Exinda, a global provider of next generation WAN optimization solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced that Eira High School has deployed its 6760 Series WAN Optimization Appliance to prioritize applications on its network, identify problem users and accelerate WAN performance.

Eira High School is a private secondary school in Helsinki, Finland. It serves 2500 students with a Gigabit Ethernet network and 370 workstations. Like any educational institution, Eira High School must ensure fast and trouble-free access to network resources and the Internet for both administrative and educational purposes. Without a means to visualise and control network utilisation at the application and user level, however, the school was ‘flying blind’ and hoping that each application would have enough bandwidth.

Specifically, Eira High School wanted to ensure priority bandwidth services for its VoIP system and key administrative and educational applications, and to be able to identify users who were accessing unauthorised content (i.e., entertainment and gaming sites) and causing an unnecessary strain on the network.

“We have some problematic students who prefer spending time online having fun instead of attending classes and studying,” said Göran Strömstén, IT manager at Eira High School. “We wanted a way to be able to identify these users immediately and to control how they used our network.”

Other challenges included identifying when a particular workstation was dropping packets, and identifying when one student shared his or her logon credentials with friends so that there were multiple workstations in use that were logged in with the same user ID and password.

After evaluating several WAN optimization and packet shaping devices, Eira High School chose the Exinda 6760 WAN optimization appliance supplied by Exinda partner Data Monitor of Helsinki. “The Exinda system gave us better visibility into our network, better control over it, and it was easier to use than the other systems we evaluated,” said Strömstén.

“We have also achieved an increase in overall network efficiency, an ability to identify students who shared passwords with other unauthorised users, and the ability to see at a glance whether any user or application was using an inappropriate amount of bandwidth.”

Eira High School also uses the Exinda appliance’s edge cache to streamline Internet and web site access for frequently used content. “The cache simplifies our network because all popular content goes into the cache and is served from there rather than having to be delivered over the network every time. We have reduced network accesses for that kind of content by about 60 percent,” said Strömstén.

“Thanks to the Exinda appliance, we now have a highly efficient network that delivers the right amount of performance to every user and application.”

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimisation and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organisations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

The FINANCIAL — Apps aren’t always the answer to engaging with consumers on mobile devices—especially when it comes to m-commerce.

According to research from rich media company Zmags, very few Americans prefer to use mobile apps for shopping activities. Instead, consumers strongly prefer purchasing through web and mobile browsers.

When Zmags surveyed US consumers who owned a PC or laptop computer about their shopping methods, 87% said they preferred using websites and mobile sites, compared to 14% who most liked shopping from websites via smartphone and just 4% who preferred to shop using mobile or tablet apps.Although smartphone and tablet owners display a preference for browser-based mobile purchases, a significant number of US retailers have created mobile apps that enable commerce activities.

Survey data from mobile-shopping company AisleBuyer showed in December 2011 that 19% of US retailers had a mobile app to connects consumers to their ecommerce site.Retail apps may be of greater value to smartphone users, for whom the browsing experience is more limited in nature. There’s also opportunity for tablet commerce apps to provide a more catalog-style approach, giving users more interactive features.

Meanwhile, the tablet commerce category as a whole is growing significantly. According to Zmags, during the 2011 holiday shopping season, 87% of tablet owners used their device for shopping. Not only do users report better buying experiences than with smartphones, but tablet owners are using their devices frequently for m-commerce.

According to Zmags, half of tablet owners are using tablets for shopping on at least a weekly basis.eMarketer projects that m-commerce sales will grow more than fourfold over the next few years, from $6.7 billion in 2011 to $31 billion in 2015. If consumers continue to prefer browsers over mobile apps for shopping, retailers should consider investing more in mobile-optimized ecommerce sites. Moreover, marketers should consider designing engaging, tablet-specific ecommerce experiences for tablet users.

 

Trish Bertuzzi, President of The Bridge Group, Inc. and Lori Richardson, President of Score More Sales have been named as two of the “Top 25 Sales Influencers for 2012.”

The list was published by OpenView Labs, the strategic and operational consulting arm of Boston-based OpenView Venture Partners. Using marketing channel prioritization metrics, the research team at OpenView Labs compiled the list of 25 of the most powerful thought leaders in the world of sales management and lead generation.

“Trish Bertuzzi and Lori Richardson have proven their dedication to growing the professionalism and performance of the inside sales industry, which is the mission of the AA-ISP,” stated Bob Perkins, Founder and CEO of AA-ISP. “It comes as no surprise to our organization that OpenView recognized their continuing contributions.”

Trish Bertuzzi has been Co-President of the AA-ISP Boston Chapter since its inception in 2009. She founded and leads The Bridge Group,Inc., an inside sales consultancy which provides advice, roadmaps and tools to sales & marketing leaders at B2B technology companies.

“I am thrilled to be one of the Top 25 Sales Influencers and especially thrilled to share the honor with my co-president Lori. The Boston Chapter is one of the largest and most vibrant in the AA-ISP network and we intend to have another great year of events and learning experiences.”

Lori Richardson has recently expanded her sales strategy business, Score More Sales to the Boston region and was appointed Co-President of the Boston AA-ISP Chapter. Score More Sales helps technology and financial services firms with sales enablement, sales coaching, and tactical ideas to shorten sales cycles as well as actual prospecting services. “I’m honored to be recognized alongside Trish and represent Boston and the AA-ISP in such a great way.”

About the AA-ISP

The American Association of inside Sales Professionals (“AA-ISP”) is dedicated exclusively to advancing the profession of Inside Sales. As the only association of its kind, the AA-ISP serves as an authoritative resource to leaders and individual sales representatives who want to take their organization and careers to the next level of professionalism and performance. Our mission is accomplished through an industry-specific focus on leadership and individual development, member forums and networking, best practice sharing, individual training, career development, sales accreditation and annual conferences. Connect with Trish or Lori about the Boston Chapter of the AA-ISP.

Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today announced a live webinar in association with Retail Week, Paypal and Unipart that will explore the state of the U.K. ecommerce market, reveal how it fared over the 2011 peak trading season and predict how the market will perform in 2012.

Title: “Christmas Trading and Beyond: The Future of Ecommerce”

When: Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Time: 2:00 p.m. GMT

Presenters:

• Joanna Perry, Special Products Editor, Retail Week
• Rob Feldmann, Chief Executive, BrandAlley U.K.
• Simon Moran, Head of Relationship Management, PayPal U.K.
•  Stephen Ashton, Chief Operating Officer, Unipart Consumer Logistics
•  W. Sean Ford, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, Zmags

Why: According to IMRG, the U.K. ecommerce market is growing at a rate of 16 percent annually, with ecommerce sales accounting for 17 percent of total retail sales in the U.K. in 2011. With data like this, it’s apparent that mobile, social and tablet shopping represent the next trend in ecommerce, but a recent Zmags’ “Mobile, Social and Tablet Readiness Study” of U.K. retailers found that not many retailers are fully up to speed when it comes to mobile, tablet and social media. Only a few U.K. retailers are poised to take advantage of the ecommerce potential of these emerging digital platforms.

What: During this free webinar, speakers will discuss:

• Predictions and early indicators for online trading in 2012
• What retailers have learned from Christmas trading online in 2011
• Which areas to focus on to successfully compete on the web
• How to strengthen your Web and multichannel offer this year

Register Here: http://mediazone.brighttalk.com/event/Emap/634841a683-5783-intro

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints. Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500. Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit http://www.zmags.com.

Contact:

Jen DeAngelis
InkHouse for Zmags
[email protected]
+1-781-966-4105

Contact Information

“We have this idea of providing real value to our portfolio companies. If we’re going to call ourselves partners, we really need to be partners.” he says.

Plenty of venture capitalists say they like to take that partner approach to their investments. But OpenView is backing that statement up with staff and infrastructure dedicated to sales growth and more.

That comes in the form of what the venture firm calls OpenView Labs. At first mention, OpenView Labs sounds like it would be the name for an incubator arm at the firm. But, as my colleague Greg has written, OpenView brands itself as an “expansion-stage” venture firm, eyeing investments in the more complex business-to-business and cloud computing software spaces. Its target companies already have annual sales between $2 million and $20 million, so, no, its Labs aren’t about helping young mobile or consumer software startups develop their technology or roll out a beta version of their product. Instead the unit is focused on helping its startups tackle the more grown up challenges of recruiting and hiring talent, identifying key markets, and generating sales leads.

To that end, the company has four full-time recruiters, who have filled about 100 jobs across OpenView’s portfolio companies in the last few years, says Zimmerman, who oversees the Labs operation. The goal is to fill another 200 this year.

We said the OpenView Labs is past helping startups toy with their technology. But sales and marketing strategy are another story. Startups at the expansion stage need to work in refining exactly which market their targeting as their customer base, says Zimmerman.

“They’ll say, ‘we sell to small businesses.’ That’s not enough,” he says. So Labs has an entire research and analytics team focused honing and refining exactly which sub-markets and customer segments portfolio companies should be targeting. It starts with Internet research and goes all the way through calling and surveying customers in the potential markets, says Zimmerman.

Once the Labs gets the companies primed with staff and a market to go after, it helps them build their marketing message around those customers, and then find specific sales leads. That third component is what Zimmerman calls the Labs’ “go-to-market” team.

Zimmerman puts companies in three categories: startup (figuring out the technology and idea), expansion (building revenue and refining a target market), and growth (preparing for an exit). “We’re focused on everything it takes for an expansion stage company to get to a repeatable model to drive it to growth stage,” he says. The firm typically invests between $5 million and $15 million in its startups, and aims to get them to $100 million in revenues.

OpenView has 18 companies in its portfolio, with seven actively using the Labs. The firm charges their startups a “nominal fee that most of them laugh off” to access the OpenView Labs consulting services, says Zimmerman, noting that if the Labs hires five employees for a portfolio company, it pays for itself.

The Labs could also have a broader impact on the Boston startup ecosystem. OpenView has helped a handful of its startups set up shop in Boston, including Open-E, Exinda, Intronis, and Zmags.

OpenView will even go so far as to move companies so they can access the best resources. Take one OpenView portfolio company that’s based in San Francisco. (Zimmerman wouldn’t publicly disclose that company’s identity). “It was a hot company that struggled to build a pipeline,” he says. So the Labs has helped hire and put together a part of that startup’s sales team in Boston, an area strong in sales and lead generation talent, says Zimmerman. The company is now looking for permanent office space in the city.

The Labs strategy plays into OpenView’s broader investment outlook, which doesn’t buy into the idea that it’s OK for a chunk of the portfolio to flop if a few companies are blockbusters. “We look at each portfolio company equally—each one of our companies needs to succeed,” says Zimmerman. “We’re not going to throw 10 out there if two become rocket ships and eight die. It’s not our philosophy.”

Erin Kutz is an Associate Editor for Xconomy. You can reach her by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (617) 252-0700, or follow her on Twitter at @erkutz.