Skytap, the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced it was selected by TechTarget’s SearchServerVirtualization as a “Best of VMworld 2011” award winner in the public and hybrid cloud computing technologies category.

The “Best of VMworld” awards program recognizes outstanding cloud computing and virtualization products and solutions released in the last 12 months. A team of expert judges, consisting of editors, independent analysts, users and consultants, evaluated nominations based on innovation, performance, ease of integration into environment, ease of use and manageability, functionality, value, and how the nominated technology fills a market gap.

“This year’s Best of VMWorld attracted submissions from 250 innovative companies,” said Jo Maitland, executive editor at SearchServerVirtualization. “In the public/hybrid cloud category, Skytap demonstrated capabilities that far and away made it the best solution. It clearly established them as the category winner. Congratulations to the Skytap team!”

“We are honored to win the Best of VMWorld award for the hybrid cloud solution category. This award recognizes our unrelenting focus to bring solutions that deliver immediate value to our customers,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Skytap’s unique solution enables enterprise IT organizations to bring the full power of cloud computing to users with self-service simplicity while retaining full visibility and control at the same time.”

Skytap enables enterprises to accelerate their transition to the cloud by reducing the complexity and time needed to set up and configure a hybrid cloud. Prior to Skytap, enterprise customers had to use a variety of hardware and software tools to create a hybrid cloud. This process required significant time and IT resources. Skytap’s hybrid cloud solution enables IT managers to set up a secure, bi-directional IPSec tunnel using a web UI. Functional users are then empowered to create hybrid cloud deployments with point and click ease. Key features of the Skytap solution include:

• Self-Service Web Interface: enables functional users to create multi-machine virtual data centers using hybrid cloud architecture in seconds.
• Skytap Remote Access Console: delivers secure desktop-level access to virtual machines running in the hybrid cloud using modern browsers.
• Skytap Instant Snapshots: allows users to snapshot an entire VDC environment in under a minute and maintain persistent hybrid cloud connections.
• Skytap Groups, Roles and Granular Permissions: enables IT managers to create granular access control lists and set up policy management rules. Access control lists created to maintain security would be enforced across hybrid cloud connections.
• Skytap Projects and Workflow: provides collaboration capabilities for distributed teams to work and share virtual data center environments as easily as sharing URLs.
• Skytap Advanced Networks: provides advanced routing between configurations and capability to set up security policies to manage communications between cloud instances and specific corporate subnets.
• Integration and Extensibility: enables IT managers to control hybrid cloud resources through a rich Web services (REST) API.

Over 150 global companies use Skytap for a variety of dynamic workloads. By collaborating with successful IT architects working in those companies, Skytap has compiled a best practices guide for cloud deployments that deliver tangible results. To learn more, read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects whitepaper.

Additionally, join Skytap on Wednesday, Sept. 14 at 10 a.m. PT for a webinar on Cloud-Based Automated Development and Testing Framework featuring Jason Arbon, engineering manager at Google. Arbon, who currently manages the Google Chrome and HTML5 testing tools team, will discuss his innovative cloud-based “testing bots” that use Skytap. He will also share best practices and answer questions from participants. For more information, or to register for the webinar, visitwww.skytap.com.

About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, application migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visitwww.skytap.com.

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Prognosis Health Information Systems, Inc., has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Creative Healthcare Systems, Inc., the developers of MedGenix, a powerful financial management and patient accounting system. The expected result: Hospitals of all sizes will be able to tap into an integrated, comprehensive computing solution that will optimize both clinical care and financial operations.

Prognosis successfully meets the needs of critical access and community hospitals with its ChartAccess® Comprehensive EHR, an innovative solution specifically engineered for speed and available at an affordable cost. With this system, many hospitals have moved from project kick off to go-live in just 120 days, putting them on the fast track to “meaningful use” attestation.  As a result, several hospitals have already leveraged the ONC-certified solution to qualify for incentive funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The flexible web-native system is intuitive and easy-to-use, offering built in analytics and health information exchange (HIE) capabilities, which can help hospitals provide consistent, high-quality patient care.

This clinical success achieved with the Prognosis EHR can now be packaged with financial solutions success. MedGenix will enable Prognosis to add 18 powerful revenue management modules including patient accounting, accounts payable and A/R collection tools to its portfolio. The MedGenix system stands out from other available financial systems as the advanced solution can produce one single unified patient statement with information from inpatient, outpatient and long-term care providers.

In the spirit of the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s Patient Friendly Billing Project, hospitals can provide an enhanced patient experience with the system’s “one patient, one record and one statement for all care received” functionality.  With many other systems, patients are bombarded with a series of individual statements from each provider.

“Hospitals today – both big and small – are seeking to implement comprehensive, enterprise-wide solutions that can help them optimize both their clinical and financial operations,” said Jay Colfer, Prognosis Executive Vice President of Client Solutions. “With this acquisition, Prognosis will be able to do just that. As a result, hospitals don’t have to worry about multiple systems, multiple contracts and multiple integration issues. Instead, they can simply implement our comprehensive system.”

Steve Everest, current CEO of Creative Health Systems, will lead all revenue management operations as the companies come together under the Prognosis brand. All existing staff members will retain their positions and continue to be based inSpringfield, Mo. Becoming a part of Prognosis, however, will result in enhanced product offerings and service, according to Everest. For example, Prognosis will quickly add its easy-to-use graphical interface to the MedGenix applications, making for a seamless user experience.  The revenue management team will be expanded to support anticipated growth in the financial arena.

“Becoming a part of Prognosis better positions us to truly meet hospitals’ needs and better serve the healthcare industry. We can now provide the complete solution under the Prognosis brand going forward,” Everest said. “Hospitals will be able to take advantage of our financial applications without having to worry about looking for and supporting a separate EHR. Plus, with the expanded resources, we will be able to more quickly meet customer needs.”

The deal is expected to close in late September. Financial terms of the acquisition are not being released.

“We started this company with the intention of creating powerful solutions that would make the dream of electronic health records a reality for all providers, regardless of size,” said Ramsey Evans, CEO of Prognosis.  “We’ve been extremely successful in the clinical realm but have realized that with a challenging economy and health reform, hospitals need to make a concerted effort to focus on revenue management improvement. With this acquisition, we are giving hospitals the power to experience both financial and clinical success.”

About Prognosis Health Information Systems

Prognosis Health Information Systems, Inc. (PHIS), Houston, aims to improve the quality and safety of patient care through ChartAccess, a certified Comprehensive EHR. Designed to be fully operational in less than six months at a predictable, affordable cost, the solution enables hospitals to meet meaningful use and improve patient outcomes by leveraging built-in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) milestone and quality measure tracking functionality. PHIS uses 21st-Century technologies to offer small community hospitals a pure browser-based system that can run on-premise or in the cloud. For more information, go to www.prognosishis.com.

About Creative Healthcare Systems

Creative Healthcare Systems, Inc. (CHS), Springfield, Mo., introduced MedGenix, an innovative financial management and patient accounting solution, in 1993. It is now installed and running strong in many community hospitals, clinics, long term care facilities and home health agencies across the United States. A thorough understanding of the financial challenges of community based organizations has enabled the company to deliver cost-effective, advanced technology solutions that truly help healthcare providers achieve financial success.

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced that the City of Coldwater Board of Public Utilities (CBPU) has selected Exinda’s solutions to improve the performance of its Internet services to its residential and business subscribers. With the Exinda solutions in place, CBPU Internet service subscribers now experience faster access speeds for video and other bandwidth-intensive applications, without compromising the performance of other applications.

“Our first priority is to provide our customers with the fastest and most reliable Internet connections we can deliver,” said Arthur W. Plato, Internet Engineer, Coldwater Board of Public Utilities. “Over the last few years, the volume of video downloads from sites such as YouTube.com has risen significantly. We chose Exinda WAN Optimization solutions so that we could improve the delivery of video and other traffic on the network without the need for an overhaul of our infrastructure.”

CBPU selected Exinda’s 8760 WAN Optimization appliances, which can support up to 5 GBs of traffic and up to 100,000 simultaneous users. The Exinda 8760 incorporates the ExOS 6.1 software, which supports Exinda Edge Cache, a single-sided caching feature that significantly improves the performance of video applications, while reducing the impact of video traffic on the WAN.

“The Exinda Edge Cache offers precisely the capabilities we were looking for from a WAN Optimization solution,” said Plato. “It allows us to offer improved download times for video traffic, while reducing the amount of bandwidth consumed. The result is a better user experience and happier subscribers.”

The Exinda Edge Cache enables single-sided caching of Internet-based content, including web objects, videos and software updates with a single Exinda WAN Optimization appliance at the branch office or data center, enabling a superior user experience and reducing WAN utilization costs. With the Exinda Edge Cache, web objects are cached at the network edge when they are downloaded from the Internet. These objects can then be delivered to the users on the corporate local area network much faster, providing a better user experience. By caching these web objects in the local office, organizations can drive down the network traffic consumed by each office, which directly reduces network costs.

“By eliminating the repetitive download of content over the WAN, the Exinda Edge Cache dramatically improves the speed and performance of internet applications,” said Kevin Suitor, Exinda’s VP of marketing. “Our customers have seen as much as 80% reduction in http traffic over the WAN, and more than 35% reduction in video and other content. By reducing the consumption of valuable WAN resources, organizations can maximize their existing network spend and use the savings to fund innovative projects that further reduce cost.”

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,000 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 .

In the late 1990’s, I heard a lot of “dotcom” mantras like “it is a land grab,” “get big fast,” and “get eyeballs.” What began as investing based on the bottom line (net income or free cash flow) slowly shifted into investing based on the top line (revenue, bookings, or billings), then shifted more into investing based on eyeballs (visitors or pageviews). Ultimately, it shifted further into projected eyeball growth before several pricks popped the bubble and investors shifted relatively quickly back to bottom line some level of top line investing.

This time around, it’s “Web 2.0” instead of “dotcom” and “user” rather than “eyeballs.” But it’s still investing based on tremendous projections (and hope) for what is going to happen in the future. The logic goes something like this: “We will have a lot more users in the future that will turn into revenue based (many times) on a to-be-determined model and a lot of that revenue will drop to the bottom line.”

Marc Andreessen recently wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Why software is eating the world.” In it, he describes a world being transformed by software and why it’s different this time. He has a lot of good points and the article is very well articulated, as is typical for his ideas. It’s a must read that explains the current exuberance private investors have for what they believe will be the winning companies.

As a VC who has invested in the software and Internet industries for over a decade, I was reaffirmed by Marc’s piece, as we have a similar rationale for our focus. Software is eating the old world, and there are a lot of good reasons for everyone to consider participating in this new world.

That said, even great companies and industries can be overvalued – sometimes considerably. Valuation is only rationale if the organization can eventually become valuable from a bottom line perspective that supports the valuations plus the return the investors need. I believe that there is significant risk in this happening with many of the private market valuations today.

The problem with the current valuations is that they depend on extremely good future performance. Software is eating the world, including other software companies. This makes it much more difficult for every crop of software companies to realize their future expectations, regardless of how large the market is becoming or how good today’s businesses are.

For example, many of the current leading social media companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) are doing great partly by eating the prior generation of social media companies (check out these seven formerly popular sites that are dead or dying). Yes, there has been incredible market growth as well, but my point is that the prior generation has stalled growth or is wilting on the vine due to new, innovative competitors. If the past is a predictor of the future, won’t the next generation of companies come along and eat the current generation too? Perhaps even before some of them ever get to a positive bottom line?

I am a huge believer in the growing importance of software and have bet much of my career and net worth on it. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t in a valuation bubble. The more today’s valuation depends on tremendous future expectations, the more unstable the valuations will be. A small change in expectations, perhaps based on not living up to them, can lead to a tremendous drop in valuations.

I think that this is the situation today. Simply stated, it is a bubble, at least in certain sectors of the private investing markets. It may continue feeding itself for months or even years, but at some point it will deflate or pop. There may be a few great winners, but there will definitely be many unhappy losers. What prick will pop the bubble? The prick that changes the future expectations of the group that’s currently investing in those future expectations.

Scott Maxwell founded OpenView Venture Partners in 2006 and has worked in venture capital for over 11 years. For more insight from Scott, you can visit hisblog and follow him on Twitter @scottsnews. Opinions expressed here are entirely his own.

Marketing technology company Zmags has named W. Sean Ford COO and CMO. He will report to CEO Michael Schreck.

In the newly created position, Ford will be responsible for global marketing, product management, customer support and recruiting, said Schreck, who declined to say how many people Ford is overseeing.

Ford is managing and integrating team-building and process-development across functional areas. He will also focus on brand positioning, awareness building, thought leadership development, and communicating the company’s range of services to the market, said Schreck.

Prior to Zmags, Ford served as CMO of data company Syncsort, which he joined in 2009. He also held two VP-level positions at software company Oracle Corp., where he began work in 2006.

Schreck said he did not look internally to fill the position.

“[Ford] and I have known each other for two decades and have been looking for an opportunity to work together again,” said Schreck, who met Ford when both were undergraduate consultants at Monitor Group in 1991. They founded college-based rewards program Upromise in 1999 and sold the company to Sallie Mae in 2006 for an undisclosed amount.

Despite wanting to reunite with Ford, Schreck said Zmags retained recruiter Cook Associates to conduct a search because “timing sometimes doesn’t align.”

“Cook Associates had [Ford] intensely targeted on their radar,” he said. “Fortunately for us, the timing was perfect and having Sean onboard is a massive coup for Zmags.”

Zmags is a Boston-based company whose client roster includes The Home Depot, McDonald’s and Lockheed Martin Corp.

News Facts:

• Zmags, the global leader in rich media merchandising and analytics solutions with more than 3,000customers worldwide, today announced that W. Sean Ford is joining the company as COO and CMO.

• Ford will oversee global marketing strategy and operations, product management, customer support and corporate recruiting for Zmags, reporting to Zmags’ President and CEO Michael Schreck.

• As former vice president of Oracle’s Global Business Unit Marketing and as CMO of Syncsort, Ford brings more than 17 years of global business marketing and retail expertise that will support Zmags’ mission to provide the world’s most progressive marketers with the ability to deliver e-commerce-enabled, rich media experiences to their customers, and to monetize their brands.

• Ford and Schreck are reuniting after their successful partnership as co-founders of Upromise.

• Prior to joining Zmags, Ford served as the CMO of Syncsort, where he was the leader in global marketing strategy and execution, marketing communications, product marketing, partner and channel marketing, customer marketing, and education and training. He has also held the position of vice president, Global Business Unit Marketing at Oracle, where he was responsible for global marketing and strategy for Oracle’s vertical industries, including retail.

• Ford holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated with a BA from Williams College.

Supporting Quotes:

• “Sean is a proven world-class marketer and leader, and I know he will make a massive contribution to our continuing global growth,” said Schreck. “Sean’s deep expertise in the retail software industry, combined with his marketing and overall business savvy, make him a significant addition to our executive team.”

• “Harnessing and integrating the potential of mobile, social, and tablet commerce without compromising the brand experience is the next frontier of opportunity for retailers, e-commerce executives and marketing professionals,” said Ford. “Zmags is well positioned – both in terms of talent and technology – to lead the next wave of mobile merchandising solutions, and I am thrilled to be a part of the Zmags team.”

About Zmags

Zmags Corp is the global leader in SaaS-based rich media merchandising and analytics. With more than 3,000 of the world’s leading brands in the retail, fashion, e-commerce and consumer products industries, Zmags enables its customers to mobilize their merchandizing and capture the value of their brand experience across social, tablet and mobile commerce channels. For more information visit www.zmags.com