Monetate, the leading provider of testing, targeting, and personalization solutions for websites, today announced that Rob Yoegel has joined the company as Content Marketing Director.

Yoegel, a seasoned professional with over two decades experience in the publishing industry, will be responsible for leading Monetate’s content development and distribution initiatives.

“With Monetate, enterprise websites finally have the agility to deliver a unique customer experience free from IT complexity,” said Blair Lyon, VP of Marketing. “By sharing our best practices, winning campaigns and industry insights, Rob will create valuable educational content that helps the industry put an end to the one-size fits all web.”

Most recently, Rob was Vice President of e-Media at North American Publishing Company (NAPCO), a business-to-business and consumer enthusiast publishing company, where he led the publisher’s online division and played a lead role in all aspects of its online efforts including business development, content strategies, subscriber acquisition, design/usability, training, analytics and vendor relations. He will join the accomplished team at Monetate that is leading the way in improving the online experience for businesses and consumers.

“Content creation and marketing plays a very important role in Monetate’s thought leadership program,” said Yoegel. “I’m thrilled to be joining an outstanding team at Monetate and lead the implementation of vital content strategies that make a real impact for our customers.”

About Monetate

Monetate is the leading provider of testing, targeting, and personalization solutions for websites. The company’s cloud based platform empowers marketers to test and target product offers and site features and convert successful tests into personalized messaging and promotional campaigns, instantly, anywhere on the website. Monetate removes the IT bottleneck and is quick and easy to install using just a single JavaScript tag, inserted only once, and requiring no internal IT resources. Some of the best known brands in the world use Monetate to make the most of their online marketing dollars, increase conversion rates, and personalize the website experience including Aeropostale, Urban Outfitters, Altrec, The Sports Authority, PETCO, QVC and more. Based in Philadelphia, Monetate serves a growing list of B2C websites around the world. For more information about Monetate, visit http://www.monetate.com.

What: AgilePalooza (www.agilepalooza.com) is a community event presented by VersionOne (www.versionone.com).

A fun, low cost event linking internationally recognized coaches and trainers with the local software community, AgilePalooza is a day of collaboration, education and advancement of agile methods.

For $69 attendees receive a full day of agile learning, lunch and a choice of participating in one of two tracks; Practicing Agile and Planning Agile. These tracks offer topics ideal for those newer to agile as well as more experienced practitioners.

Where: AgilePalooza Boston will be held at:

Four Points by Sheraton
1125 Boston Providence Turnpike
Norwood, MA 02062
Phone: (781) 551-3552

When: Friday, November 4, 2011

Who: AgilePalooza Boston has secured a line-up of experienced and talented agile experts and educators, including:

David Bulkin is a technologist and process engineer with over 20 years experience in applying lean processes to manage portfolios, projects, people, process, and technology for competitive advantage. As a practitioner, coach and regular speaker, he has helped numerous teams, in the public and private sectors, apply agile project management and engineering methods. Previously, David was a VP at JP Morgan Chase, where he managed large scale, mission-critical technology projects. He maintains sharp and relevant agile skills through frequent strategic board level and hands-on implementation activities.

Johnny Scarborough is the Eliassen Group’s Chief Agilist. His primary focus is helping enterprises truly adopt Agile methods in their product development operations. Prior to joining Eliassen Group, Johnny created and built his own Agile coaching and consulting firm working with clients to create high performance teams based on his 25+ years of product development experience. Previously, Johnny was the VP of Product Engineering and Chief Agile Evangelist at GlobalLogic, a multinational off-shore development company, where he created and led the center of excellence within GlobalLogic to establish Agile as a standard development process to be used in client engagements.

Steven Ropa is currently an Agile coach and product trainer for VersionOne. He has spent the last 17 years in the software development industry, first as a programmer and later as a development manager and director. He has been involved in the Agile development scene for the past 10 years, serving as an active contributor to the Agile Denver community and on the organizing committee for Agile 2005. He has taught and led teams, varying in size from small shops to large, in their transition to agile.

Jason Tanner is a Senior Consultant at Enthiosys and has over 18 years of professional experience in software, telecommunications and the Marine Corps. His expertise spans Agile software product management, product marketing, business planning, partner management, project management and leadership. Jason’s prior experience includes migrating from waterfall to Agile development methods and close collaboration with engineering to integrate product management into the Agile workflow.

John Galioto is an Executive Vice President at emergn, a certified scrum master and an industry leader in agile best practices. He has over 25 years of global IT consulting experience including 10 at the executive management level. During his career John has helped many Fortune 1000 clients throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa realize dramatic business results on strategic consulting and systems development and integration projects. John began working with agile in 2004 and is passionate about developing software in an iterative manner.
Giora Morein is a Principal Agile Coach and Co-Founder of BigVisible Solutions. He specializes in rapidly ramping up new Agile and Scrum teams through practical training, hands-on mentoring, and coaching. The programs Giora develops focus on all aspects of Agile, including principles, practices, and strategic thinking. His consulting experience spans Fortune-class companies, such as Merrill Lynch, Fidelity, John Hancock, SSGA, Cessna Aircraft, Bell Helicopter, McKesson, and GE Healthcare (formerly IDX). He has helped these large organizations to successfully scale their agility initiatives in size and across locations. Giora is a Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) and PMI-Certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Other: For more information on AgilePalooza, or to register to attend, please visit:  http://agilepalooza.com/boston2011/default.asp and http://agilepalooza-boston.eventbrite.com/

About VersionOne

VersionOne is recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools. By simplifying the planning and tracking of agile projects, we help teams deliver better software faster. Since 2002, companies such as AAA, Adobe, Boeing, bwin, Lilly, Lockheed Martin, NASDAQ, Qualcomm, Sabre and Siemens have turned to VersionOne. Today more than 30,000 teams from over 170 countries use VersionOne. Agile Made Easier @ VersionOne.com.

Intronis, which promotes cloud backup services to MSPs, is on pace to grow 50 percent or more in 2011, according to CEO Kent Plunkett.

To maintain that growth, Intronis plans to double-down on the North America market, focusing like a laser on managed services providers that need cloud backup services. Plunkett described the Intronis cloud storage strategy to MSPmentor yesterday during an hour-long interview.

It has been roughly 12 to 14 months since Plunkett joined Intronis as CEO, succeeding co-founder Sam Gutmann. Externally, Plunkett has kept a pretty low profile in the market — preferring to maintain the spotlight on key team leaders like Intronis Channel Chief Ted Roller and VP of Marketing and Customer Success Carol Ferrari. When I asked Plunkett how Intronis managed to accelerate its growth in 2011, he said the company’s secret sauce involves an intense focus on MSP user experience, and putting the right people (Intronis team members) in the right seats at the right time on the Intronis bus.

Tracking the Numbers

Based on research from Business Solutions magazine, Intronis held about 25 percent of the file-based cloud backup market for MSPs as of early 2011. Plunkett believes Intronis market share has grown — though he says the cloud backup market will get more crowded (not less) because venture capital companies and private equity companies have money to invest. Over time, Plunkett believes three market tiers will emerge:

• Tier 1: A file-based cloud backup leader that has about 45 percent market share with MSPs. Plunkett believes Intronis will be that leader.
• Tier 2: Second- and third-place players that each have roughly 15 percent to 20 percent market share.
• Tier 3: A “ton of companies that will kill each other and lose lots of money fighting for the final 20 percent of the market.”

Plunkett said the “lure of selling direct” will distract cloud backup companies from doing what’s necessary to serve MSPs. “Our strategy is to focus everything on the MSPs. We want to be in almost half of all MSP accounts. Then, the next stage will involve a strategy to hold that hill. But first we’re taking the hill.”

Taking a Long-term View

When Plunkett arrived at Intronis, MSPmentor speculated that perhaps Intronis’s venture capitalists and financial backers were seeking faster growth to accelerate a potential company sale or IPO. Each time we’ve spoken Plunkett has politely shot down that speculation.

“My mission here is clear; it is to build a great company,” said Plunkett. “That’s what the board wants me to do. We think the MSP market is rocking.” One proof point: Plunkett says the Intronis cloud storage system is growing about 1.5 percent per week in terms of storage consumed.

Why’s that? Plunkett insists that Intronis is “the easiest” cloud backup system for MSPs to deploy. “Our customers — MSPs — are spending less time managing backup and restore, which gives them more time for selling.” To reinforce his point, Plunkett says the MSP renewal rate for Intronis — measured by storage — is 97 percent of storage volume. Plus, MSPs typically increase their volume commitments by 50 percent to 100 percent at renewal, he added.

Thinking Team

I asked Plunkett a few times about his management style and milestones in the past year. He kept shifting the spotlight to the Intronis team. “It’s gotta be the team; it’s clearly not me.” His proof points: Intronis has more than doubled headcount in R&D while also bolstering tech support, sales and marketing.

Moreover, Intronis team members have shifted into new roles amid the company growth. Co-founder Neal Bradbury, for instance, previously ran both tech support and hosting. But now Bradbury focuses entirely on data operations and IT, while VP Rick Burnett joined the company to take on the tech support role.

Meanwhile, Intronis has hired Smitty Kirsten to lead user interface design. Kirsten previously held top user design positions at Intuit and EMC. Plunkett’s key point: Intronis believes its cloud user interface has a lead over the competition, Smitty will help to maintain or extend that lead.

While Plunkett preaches teamwork, the Intronis team seems to respect Plunkett’s management style. ”This is what Kent is good at,” said Ferrari. “He’s grown companies from very small to very large. He creates a mission and a culture that cultivates teamwork. Plus, he puts processes in place to ensure quality.”

The R&D Process

Intronis recently updated its cloud storage service with a so-called Fall 2011 release. I asked Plunkett if launch cycles raise stress levels within the halls of Intronis. His reply: An adjusted development process — involving three major releases a year — ensures plenty of time for Intronis developers to polish the system and kill software bugs before each upgrade debuts.

Intronis has a hard stop on new coding/new features roughly 60 to 90 days before each launch. “That gives us 60 to 90 days to be in beta and harden the software. We have 10 QA [quality assurance] people to really pound the product.”

Maintaining Focus vs. Rivals

Plunkett didn’t mention any rivals by name. But he kept reinforcing an intensely focused business strategy. It involves:

• North America: Intronis is maintaining a focus on product R&D — purely for MSP use — to drive dominance in North America. “There’s signifiant upside inside North America for the foreseeable future,” he said. Avoiding the temptation to go global right now. Yes, Intronis has MSP partners in roughly two-dozen countries. But it’s not part of an intense business push. That international push will potentially be explored around 2013.
• Serving MSPs: Delivering reliability, focus and serviceability for the MSP. ”We’re reinvesting every dime we have back into making sure our system is designed for MSPs.”
• Embracing Mobile — In Stages: This is a two-part strategy. Near term, Intronis plans to make sure MSPs can use their own mobile devices to manage cloud storage. Longer term, Intronis will explore how to help MSPs potentially manage storage across customers’ tablets and smart phones. But right now, Plunkett said, he thinks that market opportunity is a bit too early.
• Thinking Long-Term: Plunkett said Intronis does not need to raise more cash, but the company’s financial backers stand ready to assist if Intronis wanted to pursue additional capital. “When your product is growing like crazy like ours, you don’t have a financing problem. We’ve got the potential to be a large, great company.” And that company, he said, doesn’t necessarily need to IPO.

Reality Check

On the one hand, I’m impressed with the simplicity of Plunkett’s intensely focused strategy. On the other, I want to be careful not to hype the strategy — which also involves its share of risks. Some reality checks:

1. Revenues and Rivals: In 2010, Intronis apparently had about $5.9 million in revenues, according to the Inc. 5000 list. Assuming roughly 50 percent growth in 2011, Intronis’s annual revenues will be about $9 million to $10 million this year. Impressive… but I suspect there are dozens of cloud storage and online backup companies that currently generate between $1 million and $10 million in annual revenues so this game is far from over. Note: The revenue figures I’ve mentioned are educated guesses and they could be off the mark; Intronis is privately held and does not have to disclose revenue figures.

2. Profits: What type of cash flow does Intronis generate? What about EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) and the net income? It’s impossible to say since the company is private.

3. Focus: Sometimes, a laser-like focus can be a double-edged sword. By selling entirely through MSPs, mostly in North America, Intronis could overlook key direct sales or international opportunities that rivals exploit. I’m all for channel-friendly sales models. But I’m also realistic: There are multiple scenarios where Intronis potentially wins the North America MSP battle, but loses the global online backup war.

4. Mobile: Generally speaking, I agree with Plunkett’s reasoning in the mobile market. Right now, MSPs do want to use their own tablets to manage cloud applications. On the flip side, it may be a bit early for MSPs to manage customer storage across customers’ mobile devices like tablets and smartphones. Still, I think that tipping point is nearly here. And I believe some rival cloud storage companies already help MSPs to address customers’ mobile device management needs in the market.

Next Moves

Where is Intronis heading next? It’s safe to expect plenty of clues during this week’s Tigerpaw User Conference in Dallas, plus upcoming events hosted by ASCII, ConnectWise and more.

News Facts:

• Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today announced it ranked number 70 on Deloitte’s 2011 Technology Fast 500™ ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in North America.
• Zmags grew 1730 percent from 2006-2010.
• Serving more than 3,000 of the world’s most progressive brands in the retail, luxury and consumer products industries, Zmags’ on-demand merchandising platform enables its customers to mobilize their merchandise and strengthen brand value across tablets, websites, mobile devices and social media.
• Chief Executive Officer Michael Schreck credits Zmags’ 1730 percent revenue growth to the measurable and dramatic ROI the company delivers.
• Overall, 2011 Technology Fast 500™ companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 134 percent to 70,211 percent from 2006 to 2010, with an average growth of 1,736 percent.

Supporting Quote:

“By helping companies create highly immersive brand experiences that promote product discovery, the Zmags platform is driving as much as a 500 percent increase in page views, 100 percent increase in conversions, and more than 40 percent lift in order sizes,” said Schreck. He added, “Mobile, tablet and social commerce are creating enormous opportunity for companies to engage their customers and strengthen their brands much more deeply than websites can on their own. Zmags is enabling our customers to monetize that experience – and they’re seeing the results translate to their bottom line.”

About Deloitte’s 2011 Technology Fast 500™

Technology Fast 500, which was conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP, provides a ranking of the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies – both public and private – in North America. Technology Fast 500 award winners are selected based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2006 to 2010. In order to be eligible for Technology Fast 500 recognition, companies must own proprietary intellectual property or technology that is sold to customers in products that contribute to a majority of the company’s operating revenues. Companies must have base-year operating revenues of at least $50,000 USD or CD, and current-year operating revenues of at least $5 million USD or CD. Additionally, companies must be in business for a minimum of five years, and be headquartered within North America.

About Zmags

Zmags provides its on-demand rich media merchandising and customer analytics platform to the world’s most progressive brands. With 3,000 customers worldwide, Zmags is the global leader in helping retailers, luxury brands, and consumer product manufacturers drive product discovery and inspire purchase by creating a deeply immersive online, social and mobile shopping experience that increases conversion rates, order sizes and customer retention. CommercePro from Zmags enables retailers and brands to harness the power of online, mobile and social channels by bringing commerce transaction capability directly into the digital merchandising environment — whether a consumer is using a tablet, website, smartphone or social site. Zmags is headquartered in Boston, Mass. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com.

Instructure™ (www.instructure.com) has launched a new partner program for companies who share a common vision of helping improve education through technology.

Instructure invites these companies to leverage the Canvas platform and open APIs by becoming official Instructure partners. The program launches today with a number of partners, including Cengage Learning as a Premier partner and WiZIQ and EQUELLA as Certified partners.

“There are so many incredible technologies that make up the ecosystem in this industry, and Instructure wants to keep the ecosystem open,” said Josh Coates, CEO of Instructure. “Instructure is an open company with open source code, an open architecture and open APIs.”

The partner program offers three opportunities for companies to partner with Instructure. The first is the Community program. It is designed for those that want to work with the Canvas Community Edition and who want a low barrier to participate. Partners receive an API key, API documentation and forum support.

The second opportunity for partnership is the Instructure Certified Partner program. For these partners, Instructure will certify the integration work and develop joint marketing initiatives. WiZIQ and EQUELLA have had their integration work certified and are recommended by Instructure as tools to use within Canvas to improve learning.

“Instructure has taken an incredibly progressive view of the LMS as a teaching and learning tool. WizIQ is thrilled to be a partner and make its virtual classroom available to Instructure Canvas users,” said Chris Dawson, director of Business Development at WizIQ. “Instructure has made the process very straightforward and Canvas’ open architecture and engineering support has simplified our development and integration efforts.”

Premier partners are those companies that want a customized partnership with Instructure. Both companies dedicate a significant investment of time and both contribute to making the integration a success.

“We are constantly seeking ways to improve the teaching and learning experience through improved integration of technology and content in the classroom,” said William Rieders, executive vice president of Global Strategy & Business Development at Cengage Learning. “Through our relationship with Instructure, we will deliver innovative approaches to solving some of the challenges of using technology to deliver instruction to customers using the Canvas platform.”

Instructure has grown rapidly over the past 10 months, adding more than 70 customers to the Canvas platform. Recently Brown University and New Mexico State University announced they have chosen Canvas for their institutions’ learning platform. For more information on partnering with Instructure, please visit www.instructure.com/partners.

About Instructure:

Instructure is a technology company that is focused on improving education. Founded in 2008 by two Computer Science graduate students, Instructure built Canvas — the only open source learning management system and the only LMS native to the cloud. Instructure now services over 75 institutions in higher education and K-12. Investors include OpenView Ventures Partners, EPIC Ventures and TomorrowVentures.

Acronis and Ingram Micro have signed a distribution deal that will see Ingram Micro selling and supporting Acronis’ product suite of disaster recovery and data protection solutions in the ANZ region.

The vendor has ended its deal with Distribution Central in New Zealand but is keeping Mindscape which will be responsible for retail distribution here.

According to Karl Sice, general manager for the Pacific region for Acronis, this deal is an extension of the ties that already exist between Acronis entities and Ingram Micro abroad.

“We’re in expansion mode, growing our business and our partner community in New Zealand,” says Sice. He adds that the company decided to go with a tier 1 distribution arrangement “because we want to increase our business”.

“We will leverage the Ingram Micro team in New Zealand,” says Sice, but he does not dismiss the possibility of setting up a local presence in the country. “We hope to develop a business plan for local investment. We hope and wish for it in the short to medium term.”

Acronis, which has 20,000 partners across the globe, says business in New Zealand is going well and, being a channel-only organisation, it is always looking to add more resellers.

Sice says there is a lot of opportunity for resellers in the data protection and disaster recovery markets. The company recently conducted a survey of 2,000 IT managers worldwide, including Australia and New Zealand, and the results were “shocking” from the disaster recovery point of view. “Thirty-six percent of participants did not have a disaster recovery and data protection solution in place,” says Sice. “We’re keen to activate that.”

He says the number is disappointing but also positive in the sense that it represents growth opportunities for resellers in this space.

Sice adds that Acronis is planning a series of road shows in New Zealand next year to promote Acronis products. “There have been a lot of complex solutions [in the disaster recovery and data protection markets] and people have been scared. For us, simplicity is the key,” says Sice. “It is an exciting time for us, I have never been busier.”

Exinda, a leading global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions, today announced it achieved record sales growth and product development milestones during Q3 2011.

Fuelled by the expansion of its sales and support capabilities in EMEA markets, the company achieved revenue growth of over 49% for the three months ended September 30, 2011, compared with the same period in 2010. This follows two quarters of Y/Y revenue growth exceeding 130%. The company also reported sequential quarterly revenue growth of 8% compared with Q2 2011. Exinda also announced that it has increased its global customer footprint by over 25% to more than 2,500 customers, with significant new account wins coming from each of its key geographic regions.

Exinda’s Unified Performance Management (UPM), unique in its integration of visibility, control and optimization, is aggressively winning over customers. Unlike solutions that blindly accelerate any traffic offered to it, the dynamic feedback between components allows UPM to selectively accelerate only business critical applications, not wasting precious optimization resources on recreational or other non-business traffic. UPM’s deep visibility also plays an increasingly important part in real business application identification, while legacy WAN optimization technologies are mired in working only with ports and protocols. As businesses demand more focus on end user experience in increasingly complex application delivery architectures, UPM’s ability to see, protect and enhance at the user level is becoming the clear choice.

“Changes in the way businesses manage their applications are demanding a change in what is needed for effective WAN Optimization,” said Michael Sharma, CEO of Exinda. “Exinda’s next-generation approach to managing applications on the WAN is filling a gap as enterprises increasingly need to extract every measure of performance from their WAN Optimization systems. The legacy systems that made sense a few years ago simply cannot keep up with today’s demands. Businesses that require visibility at the user level and the flexibility dynamically apply and adjust both control and optimization are upgrading to Exinda.”

Exinda’s customer growth includes both organizations that selected its solutions for green field deployments, as well as companies that installed Exinda to replace existing competitive appliances that did not deliver all the required elements of a next generation WAN Optimization solution.

“Exinda’s growth has outpaced many in our industry, and we continue to attract new customers and expand our market reach with our Unified Performance Management approach to managing and optimizing WAN traffic. A significant portion of our new customers has come through displacement of competitors’ products in customer networks. As a ‘pure-play’ WAN Optimization technology provider, Exinda has been able to establish an innovative first-to-market advantage with a fully integrated solution that delivers visibility, control and acceleration – the three pillars of a true next generation WAN Optimization solution,” continued Sharma.

Among the new customers that selected Exinda in Q3 2011 were higher education facilities including University of Colorado and Thomas M. Cooley Law School and government/enterprise organizations such as The State of South Dakota and Raytheon. Telecom Malaysia, Rajamangala University of Technology Isan, Genting Casinos, and Inteva were among the existing customers that placed follow-on orders for Exinda’s WAN Optimization solutions.

Q3 2011 Highlights

·     Exinda Introduces Virtual WAN Optimization Appliance – New Product Enhances Cloud, Enterprise WAN Optimization, Supports Mobile Road Warriors
·     Exinda Optimizes Network Bandwidth for Ryerson University – Major Canadian University Chooses Exinda Appliance to Prioritize Applications
·     City of Coldwater Selects Exinda to Optimize its Internet Services – Exinda’s WAN Optimization Solutions Improve Download Speeds for Video, Rich Media and Other Internet Applications
·     Exinda’s Products Awarded GSA Schedule 70 Through Distribution Partnership With Synnex – Listing on GSA Schedules Enables Federal Agencies to Improve Network Performance With Exinda’s WAN Optimization Solutions
·     Exinda Accelerates Network Performance for Inteva Products, LLC – Tier 1 Auto Parts Engineering and Supply Firm Selects Exinda’s WAN Optimization Solutions to Drive Better Connections Between ItsGlobal Locations
·     Exinda’s WAN Optimization Solutions Chosen by Ball State University- Exinda Solutions Increase Bandwidth Management Capacity by 250 Percent
·     Exinda announces appointment of Robert H. Scott to Chairman of its Board of Directors – Scott brings more than 30 years of executive experience in the technology industry to Exinda board

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organizations 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.