software companies in the world with 100 million users, grew deal sizes by 45% with Handshakez. “Selling to the enterprise can be really complex and expensive. Most CRM tools, as it turns out, are focused more on the vendor than the customer. Handshakez has changed that for us in a special way. This has been a huge win for our customers.” – Patrick Nichols, GM of Corel
Punchh, a social loyalty platform for restaurants, increased sales productivity by 20% with Handshakez. “With Handshakez, our sales team can cut roughly ten hours each week of the tedious administrative tasks of traditional CRM. That time savings is a huge competitive advantage.” – Gregg Carman, SVP Sales for Punchh
AlterPoint, a network governance provider, boosted renewal rates by 10% with Handshakez. “We manage 1,000 renewals each year. Before Handshakez, we largely used intuition to determine likeliness of renewal. Now, we not only have an objective way to measure the temperature of each client, but we know who is a good upsell candidate.” – Danielle Royston, CEO of AlterPoint
“The CRM system alone needs to serve more as a means rather than an end goal of salesforce automation,” said Peter Ostrow, VP of Sales Effectiveness at Aberdeen Group. “Using a private showroom to regularly add relevant business content rather than just email effectively allows a salesperson to demonstrate sincerity, expertise, and the impression that they actually care about their customer’s eventual success.”
About Handshakez
Handshakez is pioneering a new class of front end enterprise applications built around the customer. Led by a team of enterprise software veterans, Handshakez offers a collaboration and analytics platform that brings business relationships out of email and into private collaborative spaces, fostering engagement and innovating new analytics to predict and drive customer success. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas and is privately held with funding from Austin Ventures, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE, CrunchFund, Valhalla Partners and Thinktiv.

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Facebook has appointed a former Genentech executive to its board of directors, writes Reuters. Susan Desmond-Hellman, the Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, becomes Facebook’s ninth director and the second woman on its board.

Reuters – Facebook Inc appointed a former Genentech executive to its board of directors on Wednesday, the social networking company’s latest move to expand its boardroom following its initial public offering last May.

Susan Desmond-Hellman, the Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco, becomes Facebook’s ninth director and the second woman on its board.

A former president of product development at Roche Group-owned biotechnology company Genentech, Desmond-Hellman also sits on the board of directors of Procter & Gamble Co.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg cited Desmond-Hellman’s experience shaping public policy and operating public companies.

Desmond-Hellman will serve on the board effective immediately, but will have to be elected by shareholders, along with the other Facebook directors, at the company’s annual meeting in June.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg joined Facebook’s board in June 2012, a month after the company’s rocky initial public offering.

The world’s No. 1 online social network became the only U.S. company to debut with a market value of more than $100 billion. But its shares plunged more than 50 percent in the months after the IPO on concerns about its long-term money making prospects.

Facebook shares have rebounded roughly 56 percent from their 52-week low, finishing Wednesday’s regular trading session at $27.45.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Alden Bentley)

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There’s not much debate about what’s going to take place Thursday morning at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.: the company has already said that it’s going to unveil an update to its service’s News Feed, the most vital part of the Facebook experience and one that hasn’t seen an update in quite a while.

But we’re still not sure exactly how Facebook might change the design and/or features of this service. Until the event starts at 10am PT, check out my thoughts on the things Facebook really shouldn’t break in this update.

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