NextDocs of King of Prussia, Pa., provides life sciences companies of all sizes with software products designed to reduce the cost and complexity of meeting government regulatory and compliance requirements.

In June, the company entered into a partnership with Microsoft to open a “life sciences solutions scalability lab” inside the Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern, Pa. The lab will be used by drug developers to test and verify the effectiveness of new product candidates.

The company plans to use the proceeds from the financing to broaden product lines, expand into new markets and strengthen customer service and support.

NextDocs was founded in 2006 by Zikria Syed, the company’s CEO, and Matt Walz, its chief technology officer.

 

Personnel

Graham Hughes — a former GE Healthcare executive — has been named chief medical officer for the SAS Center for Health Analytics and Insights, a provider of business intelligence software and services…Christine Bechtel — vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families and a member of the Health IT Policy Committee — has been named to the editorial advisory board of the Commission for Case Manager Certification‘s new online educational resource…James Mathews — former business development and government initiatives representative at Sage Healthcare — has been named vice president of business development at Kareo, a provider of medical billing software.
Read more: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/8/19/health-it-business-news-roundup-for-the-week-of-august-19-2011.aspx#ixzz1VliwZDY3

loud backup company Intronis has recently elected to move Steve Frank to the position of VP and chief architect at Intronis. What does this mean for the channel-centric cloud company? Read on for a quick rundown …

Refresher: We took a look at Intronis back in January 2011 over at our sister site TalkinCloud. During a FastChat video, Intronis CEO Kent Plunkett said in the SMB market Intronis had few rivals in the cloud-based backup world, and MSP adoption was the real key to maintain success. Fast forward to the present and Intronis has made some significant channel moves, including recently powering Autotask’s cloud backup.

Now the company has announced Frank’s title change. Frank is credited as being one of the original co-founders of Intronis, in addition to providing the programming and software engineering backbone for Intronis today. The decision to move Frank into his new VP role is in concert with Intronis’s desire to grow and accelerate the momentum of its cloud solutions. As VP and chief architect, Frank will be tasked with laying out the blueprint for new Intronis products and product development. Part of that new job will also be ensuring that new products are aligned with Intronis’s IT channel priorities.

Interested in being part of the future of Intronis? Partners can check in here.

Who’s checking in to location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla? It’s not who you think. Where are consumers going to look for deals? It’s not just your website. And what tech toys are entrepreneurs planning to spend money on this year? Here’s a closer look at some of the latest small-business surveys.

Check Her In

Mobile Dependence Day, a new study fromExactTarget, reports that 28 percent of smartphone owners (12 percent of the overall U.S. online population) have used their phone to “check in” at least once to location-based services likeFoursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places.

But if you envision the typical check-inner as a 20-something male hipster, think again. ExactTarget found women are more likely than men to use check-in services (37 percent versus 21 percent). And women ages 35 to 54 are even more likely to check in (38 percent have done so, compared to just 13 percent of men in that group). What accounts for the difference? Women, particularly those in the 35-54 demo, are the segment most interested in deals and discounts, and likely view location-based services as a quick way to grab deals.

About Face(book)

Speaking of deals, Facebook business pages are becoming a key way that consumers learn about deals and special offers. According to new research from Compete, 25 percent of consumers say they visit an official Facebook page for a retailer or product at least once a month. More than half of these respondents (56 percent) say the main reason they go to retailers’ Facebook pages is to stay current on sales and promotions. (In fact, the survey found that Apple’s iTunes Facebook page actually had more visits than the actual iTunes store.)

By comparison, showing that they “like” a company, or connecting with the company, was not high on the list of reasons for visiting a Facebook page — both those reasons were cited by about 14 percent of respondents.

Is Facebook effective? More than 20 percent of consumers say Facebook pages have been “influential” or “extremely influential” when making a purchasing decision. Speaking as a fervent deal-seeker, I know they’ve influenced me.

IT Issues

Are small businesses ready to invest in IT? Yes and no. The latest CDW IT Monitor describes IT decision-makers as “cautiously optimistic,” but reports only about one-fourth (24 percent) of them plan to increase spending on IT solutions in the next six months.

Where will their money go? Half will be spending on software, and 44 percent on hardware. In terms of IT needs, virtualization, security and cloud computing are top areas of interest. Nearly half (48 percent) of those surveyed say security is a greater concern than in the past two years, with internal threats seen as the biggest worry. Of those threats, the number-one concern was social networks, followed by mobile devices.

Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media company that helps entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. Follow Rieva at Twitter.com/Rieva and visit her blog at SmallBizDaily.com. Visit her website SmallBizTrendCast to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.

Intronis, the leading cloud backup and disaster recovery solution for the IT Channel, announces co-founder Steve Frank as Vice President and Chief Architect.

Steve, one of the co-founders of Intronis, has been an essential team member to the success of our online backup solution since the beginning. He came to Intronis with more than 15 years of experience in programming in software engineering, embedded systems, website application testing and statistical analysis.

Intronis CEO Kent Plunkett commented, “Steve, one of the original co-founders, has been an incredible asset to our team at Intronis. We are excited to promote Steve to Vice President and Chief Architect, since he has been a critical resource in building our leading cloud backup solution. I fully believe that Steve will continue to drive the evolution  of our solution.  With a great talent like Steve driving our roadmap and development agenda, it is no wonder our product has become the number one choice in the IT channel for cloud backup.”

About Intronis
Intronis is a cloud provider of backup and disaster recovery services for managed service providers. Intronis utilizes 256-bit AES security and multiple data centers located on opposite coasts to ensure data protection and availability. Intronis offers IT service providers a secure data solution combined with a robust partner program, the convenience of online account management, and an industry leading technical support team.  www.intronis.com.

According to a recent announcement made by leading WAN optimization solutions provider Exinda, its solutions have been selected by Inteva Products LLC to improve the performance of business applications on its corporate network that connects 25 locations throughout Europe and Asia. By deploying Exinda’s 4000 and 6000 series WAN Optimizations solutions, Inteva has been able to accelerate engineering CAD traffic, and control internet bandwidth to multiple sites, resulting in a 35 percent reduction in traffic over its network.

“The wide area network that connects our sites is critical to our ability to collaborate between teams and deliver products that our customers’ stringent requirements,” said Jody Kelley, Infrastructure Manager, Inteva, in a statement. “To handle the transfer or large files between offices, while minimizing bandwidth consumption, we needed a solution that offered both packetshaping and acceleration of WAN traffic.”

Inteva worked with its technology solutions partner, Amerinet, to manage the installation of theExinda appliances. “Exinda provided Amerinet with appliances for a proof-of-concept prior to our purchase. After seeing the immediate impact the Exinda had on network performance, we were confident that it was the right solution to connect our 25 sites,” added Kelley.

Exinda’s 4000 and 6000 series WAN Optimizations solutions provide visibility, control and optimization of the applications and users on the network, all in a single appliance.

Recently, Ball State University selected Exinda’s WAN optimization as a service solution to improve the user experience of the more than 20,000 students, faculty and administrators on its wide area network (WAN). With Exinda solutions, the university’s IT team has improved visibility, reporting, and control of its network infrastructure. Moreover, it has also increased its bandwidth management capacity by 250 percent. Ball State University selected Exinda’s 10060 series WAN optimization solution, which supports up to 20 Gbps worth of traffic and up to 250,000 users.

Acronis, a leading provider of data protection and disaster recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced it has extended its distribution relationship with Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM), the world’s largest technology distributor and supply-chain services provider, to reach partners and customers in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

Ingram Micro will now sell, market and support Acronis’ product suite of data backup and recovery solutions to resellers and managed service providers (MSPs) throughout the regions. Under the new agreement, Ingram Micro channel partners will have access to a wider range of data protection and business continuity programs based on the Acronis product suite.

“We are delighted to add Acronis to Ingram Micro’s Advanced Computing Division’s portfolio of industry-leading solutions and services,” said Eduardo Maurizi, market development manager, Ingram Micro Latin America. “Acronis recognizes the value we bring to the small- to medium-sized business, as well as enterprise markets as demand for, and adoption of, data backup and recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments continues to grow. Acronis’ backup, recovery and virtualization solutions offer the features and capabilities these organizations are looking for when it comes to data protection, virtualization and disaster recovery.

“We are pleased to have extended our agreement with the world’s largest technology distributor to develop a new sales channel for our market-leading solutions,” said Xavier Aguirre, Sales Director of Latin America, at Acronis. “We look forward to working with the Ingram Micro team and leveraging their advanced marketing programs and extensive VAR channel to provide our family of data protection and disaster recovery solutions throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean.”

Notes for Editors:

Acronis Signs Americas Distribution Agreement With Ingram Micro

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis’ disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime. Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis_LATAM.

About Ingram Micro

As a vital link in the technology value chain, Ingram Micro creates sales and profitability opportunities for vendors and resellers through unique marketing programs, outsourced logistics, technical and financial support, managed and cloud-based services, and product aggregation and distribution. The company is the only global broad-based IT distributor, serving more than 150 countries on six continents with the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of IT products and services. Visit www.ingrammicro.com. Follow Ingram Micro on Twitter:http://twitter.com/IngramMicroInc.

David Brussin is CEO of Monetate, a provider of testing, targeting, and personalization services for websites.

Earlier this month, the company announced a $15 million Series B funding round led by OpenView Venture Partners.Read more on TechCrunch.

AdExchanger.com: Is the focus of the company eCommerce?

DB: We’re actually not focused on eCommerce. Our mission is really about anyone with a website, who has a commercial goal around the site, because all websites have the same thing in common.

Whether they’re transactional B to C, eCommerce, online retail, direct response or subscription, they all have the same characteristics around needing to provide relevant, compelling experiences for visitors, in order to drive an outcome.

For online retail, that action is purchasing a product that’s probably going to be shipped to them. For direct response, it might be transactional or it might not. But there is a pretty direct connection to some kind of exchange of value transaction.

For media, it’s different. That action might be transactional in nature and subscription oriented, but it might also be engagement and consumption of content, ad views.

We chose eCommerce as our initial vertical, because we actually have some features that we’ve built that are specifically for eCommerce that help that vertical. But we’re now playing in a number of other spaces.

Looking at a HubSpot or Adobe which has its enterprise platform solution – how does Monetate differentiate?

The Adobe products I would characterize as legacy products and came from Omniture, which really started about 10 years ago.

The challenge is that everything a marketer needs to do with those legacy platforms requires IT. That’s really why we have this whole micro‑site challenge in the first place: IT has to be involved and means that you’re looking at six to 18 months to launch campaigns.

If you look at the pace of activity, the agility of marketers working in display and search, those legacy platforms just can’t keep up. What’s needed is a platform that actually allows marketers to work at the same pace they’re working in every other channel.

What do you think about the potential impact of a downturn in the economy for a product offering like Monetate’s?

Well, we’ve seen this before, so my answer is maybe less prognostication and more thinking about the way things happened in the last downturn or maybe the first part of this one, if it goes that way.

Monetate was founded in January of 2008. We launched our product into the market in the summer of 2008. Thereafter, the retail and consumer economy and the rest of the market fell apart.

Monetate actually grew and even got to cash flow positive during that time.

We see two things that drive Monetate in the long term. One is a kind of an effect, where folks actually have to focus on doing better, rather than just doing more. The other piece is we’re just reaching a natural inflection point in the growth of eCommerce. As we get closer to that inflection point, then the growth in this industry will be driven through sophistication. Just as it was 20, 30 years ago with companies like Walmart and Target doing the same things with their large bricks‑and‑mortar empires and starting to pay attention in deep ways to data from their customers and from their supply chains.

Are you starting to bring in the marketer’s offline data to help with online campaigns?

Yes. There are a lot of crossovers. Sometimes the things we’re doing are online campaigns that turn into digital and in‑store coupons to track in that direction. Often we’re paying attention to data that comes from the offline channel, but that we can also use when folks have an online interaction.

You were an outside board member at Invite Media before it was acquired by Google in 2010. Obviously, you have lots of experience in display. In your opinion, is the display space as complex as everybody says it is?

Yes, I think it is very complex. In some ways I think it’s useful to contrast display with search, where there are definitely powerful ecosystems that have built around both. There’s no question that display is more complex, because in search there are really only a couple of controllers of all inventory. In display that’s not true.

What surprises me about display today is that some of the innovations in display have taken longer to take hold than I would have expected given how powerful they are. But when I think of it from the other perspective, in contrast with search, I guess it’s not that surprising because given that the ecosystem is so much more complex, those innovations will naturally take longer to take hold.

I think that the transformation that the exchange has brought to display is an incredibly powerful one.  I look at it through this lens because of Invite Media, but I see that transformation as being a key driver for future innovation in this space. It brings a model that allows for all of the value, the richness of targeting, segmentation and intelligence around data. Whereas before the exchange,  a lot of it was used, but in much less direct ways.

That meant the ROI was lower and more complex. I think that’s one of the reasons that those otherwise really powerful technologies have been a bit slower to take hold.

Regarding your latest funding round, can you expand on what you plan on doing with the additional funds?

Sure. I talked a little bit about the early path of the company, and growing rapidly to cash flow positive in the bad economy. We did that without raising much money. The nice thing about the way we got started was that we really got the product right, and we made sure that what we were offering is exactly what the market needed.

So our path since then has really been driven by that early work. This expansion is all about being able to serve more customers, and across all areas. Certainly, a lot of it is about sales and marketing, but we’re adding dramatically to our strategic team and our engineering team because we want to stay out in front. We get a tremendous amount of data on what works for customers and what doesn’t. We’ve always been able to use that to keep the product out ahead of our customers.

So a big part of [the new funds] is about continuing to innovate and drive forward for marketers.

Do you think about international at all?

We do. We have a number of international customers, both U.S.-based companies that do significant business in 100 or so international markets, as well as internationally‑based customers who are focused on both U.S. and other markets.

All of our employees are based in the U.S. today. At some point we certainly will expand our footprint and have folks overseas. I can’t tell you exactly when that will be, but it’s something we’re thinking about.

Follow David Brussin (@dbrussin), Montetate (@monetate) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.