Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Great post on user registration pages

I read an interesting post on registration pages and questions there in. The author uses his insights from registering on 87 accounts to come up with the tips for registration page design. Here's the link - Registration Usability - 87 Registration Forms Tested

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Virtual IronSoftware raised 20M, Intel Capital coinvested

Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), the leading provider of enterprise server virtualization made easy, today announced that it has secured $20 million in new venture equity financing. The funding, provided at an increased valuation, will be used to accelerate product development and expand global sales, marketing and distribution efforts. The investment brings Virtual Iron's total venture funding to $65 million in invested equity capital and includes Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures.

"This funding and the increased valuation are a reflection of Virtual Iron's strong market momentum. The server virtualization market is exploding and Virtual Iron is growing faster than the market itself," said Ed Walsh, CEO of Virtual Iron. "Virtual Iron is known for providing enterprise server virtualization made easy. Our clients and partners get all the advanced benefits of server virtualization without the cost and complexity. The company's market momentum is a direct result of the significant value our software delivers for our clients and partners."

Virtual Iron specializes in enterprise-class server virtualization and offers comparable capabilities to market leader VMware but in the industry's easiest-to-use package. The software is currently deployed in over 1,450 organizations worldwide. Recent highlights for the company include:

- Dramatic growth in revenue over the last 12 months
- Strong international expansion; over 40% of Virtual Iron's revenue and customers now come from outside North America
- Approximately 10X growth in the number of channel partners over the last 12 months
- Tier 1 distribution agreements with Tech Data Corporation, Avnet, and expansion of its distribution network in Asia-Pacific and EMEA
- Reseller agreements with Dell, HP and Arrow Electronics
- The December 2007 release of Version 4.2 of its server virtualization platform � the first Xen�-based solution to offer expanded high availability and disaster recovery capabilities to strengthen support for production use cases and workloads
- Broad expansion of its technology partner ecosystem including new and expanded agreements and collaboration with Compellent, Dell, EqualLogic, FalconStor, HP, IBM, Intel, LeftHand Networks, Microsoft, NetApp and PlateSpin, among others
- Participation in Microsoft's Virtualization Validation Program and Interoperability Alliance

"Virtual Iron is the only competitor to VMware in the market that has the features to support the high value use cases for virtualization such as dynamic workload management, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery," said David R. Skok, General Partner at Matrix Partners. "Virtual Iron's product is differentiated from VMware in several important ways including its ease of use, scalability and use of a standard storage architecture. There is a large and important segment of the market looking for an alternative to VMware, and uncomfortable ceding this market to EMC. This demand is allowing the company to grow at a fast rate. We're excited about the potential here, particularly given the talents of the new management team."

The server virtualization software market is growing at 60% per year according to IDC and is expected to reach over $9 billion by the year 2012, but user adoption, only at 6% today, has been hindered by the complexity and high price of established commercial solutions. Virtual Iron addresses this gap by providing customer�proven, enterprise server virtualization capabilities that are both easy to use and afford. The platform combines the Xen� open source hypervisor with robust virtualization services, policy-based management and transparent workload migration capabilities. The software takes full advantage of new hardware�assisted virtualization (Intel VT and AMD-V) to deliver near native performance. Unlike other virtualization solutions, Virtual Iron requires no installation or management of software on physical servers, further simplifying deployment and data center operations. Users leverage Virtual Iron to support a broad range of data center initiatives including server consolidation, development and test optimization, high availability, disaster recovery, capacity management and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

About Virtual Iron Software, Inc. � Enterprise Server Virtualization Made Easy
Virtual Iron provides easy-to-use, enterprise-class server virtualization software solutions. The software enables organizations of all sizes to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of managing and operating their data centers. Virtual Iron includes advanced capabilities that leverage industry standards, open source economics and built-in hardware-assisted acceleration. The software is available exclusively through Virtual Iron's Channel One partner network. Evaluation copies are available for free download at http://www.virtualiron.com/free. For more information, visit http://www.virtualiron.com or email info@virtualiron.com.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Startup pricing model

Dhrmesh Shah makes an intersting point about the pricing models:

Don’t confuse marketing models with business models. The former helps you get visibility for your product, the latter defines how you will actually make money. Too many startups try to pass off marketing models as business models. Also, make sure you think through what your customers likely want (you know, customers, those people that give you cash).

Read the full article here

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Interesting read- VC phrases

1. favorite VC phrases

2 The Art of Saying “No”

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Intel Capital makes series A investment in REvolution Computing, creator of parallel computing open source software for computational statistics

Santa Clara, CA - January 22, 2008 - Intel Capital, the global investment arm of Intel Corporation, today announced that it has invested in the Series A financing of REvolution Computing, creator of parallel computing software for computational statistics. The funds will be used to advance REvolution's product offerings and expand into new markets.

REvolution Computing provides RPro and ParallelR, which deliver the open source ‘R’ statistical tool with commercial support and the power of parallelism. Already used throughout life sciences, financial services, manufacturing and energy, the R statistical packages are now being deployed and supported by REvolution Computing for production, commercial, and regulated environments.

"REvolution Computing’s innovative technology provides a much-needed solution for many industries, including financial services, health-care and retail,” said Arvind Sodhani, president of Intel Capital. “This approach to business-ready open source solutions aligns with Intel’s platform strategy and continues our commitment to investing in the open source community."

"Intel Capital has a long history of investment in open source enterprises, beginning in 1998 with our investment in Red Hat,” said Lisa Lambert, managing director, Software & Solutions Group, Intel Capital. “We also provided subsequent funding for innovators such as: SuSE Linux, JBoss, MySQL, Zend Technologies, Fonality, CollabNet, and Black Duck, among others. REvolution Computing’s involvement in Intel Capital’s Open Source Incubator Program is just the latest illustration of our ongoing commitment to fostering new business models and encouraging open source software solutions."

This is the second investment made under the Intel Capital Open Source Incubator Program. Founded in January 2006, the program was created specifically to drive investments in open source projects and accelerate the adoption of open source on Intel platforms. Intel Capital’s first investment under this program was WS02, a web services platform company with primary operations in Sri Lanka. The program provides seed capital, computing resources, office facilities, and solution services through Intel’s global network of IT Innovation Centers where developers work directly with Intel engineers to develop, test, and performance tune software for the latest Intel platforms.

"The use of 'R' has been growing steadily since 1995 and 'R' is now the standard computational statistics package for an estimated one million users of statistical software worldwide,” said Richard Schultz, CEO REvolution Computing. “Our products for computational statistics are fully supported, easy to use, with commercial features and automatic parallel processing. We’re excited about this investment from Intel Capital and value their vision and commitment in this emerging segment of the market."

In conjunction with Intel Capital's investment, REvolution Computing’s Board of Directors has been expanded to include: Andre M. Boisvert, former Oracle executive, former President and COO of SAS Institute Inc., and now Chairman of several open source companies including Pentaho, an open source business intelligence (BI) suite; and Michael P. Haydock, former President and CEO of Cray Research and now VP in HP’s Business Intelligence (BI) Division. Additionally, Dr. Martin Schultz, one of the leading researchers in parallel computation over the past 30 years at Scientific Computing Associates has joined the company as Chief Science Officer.

"R has become the de-facto statistical language and REvolution Computing's R-based solutions provide the necessary scale and support for its growing commercial usage,” said Andre M. Boisvert, Revolution Computing board member. “With this investment, Revolution Computing can deliver the type of performance that has been missing in existing computational statistics offerings."

Direct link to Intel Capial site

Endeca gets $15M from Intel Capital, SAP

In a bid to align itself with two technology titans, enterprise search firm Endeca said Wednesday it received a $15 million investment from Intel and SAP.

The cash infusion into Endeca, whose clients include Ford, Wal-Mart, and the super-secret Defense Intelligence Agency, comes about two weeks after Microsoft acquired rival Fast Search & Transfer for $1.2 billion.

Endeca Chief Executive Steve Papa said the company, which in November reported its 19th consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth, had no pressing need for the funding but is seeking closer ties to business software maker SAP and its 43,000 customers and semiconductor giant Intel and its dual-core technology.

"It's not just that they're giants, but what they do that's so important for information access," he said, citing the impact of Intel's dual-core technology on complex data searches.

Lisa Lambert, managing director for Intel Capital's software and solutions group, said Endeca is a good fit from a financial and strategic perspective.

"They've made tremendous progress on a [profit and loss] basis," she said. "People want to know where the data sits to make decisions."

On the strategic side, she noted that Endeca's multi-threaded application can serve as a showcase as Intel goes beyond the current quad-core architecture on the semiconductors that power servers.

"This s a processor intensive application," Ms. Lambert said. "On the whole, this is a good marriage. They need more cores and we have more cores to give it."

The new relationships, however, don't preclude Endeca from hammering out similar bonds with a company like Oracle, which competes in the business software marketplace against SAP.

"We're absolutely open to Oracle in a similar relationship," Mr. Papa added. Endeca also is backed by investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, and In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the Central Intelligence Agency,

In addition to Fast, Endeca competes with enterprise specialists like Autonomy as well as consumer search king Google. Unlike the advertising-supported consumer model, Endeca charges from $100,000 to more than $10 million per installation.


Mr. Papa said enterprise information access is a different and far more interpretive process than consumer search.

Rather than "dump information on you," information access seeks to uncover and present relationships in the disparate forms of structured and unstructured data found in an enterprise. In September, the company also added functions that allow user-generated content to enhance search for retail and online media customers.

In a podcast, AMR Research Chief Research Officer Bruce Richardson called Endeca one of Boston's hot tech stories that went from one customer, Fidelity Investments, in 2001 to 500 as of early 2008.

In one instance, Mr. Richardson noted, Endeca set up a search system for a government client whose data set had 10 million records each with 22,000 attributes.

Mr. Papa said that Microsoft's acquisition of Fast was a function of the target company's weakness.

"They were able to buy Fast because the company was trying to sell itself," he said, noting that Microsoft plans to mesh Fast with its SharePoint content management software, linking both products to Windows rather than the Linux operating system more widely used in search applications.

Here's the direct link to RedhErring.com

Web Analytics Service firm QuantCast gets $20M funding

The more web publishers know about their audience, the better positioned they are to sell advertising. That’s the driving force behind web analytics startup Quantcast, which on Tuesday announced a $20 million second round of funding led by the Founders Fund and Polaris Venture Partners.

“Quantcast is changing the way the media industry measures and identifies audience segments through a collaborative, direct-measurement platform,” said Quantcast CEO Konrad Feldman in a statement.

San Francisco-based Quantcast hopes to do this by analyzing massive amounts of data on demographics, web sites, and web surfers and then building specific audience profiles and traffic volume for sites.

The ace up its sleeve is its open Quantified Publisher program. Web publishers tag their sites, which allows Quantcast to measure their activity, and then publishers receive Quantcast’s data for their sites for free.

The more web publishers that join—to date, 20,000 and counting—the more data Quantcast has and the more accurate a picture the startup can create of Internet traffic.

While popular web analytics services such as comScore and NetRatings use surveys of web surfers to estimate traffic, Quantcast combines similar “panel” surveys with data gleaned from their Quantified Publisher program.

“If you look under the hood of Quantcast, they are doing billion of sets of analysis,” said Mike Hirshland, of Polaris Venture Partners.

Mr. Hirshland said the Quantcast founders have backgrounds in statistical analysis for the financial industry, and they’re now taking that experience directly to web publishers. The result, he said, should be a more accurate picture of who’s viewing web sites.

Advertisers and publishers could be thrilled if Quantcast can do what it has set out to do. Mr. Feldman said the company eventually hopes to leverage its data to bring publishers and advertisers together—and make money in the process.

But he would not comment on any revenue-generating partnerships to date, saying only that the company is focused on providing more accurate data to its network of publishers—for free.

Launched in September 2006, Quantcast now has a total venture funding of $26 million.
Here's the direct link to RedHerring

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

VC investments rise to six-year high (29.4B in 2007) - Associated Press

Venture capital investments in U.S. startups climbed to a six-year high of $29.4 billion in 2007, raising hope that ample money will still be available to back promising new ideas even if the staggering economy falls into a recession.

The amount of venture capital spread across 3,813 deals represents the industry's busiest year since $40.6 billion went into nearly 4,500 U.S. startups in 2001, according to data scheduled for release Saturday by Thomson Financial, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

The $29.4 billion invested last year marked an 11 percent increase from $26.6 billion in 2006.

In 2001, venture capitalists were actually curtailing their investments after the dot-com economy pushed the U.S. economy into its last recession.

Although many experts believe another recession is imminent, venture capitalists say there is little reason to believe their investment pace will slacken this year.

In a show of confidence, venture capitalists raised $34.7 billion for future investments during 2007, a 9 percent increase from the previous year.

The industry's optimism stems from a belief that many of today's hottest concepts either are recession-resistant or are developing moneysaving products that may have even more appeal during an economic downturn.

The investment areas spurring the optimistic outlook include: health care and biotech; the Internet; and technology aimed at developing alternative energy, reducing pollution and promoting conservation.

Combined, these sectors attracted nearly $16 billion in venture capital investments last year, accounting more than half of the total activity.

While focusing on specialties less susceptible to economic downturns, venture capitalists have been increasing their investments more gradually in recent years. During the dot-com boom, high-tech financiers had routinely entrusted millions of dollars with young Internet entrepreneurs who had never before run profitable businesses.

The newer, more disciplined approach makes it less likely there will be a dramatic about-face like the one that occurred after venture capitalists invested nearly $160 billion in 1999 and 2000. After that flurry, venture capital investments fell for the next three years before bottoming out at $19.7 billion in 2003.

"There is nothing to suggest we will fall off a cliff" this year, said P. Sherrill Neff, founding partner of Quaker BioVentures in Philadelphia.

Quaker BioVentures focuses on startups involved in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical devices — categories that Neff expects to remain in strong demand even in a feeble economy because people won't stop getting sick or growing older.

Other venture capitalists seem to share his opinion, helping to produce a record year for investments in "life sciences," which includes biotech and medical devices. Venture capitalists invested $9.11 billion in 862 life sciences deals last year, a 21 percent increase from $7.56 billion in 2006.

Internet startups also appear better positioned to weather any economic turbulence because the advertisers that generate most online profits appear likely to keep shifting their spending from television, print and radio to the Web even if there is a recession.

Venture capitalists invested $4.6 billion in Internet deals last year, a 12 percent increase from $4.1 billion in 2006.

Venture capital investments in so-called "clean technology" focused on alternative energy and reducing pollution from fossil fuels totaled $2.2 billion, a 47 percent increase from $1.5 billion in 2006.

Although they are expected to continue to ramp up their investment this year, venture capitalists may have more trouble cashing out. That's because the sluggish economy could hinder initial public offerings of stock; last year 86 venture-backed startups made their market debuts, the most since 2004.

"We are very concerned about the public markets shutting down, but it is to be expected in times of unpleasantness," said Deepak Kamra, general partner with Canaan Partners in Menlo Park.

Original link here

An Interview with VC Pioneer Thomas J. Perkins

Is Kleiner Perkins not funding Web 2.0 companies anymore? There was some discussion of that in the blogosphere recently, with valuations for Facebook and other Web 2.0 companies getting really, really high.
I’m not aware of that. A lot has been done but we haven’t made it an official policy. I love bubbles. We made a lot of money in bubbles.

Every time Google passes one of the century marks, 100 to 200 to 300, everybody said, “My god.” If you bought Google on the offering you would have made about 10 to 1. Is the market always right? No. Is it always wrong? No. You don’t get rich by betting against the market.

Is there too much venture capital floating around?
There’s always been too much money in venture capital. It doesn’t mean you can’t make too much money in venture capital.

What’s the worst investment you ever made?

Click here to read the full interview at CreativeCapital

Saturday, January 19, 2008

IBM Explains the Exploitation of Application Mashups

In times of innovation you get some definite chaos coming through, but IT and line of businesses see this as a big opportunity... The methodology here is very different from the development methodology we’ve been brought up to do. It’s much more collaborative, if you’re line of business, and it’s much more than a set of specifications.

Read or Listen to the full podcast here

Oracles acquisition of BEA

Users Lose Middleware Choice in Oracle Acquisition of BEA

What Will SAP Acquire Next?

Intel Capital leads Series A investment in 123Greetings.com

Here'sthe link to the press release

New York, USA & Mumbai, India – 17 January 2008 - Intel Capital and 123Greetings, a leading provider of online e-card services, today announced the first closing of a Series A investment in IntraSoft Technologies Ltd, the owner of 123Greetings, led by Intel Capital. The proceeds from the investment are intended to support future product launches, sales and marketing, infrastructure and expansion both in India and internationally.

"Online greeting cards have become a standard form of modern socialization around the world,” said Arvind Sodhani, president, Intel Capital. "Intel Capital looks forward to working with 123Greetings as they advance to the next stage of their growth and expansion."

"We are pleased to receive this support from Intel Capital," said Arvind Kajaria, founder, 123Greetings.com. "Their investment provides us with the opportunity to further our strong position in the online expressions space and take full advantage of growth opportunities."

"Our investment in Intrasoft/123Greetings highlights Intel Capital's interest in India’s technology industry," said Sudheer Kuppam, Intel Capital's managing director for India, Japan, Australasia and South-East Asia. "123Greetings is well established in this market segment. This, combined with their strong content development team, attracted our attention."

Intel Capital's investment comes from the US$250M Intel Capital India Technology Fund which was founded in December 2005. This fund invests in Indian technology companies to help stimulate local technological innovation and the continued growth of India's Information Technology industry. Intel Capital has invested in more than 40 companies across eight cities in India since 1998.

About Intel Capital
Intel Capital, Intel's global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing, and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$6 billion in approximately 1,000 companies in more than 40 countries. In that timeframe, about 157 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and another 187 have been acquired by other companies. In 2007, Intel Capital invested about US$639 million in 166 deals with approximately 37 percent of funds invested outside the United States. For more information on Intel Capital and its differentiated advantages, visit www.intel.com/capital.

About 123Greetings.com
123Greetings is the world's leading online destination for human expressions reaching over 200 million people annually. Drawing from its tag line "Giving Life to your Expressions" the service inculcates a sense of personalization that relates to the users on an emotional level. Its offering of over 20,000 greeting cards covers a mix of 2,500 special events and everyday celebrations. Its applications & widgets for social networks & blogs allow users ubiquitous access across multiple devices and platforms. For more information on the company, visit www.123greetings.com/info/.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sun acquires Open Source Software MySQL

Some open source software [OSS] purists on the blogosphere–and some outright double-dipping conflicted for-profit OSS company executives–have been beating the drum for over a year about the upcoming parade of IPOs that we would see from the OSS movement. But reality happened, market forces intervened, Yahoo (YHOO) bought Zimbra, Citrix (CTXS) bought Xensource (paying way too much), and the OSS IPO marching band kept getting smaller and smaller. Wednesday Sun (JAVA) acquired MySQL, pulling the lead trombone of the OSS IPO parade, out of the line of march. The marching band is about to become a quintet.


Here are the links to the posts:

Buying MySQL Could Save Sun

Sun Rains on the Open Source Software IPO Parade

Five Questions Facing Sun Micro's MySQL Acquisition

More acquisitions by VMWare

VMware Inc. (VMW) on Monday announced its seventh acquisition of the past year, while rumors are circulating that it may be near completing an eighth, underscoring the land-grab nature of the virtualization sector today.

The company's latest acquisition is of Thinstall, a privately held application vitrualization software company that it bought for undisclosed terms. VMware said Thinstall's technology would help it expand its desktop virtualization capabilities to help customers better maintain desktop environments. VMware's core virtualization technology was built to consolidate the servers that run in the back office, but enterprises are increasingly looking to streamline other parts of the network. In addition, as more and more companies deploy virtual machines to enable multiple applications to run on a single server, they are requiring new technologies to manage these virtual environments.

Click here to read the full story and other links at Seeking Alpha

ICICI Bank Launches Mobile Banking Application - ContentSutra

Click here to read the original story at ContentSutra

ICICI Bank has introduced iMobile, a mobile application that allows customers to use it in a manner similar to the Internet banking transactions, including transferring funds to ICICI and non ICICI Bank accounts, pay utility bills and apply for insurance premiums. The facility is being offered free of charge, and covers Savings accounts, Demat, Credit Card and Loan accounts. This is a significant move, coming from India’s largest private sector bank (and second largest, overall, after State Bank of India). ET adds that 22 percent of the bank’s transactions last year were via the Internet, up from 2 percent five years ago. The application can be downloaded by SMSing iMobile to 56767661,or via their website. There’s a flash based demo that you can try.

I just installed the application: it required GPRS for downloading, or will need transferred via the PC - that might limit usage, and ICICI would do well to tie up with a handset manufacturer. The application can use both SMS and GPRS. I received a security code for activation of the service. The activation process took around 5 minutes, over GPRS. The service identified my bank account based on my mobile number on its own. Some features - like checking for the last 5 transactions, did not work. I wasn’t able to figure out how to activate the bill payment, though. The application has been developed by c-sam, promoted by telecom veteran Sam Pitroda. For starters, it’s likely that the bank will try to get its Internet banking customers to use mobile application (their website now has a prominent iMobile banner and link). The bank to bank funds transfer can be used as a payment system. If banks start launching their own mobile payment services, I wonder what will become of independent third party application services?

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Recession Proof Software? Try SaaS, Managed Services and Open Source

Nice article on ContentSutra:

Conventional wisdom says Software as a Service [SaaS] companies like Salesforce.com (CRM) and NetSuite (N) will perform well during a recession. Some pundits even think SaaS providers are immune to a recession.

I wouldn't go quite that far. But I do believe technology investors should focus on three markets in 2008. They are SaaS, managed services and open source. Here's why.

If the economy slows, chief information officers [CIOs] will surely take steps to delay or even cancel big internal IT projects — particularly complex application development efforts. In stark contrast, SaaS offerings from Salesforce.com and its rivals provide CIOs with predictable monthly costs and on-time deployments, and the risk of hidden costs is very low.

With these benefits in mind, SaaS remains a hot topic on Wall Street. Big software companies will surely follow Salesforce.com into the SaaS market. I continue to hear, for instance, that Symantec will launch the Symantec Protection Network in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, SaaS will continue to converge with managed services, as technology consultants meld their network management capabilities with application deployment expertise.

Peter Sandiford, CEO of Level Platforms, describes this convergence of SaaS and managed services in a recent blog entry for MSPmentor. The managed service industry is filled with small software companies that are hiring talent and mulling initial public offerings in late 2008 or 2009. Keep a particularly close eye on Autotask in Albany; Level Platforms; Kaseya; ConnectWise and N-able, just to name a few.

We're also seeing the convergence of open source with SaaS and managed services. SugarCRM, for instance, is a fast-growing application provider that ranks among the top 10 open source firms you should be watching. In fact, SugarCRM offers its software as either an on-premises or on-demand solution. Watch for an IPO in late 2008 or 2009.

On the managed services front, companies like Untangle are promoting open source security solutions as robust, community-enhanced alternatives to closed-source technology. Untangle has lined up about 50 new managed services partners since September 2007, lifting its partner ranks to about 60 companies — about half of which have already generated sales for Untangle.

Untangle, still privately held, isn't alone. Watch for Red Hat (RHT) and Novell (NOVL) to start talking more aggressively about SaaS and managed services in the months ahead.

So, are managed services and SaaS the perfect antidote to a sick economy? I think not. But if I had a few extra bucks for tech investments, the most compelling bets remain SaaS, managed services and open source.

Followup posts related to SaaS:

Tech Data, Ingram, Avnet Moving Into SaaS

Salesforce.com To Offer DaaS Service, New Pricing Model, Competition

Monday, January 14, 2008

LogMeIn Files for $86M IPO; Gets Money from Intel

Here's the link to original post

Remote computer access service provider LogMeIn has filed to raise up to $86.3 million through an initial public offering, according to a filing late last week with the SEC. The Woburn, Mass.-based company reported a loss of $6.5 million on sales of a mere $18.1 million for the nine months ending Sept. 2007, but its growth is strong, with sales increasing 151 percent in the same time period.

As it uses a peer-to-peer data transfer model after it makes the connection between the home computer and the remote user, LogMeIn faces less of an infrastructure burden as it grows. It has filed to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol LOGM.

The company sells primarily to enterprises, so the IPO may also be an effort to gain some credibility with corporate buyers. Some of that credibility may also come from a deal LogMeIn signed with Intel in December. The previously undisclosed deal involves Intel investing $10 million in LogMeIn and an agreement to tightly integrate LogMeIn’s services with Intel hardware. The chipmaker will also market and sell LogMeIn’s service to its customers and share that revenue with LogMeIn. Polaris Venture Partners, Prism Venture Partners, Integral Capital Partners and Intel Capital are backing the five-year-old company.

A $25M Innovation Fund Takes Flight in India

India's National Association of Software and Services Companies on Friday launched a $25 million innovation fund in collaboration with ICICI Knowledge Park.


Investors include India’s largest software services company, Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s leading private telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, and ICICI Knowledge Park.


On the drawing board for over a couple of years, the Knowledge Park Innovation Fund (NIIF) is finally expected to be operational within the next three months and to attract a first round of investments from 8-10 institutional investors. Follow-on rounds are expected to attract $40 million to $50 million.


NIIF will provide seed stage investments to encourage intellectual property-driven innovations in emerging technologies.


“While the larger firms can invest in innovation, startups and young firms in India often fail to scale up due to the lack of timely availability of seed capital," Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies, said in a statement.

Click here to read the full article at Red Herring

IBM Joins Sony, Nokia in Sharing Ecological Patents

International Business Machines Corp., the leading recipient of U.S. patents, is joining Sony Corp., Nokia Oyj and Pitney Bowes Inc. in offering the rights to environmentally friendly technologies for free.

The effort, called the Eco-Patent Commons, is designed to help companies save energy and water and curb pollution, Armonk, New York-based IBM said today in a joint statement with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva.

Companies are taking steps to show they're fighting global warming and promoting sustainable development. The Eco-Patent Commons is the first forum for sharing intellectual property with environmental uses. Click to read the full article at Bloomberg

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Intel@CES 2008

Intel CEO, Paul, describes how the Internet will continue to transform the CE and entertainment industries, and how it’s evolution will create business opportunities for those who embrace it. here's the link. Do watch Paul's keynote video..awesome new tchnologies to come!!!

Other Stories:

The Relative Importance of PC and Mobile-Based Internet Access

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Intel sets sight on consumer electronics with foray into mobile space

Here's an article from USA Today Q&A: Intel CEO sets sights on consumer electronics

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Chip giant Intel has a new industry to conquer: consumer electronics. CEO Paul Otellini is expected to lay out the No. 1 chipmaker's plans to push further into everything from cellphones to digital video recorders during a speech Monday at the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Intel (INTC) dominates the computer industry, with about 80% of the market for PC processing chips, but is a relative underdog in electronics. Otellini spoke with USA TODAY (GCI) reporter Michelle Kessler about why his company is bothering to start at the bottom of a new industry — and what impact Intel might have on that market.


CES SHOW PREVIEW: Electronics industry gets less traditional
Q: Intel has begun aggressively selling chips for consumer electronics. What makes you think you know anything about that market?

A: Everything in this space will be connected to the Internet. And the Internet is built around (Intel-style) chips. A lot of the early (digital video recorder) work was done by Intel — a lot of the (underlying software). It's not as far afield as you think. We're not trying to rerun the PC movie, (but electronics are becoming more like computers).

Q: Computerlike electronic devices sound frightening. Will future cellphones crash or get viruses?

A: You have to (design products) with protection. We have to produce something that doesn't crash, that's always on.

(Some of the first will be) mobile Internet devices. Think of the iPhone (AAPL) on steroids — thin and in your pocket. Some will work on voice. They'll have the full Internet at reasonable speed with no compromises.

Q: One of Intel's biggest pushes is in cellphone chips, an area where the company has struggled before. Why return to that ultracompetitive market?

A: Voice is free. If it's not free today, it will be. Everybody in the business is looking for a (data) services-based revenue stream. You make up the (lost voice revenue) through a zillion data service transmissions, (which plays to Intel's strengths as a computer-chip maker).

It's a lot easier to bring voice to a small computer than it is to bring the whole Internet to a phone. We're going to advocate for standards, like we did in the early days of the PC. We joined Android (Google's cellphone software coalition).

Q: Intel is pushing a new type of wireless data service for cellphones and other devices called WiMax. Sprint is embracing WiMax, but most other cellphone carriers are advocating different technologies. Wi-Fi, another wireless technology pushed by Intel, was a much bigger and quicker success. What's wrong?

A: People have been talking about 3G (cellphone networks based on different technologies) for 15 years. We've been talking about WiMax for five. With Wi-Fi, you have 50 million individual hot spots.

(With WiMax, which is operated by cellphone carriers), you have to deal with telephone companies and governments (that regulate the airwaves). It's more expensive, and it has to be ultrareliable. … We still think that by the end of 2010, 250 million people will be covered.

Q: After struggling in the past few years, Intel's fortunes have suddenly surged. Earnings and market share are up. What happened?

A: Tech goes in cycles. We have been lucky enough, for the bulk of the cycles, to come out OK. We've buckled down, refocused and done significant downsizing. We focused a large portion of (research and development) on where we wanted to go.

We have the financial resources. Even in bad times, we make a few billion a year.