Alex Williams

May 16th, 2013

Tableau Software To Open Trading On The NYSE At $31 Per Share With Market Symbol “DATA”

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Data visualization software company Tableau Software, going by the symbol “DATA,” will start trading tomorrow on the New York Stock Exchange at $31 per share, up from earlier today when the company said it would trade in the $28 to $30 range.

Tableau will offer 8.2 million shares of its Class A common stock, up from the 7.2 million it previously said it would offer. That puts the offering at… → Read More

May 16th, 2013

The Magic Of Google’s APIs and Algorithms, The Bread And Butter Of The Google I/O Keynote

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It’s clear that Google had other things it could have talked about on the first day of the I/O conference. Like Google Glass. Instead, the attendees heard more about how Google has developed new ways to turn data into services. The highlights were not some fancy hardware but the magic of Google’s APIs and algorithms, the bread and butter of what Google does. I spent part of the… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Unboxing The First Chromebook Pixel Given Away At Google I/O

Sebastian Rodriguez waited in line 90 minutes to be the first person at Google I/O to get the Google Chromebook Pixel, the premium laptop given to all conference attendees today. Rodriguez is a a software engineer with Thales, a data security company. He humored us and did an “unboxing” of his new  Pixel. He was hoping to get Google Glass as were most of the people we talked to at the… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Stock Price Closes At 52-Week High Of $915 On First Day Of Google I/O As Apple Takes Another Drop

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Google’s stock price came close to its 52-week high on the first day of Google I/O today, hitting $915 per share at close. In comparison, Apple today dropped 15 points to close at $428 per share, 277 points off its 52-week high. This morning, Google stock jumped to $909 per share from its opening price of $895 when Co-Founder Larry Page hit the stage at around 11:45. It is now trading at… → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google Cloud Platform Opens To General Availability With 3 Million Applications, New Pricing And PHP

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Google announced today at I/O that it made Google Cloud Platform generally available, marking a milestone for the cloud community and the real arrival of a giant to contend with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and its pay-as-you-go pricing. → Read More

May 15th, 2013

Google I/O Session Totals Show Deeper Importance Of Google Cloud Platform

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We are more than two hours into the Google I/O keynote, the kickoff to a three-day event with 171 sessions. But something is quite different from last year. Google Cloud Platform now represents about 14% of all the sessions at the event, second to only Google Chrome and Google Android.

Last year, Google Cloud Platform had just been launched and so the sessions were more introductory in nature. → Read More

May 14th, 2013

Collaaj Launches An Easy Way To Create, Store And Send Video Messages

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Collaaj has launched a service designed to make it easy to create videos and send them as messages.
The SaaS tool includes an editor that allows people to make videos from content that could include a demo recording of an app, a drawing, annotations on a presentation or someone sending a video message of themselves to an individual or a group. The data is managed through the Collaaj platform that… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

GraphLab Raises $6.75M For Data Analysis Used In Consumer Recommendation Services

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GraphLab, the open-source distributed database, has received $6.75 million from Madrona Venture Group and NEA for its machine learning technology used to analyze data graphs for recommendation engines. Developed five years ago at Carnegie Mellon University, the open-source data analysis platform takes semi-structured data that describe relationships between people, web traffic, product purchases… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

PernixData Raises $20M In Oversubscribed Round For New Way To Think About Storage

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Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is the lead investor in a $20 million oversubscribed B round for PernixData, a company that the venture capital firm says has made a breakthrough that has not been seen in the storage business for the past decade. Lightspeed Venture Partners, which led the first round, joined the round with Kleiner. Also participating in the new round were Mark Leslie, founder… → Read More

May 14th, 2013

As Google I/O Approaches, Microsoft Hires A High-Profile Team To Attract Outside Developers

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Just before Google I/O, Microsoft is making a big pitch for developers with a high-profile announcement about a new team that will focus on building outside interest in app development on the Azure platform. The group,  which will have a base in San Francisco, is part of the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group led by Technical Fellow John Shewchuk.  As Mary Jo Foley wrote, the new… → Read More

May 13th, 2013

Zapier Launches API-Monitoring Service To Catch Issues And Outages

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Zapier, a service that automates tasks between online services, has launched a tool that monitors 200 APIs, sometimes catching an outage before the provider does.

The new tool monitors the uptime and downtime of every API on Zapier. It is designed to monitor the realtime status of popular web APIs and their impact on customers that use the Zapier service or just want a good resource to… → Read More

May 12th, 2013

How A Car Crash Changed Vishal Sikka And The Direction Of SAP

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It’s a rare fall rainy day in Palo Alto and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka is as sick as a dog. It’s less than a week until SAP Sapphire in Madrid and the community around him are like a worrying family. I had told them that it is okay. I could make the trip another time. But they were insistent I make the trip. Fast forward to May. It has been several months since that… → Read More

May 10th, 2013

Rackspace Share Price Down 25% As Cloud Price Wars Take Their Toll

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Rackspace will open trading this morning on the New York Stock Exchange with a share price that dropped nearly 25% on Thursday. The stock dropped after the company missed its earnings, raising concerns the cloud price wars with giants like Amazon Web Services are taking its toll. → Read More

May 9th, 2013

Microsoft To Fold Yammer Sales Team Into Office 365, Identity Surfaces As A Core Focus

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Microsoft today announced that it will fold about 100 sales people from Yammer into the Office 365 team. Microsoft also is making a point to focus on identity management and other issues as part of its road to full integration.

The news follows the road map that Microsoft set at its SharePoint Conference last November. In March, Microsoft detailed the transition and how Yammer will co-exist… → Read More

May 8th, 2013

Debian Will Serve As The Default OS For Google Compute Engine

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Google is bringing Debian to Google Compute Engine and is making it the default OS for developers using the service. Google will support both Debian 6.0 and 7.0, which was released this week.

There are some pretty clear reasons why Google is making Debian the default OS. First of all, it’s free, said Krishnan Subramanian, a cloud analyst and founder of Rishidot Research. “With Ubuntu and… → Read More

May 8th, 2013

Open Compute Project To Develop A Network Switch, A First-Of-Its-Kind Open Source Project

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Open Compute will develop a specification and a reference box for an open networking switch and will do so from the ground up in the fashion of open-source software efforts, such as those developed by the Apache Foundation.

The OS-agnostic, top-of-rack switch will be the first developed as an open-source project with the spec developed by the Open Compute community.

“Closesd switches are… → Read More

May 8th, 2013

G2 Crowd Takes On Gartner Magic Quadrant With Crowdsourced Review Platform

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G2 Crowd wants to disrupt Gartner’s Magic Quadrant through a real-time, crowdsourced platform of peer reviews and social analytics targeting the CRM and marketing automation markets.  The new “Grids” service launches June 1. The platform, free to explore, analyzes and correlates about 15,000 peer reviews that it has aggregated since its launch in February. CEO Abel Goddard says… → Read More

May 7th, 2013

Cisco Meraki Launches “Presence,” With Facebook Account Log-In To Wireless Networks

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Cisco Meraki has launched a new service called Presence that provides data about mobile behavior across location and automatic login to wireless hotspots using a person’s Facebook account. → Read More

May 7th, 2013

AWS Offers General Availability For Node.js, The Popular Development Platform

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Node.js is the everyman’s platform for developing apps. It’s JavaScript on the sever. It’s relatively easy to learn and it’s immensely popular. Now Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released the Node.js SDK for general availability. → Read More

May 6th, 2013

SkyGiraffe Raises Seed Round From 500 Startups Partner And Original .Net Creator For Mobile App Platform

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SkyGiraffe, an enterprise mobile platform provider, has raised a seed round from well-known investors, including Parker Thompson, a partner at 500 Startups and Yuval Neeman, a former corporate vice president at Microsoft, who started and led the company’s .Net development. SkyGiraffe makes a platform called SkyGiraffe Studio that connects data from different business groups with mobile apps… → Read More

May 6th, 2013

Dell Moves Deeper Into The Software Business, Acquires Enstratius, One Of The Most Recognized Cloud Management Startups

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Dell has acquired Enstratius, a provider of cloud management software considered one of the most innovative startups in the market by Gartner Research. The acquisition gives Dell another way to provide end-to-end-cloud solutions. Offering enterprise solutions is part of Dell’s larger plans to transition from its dependence on personal computer sales and move deeper into the myriad… → Read More

May 5th, 2013

6 Experts on Speeding Up Data

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Speed. That’s what it’s all about these days. The problem: it’s still more effective to use FedEx than trying to squeeze a data load across a network. It’s an absurd reality when it requires a plane to move data from one place to another.

It’s not necessary to move terabytes of data all day, all night. Moving hard drives across the continent for a feature film is different from… → Read More

May 2nd, 2013

Zoho Launches Card Scanner With Direct CRM Integration

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Zoho has a new Card Scanner app for iOS for its SaaS platform that allows a customer to take a photo of a business card and have that data stored in the Zoho CRM or as a new contact. The app scans business cards in English, French, German and Spanish. An Android app is coming soon. Zoho developed the app to help sales people save time on manual data entry. Cards get left on a desk, never to be… → Read More

May 1st, 2013

Microsoft WebMatrix 3 Web Development Tool Comes With Deeper Windows Azure Integration And Support For GitHub

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Microsoft has released WebMatrix 3, the latest version of its free web development tool. The new version now comes with deeper Windows Azure integration and support for GitHub. WebMatrix users can now sign in through Windows Azure and create up to 10 sites for free. The capability means users can manage their sites locally or in Windows Azure. In WebMatrix 3, developers can do remote editing of… → Read More

May 1st, 2013

Datahero Turns Data Into Rich Visuals Without The Need For A Data Analyst

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Datahero, here at Disrupt NY, represents how the market is segmenting for data visualization and data-analytics tools based upon level of skill, complexity and overall richness and sophistication of the technology. Datahero caters to a market that often has to rely on data analysts to do their work for them. Deal flows and other segmentations have traditionally required the help of someone who is… → Read More

April 30th, 2013

Mowbly Offers A Mobile Platform With A Single-App Approach

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Mowbly, which recently launched and is here at Disrupt NY, takes a counter approach to mobile development platform environments. Instead of a steady stream of apps, Mowbly uses a single-app approach that it offers through its mobile platform as a service (PaaS), said Co-Founder Vignesh Swaminathan. Mowbly offers third-party app support. But it only processes the data by calling the third party… → Read More

April 30th, 2013

AWS Launches Certification Program, Shows How Much It Wants Enterprise Customers

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched a certification program to designate people who have the technical skills for building secure and reliable apps using AWS technology. The new Amazon Web Services Global Certification Program is built around the three primary roles for engineering teams delivering cloud-based solutions: Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator and Developer. Before getting… → Read More

April 29th, 2013

Kloudless Launches Service That Uses Connectors To Move Files Between Different Cloud Services

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Kloudless launched at Disrupt NY 2013 today with its service for moving data from email to different cloud platforms through connectors which act like pipes that flow between the different services. The service offers a plugin that the user installs in Outlook or as an extension through their web browser to use in Gmail or other apps, said CEO Eliot Sun. Kloudless does not store any data, nor… → Read More

April 29th, 2013

Good Technology Raises $50M On Its Road To An IPO

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Mobile device management company Good Technology has raised $50 million, according to a Securities and Exchange (SEC) filing. A company spokesperson confirmed the fundraising but had no comment about the purpose of the raise. The SEC document says the company is seeking a total of $60 million. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Good Technology is backed by Oak Investment… → Read More

April 29th, 2013

Glider Launches At Disrupt NY With SaaS That Automates Approving And Signing Contracts, Adds Intelligence To Deal Flow

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At Disrupt NY 2013, Glider unveiled its SaaS for corporate teams to bring structure, clarity and reporting to the contract process much like Salesforce.com did for the sales funnel. The visual analytics tool should help shed light on the number of contracts closed, those outstanding and a host of other metrics to help executives get a better view of deal flow. The service is meant to replace… → Read More