Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions, achieved record sales growth and product development milestones in Q2 2011.

The company achieved revenue growth of more than 130% for both the three and six months ended June 30, 2011, compared with the same periods in 2010

Officials say the growth was fueled by the expansion of its sales and support capabilities in both domestic and key international markets.

The company also reported sequential quarterly revenue growth of 29% compared with Q1 2011.

“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,” said Michael Sharma, CEO of Exinda. “While we are excited about the rapid pace of our new customer growth, we are extremely pleased that a large percentage of our existing customers are placing follow-on orders for Exinda’s solutions. We will continue to invest in delivering the high level of service that our customers deserve as we build out our teams in key markets.”

Among the new customers that selected Exinda in Q2 2011 were higher education facilities including Ryerson University and Ball State University. Vodafone (News – Alert) and GITN were among the existing telecommunications customers that placed follow-on orders for Exinda’s WAN Optimization solutions.

Q2 2011 Highlights

Exinda expanded its technology leadership and market presence during the second quarter of 2011. The company expanded the capabilities of its WAN Optimization technologies with the introduction of the Exinda Edge Cache™, the Network Reporting Centre, and its ExOS 6.1 software. The ExOS 6.1 release includes several key features and enhancements including the Exinda Edge Cache™, increased Optimization Scalability, and support for IPv6. These features address network issues including the increase in rich media such as video traffic on the WAN, the growing number and complexity of users and devices, and the rising demand for a better user experience.

“The Exinda Edge Cache and other features in our ExOS 6.1 software release address many of the specific challenges our customers are facing today, such as the growth of video traffic and virtualization. I am proud of our team’s ability to execute on our product development initiatives and deliver solutions that make a difference to our customers’ businesses,” added Sharma.

In Q2, the company strengthened its global sales capabilities with the addition of a new VP of Sales for EMEA; total company headcount has almost doubled in the past 12 months. Exinda also increased its market presence through its participation in several industry events including Interop (News – Alert) in Las Vegas and HP Discover.

eEye Digital Security, a provider of IT security and unified vulnerability management solutions, announced that the latest release of its Retina Network Security Scanner, as well as the corresponding free version of the product, Retina Community, will both now include exploit identification and right-click integration with Metasploit penetration testing.

In a release, the Company noted using the Retina Community scanner or the Retina Network Security Scanner (version 5.13.0 or higher), users can see whether a vulnerability has an associated exploit from Core Impact, Metasploit, or Exploit-db.com, allowing IT Security professionals to better prioritize vulnerabilities. In addition, if a Metasploit exploit exists, users can right-click to launch Metasploit (3.6.0 or higher) directly from the scanner to perform a penetration test against the targeted host.

“This latest version of Retina Community and the Retina Network Security Scanner allows IT Security professionals to fix their biggest risks first. And, with right-click Metasploit integration, penetration testing is literally at the IT Security professional’s fingertips within the Retina interface,” said Brad Hibbert, VP Strategy, eEye.  “These new features are further examples of how eEye solutions improve risk prioritization and streamline the vulnerability management process.” eEye Digital Security provides vulnerability and compliance management.

OpenView Venture Partners recently launched its newest report on cloud computing. The report offers insight on several areas related to cloud computing including development, QA operations, on-premise deployment and integration, storage, software training, sales demonstrations, and websites in general.

As online services become more common and small companies are acquired for millions, one thing is for certain – the cloud can no longer be ignored. And with that, companies everywhere have become keenly interested in what cloud computing can do for them.

Of course, there are many different flavors of cloud to consider, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Should you build your own private cloud? Or is public the way to go? Could your test and development environments benefit from a cloud model? What are the risks?

These are the questions organizations of all sizes ask every day. And with so many different players now entering the cloud computing market, the answers aren’t always clear. The key is to separate the providers that have a true cloud message from those who only think they do.

Scott Maxwell, Founder of OpenView Venture Partners, says there’s no denying that investments in the cloud will grow exponentially in the coming years. “I fully expect that cloud service providers will be the dominant location for server loads over the next decade or two. Only companies that have the largest data center needs or specialized needs will be running their own data centers in the future. That said, like all newer architectures, there will be glitches and setbacks along the way.”

Those setbacks are what most organizations still fear. But for expansion stage companies, the benefits of cloud computing are sure to be realized sooner rather than later. From development to quality assurance, storage management to software training, sales demos to deployment testing – it’s clear that the cloud has plenty to offer.

So which flavor of cloud computing is right for you? In this report from OpenView Venture Partners, you’ll find a section-by-section breakdown of all the key areas of interest for companies at the expansion stage, with details on the top service providers to consider.

Begin your path to the cloud today by visiting OpenView Partners and downloading the full report.

About OpenView Venture Partners
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion stage venture capital fund with a focus on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives, who collectively bring several decades of technology and management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies with quickly ramping up Product, Go-To-Market, and Organizational and Operational functions to best practice levels. The firm was founded in 2006 and has a total capital under management of approximately $240 million. OpenView Venture Partners is based in Boston and invests on a worldwide basis.

ExactTarget, a global provider of interactive marketing solutions, announced today that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and executives from Best Buy and eMarketer will keynote Connections ’11 Sept. 13–15 in Indianapolis.

The three-day event, held as an annual user conference for ExactTarget clients and partners, will feature more than 50 breakout sessions ranging from interactive marketing best practices to case studies and advice on how to build engaging interactive campaigns across email, social media, mobile and the Web.

“Connections ’11 will provide the insights and inspiration marketers need to harness the power of interactive marketing to serve customers online and deliver business results,” said Scott Dorsey, chief executive officer of ExactTarget. “With his passion for service and commitment to innovation, Jimmy Wales is a great way to kick off this year’s event and highlight the power each of us has to change our world.”

Best known for his role in pioneering Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia, Wales has earned accolades from Forbes, the Economist and Time Magazine for his work in science, technology and the Web. He’s also garnered international acclaim for his philanthropic pursuits and creation of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Building on the theme of “The Power of One,” Connections ’11 will challenge individuals, teams and organizations to use technology and individual ideas to make positive changes in their communities, their companies, and the world.

Barry Judge, global chief marketing officer of Best Buy, and Robert Stephens, Best Buy’s chief technology officer, will also keynote the event to highlight how corporate marketing and technology teams can collaborate to deliver cross-channel interactive marketing. Judge and Stephens’ leadership has catapulted Best Buy and its family of brands and partnerships to collectively generate more than $50 billion in annual revenue.

Other “Power of One” keynote speakers announced include:

— Geoff Ramsey, CEO and co-founder of eMarketer — Ramsey, who recently unveiled his new book Digital Impact:The Two Secrets to Online Marketing Success, will offer new thoughts on how Facebook, Twitter, Email and mobile are changing the face of online marketing.

— Aron Ralston, best-selling author and mountaineer — Ralston, whose autobiography Between A Rock and a Hard Place inspired the Golden Globe and Oscar-nominated movie 127 Hours, will share thoughts on the power of personal strength, determination and focus.

Connections ’11 will feature 10 unique content tracks, including industry-specific sessions for retail, business-to-business and multichannel interactive marketers as well as day-long workshops for beginners, experts and developers. Through a partnership with Conseco Fieldhouse, attendees will also have the opportunity to attend a concert by a special Grammy-nominated and People’s Choice Award-winning artist.

Registration is available online at www.Connections2011.com . Marketers who register before Aug. 10 will receive $200 off the $995 registration fee. Marketers attending Connections ’11 may also register to attend ExactTarget’s certification session Sept. 12 in Indianapolis. The day-long program offers registrants the opportunity to earn certification in three levels – Professional, Marketer and Partner. To register or to learn more about the certification program, click www.Connections2011.com .

Connections ’11 follows ExactTarget Connections ’10, an event that welcomed more than 2,000 marketers to Indianapolis and featured a lineup of industry titans including Virgin Group Founder and Chairman Sir Richard Branson and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and interactive marketing solutions. The company’s Interactive Marketing Hub technology provides organizations a single solution to connect with customers via email, integrated text messaging, landing pages and social media. Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget powers permission-based multichannel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Best Buy, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com .

Anson General Hospital is proving that small community hospitals don’t always have to follow but can take the lead: The 45-bed hospital can be counted among the first wave of providers to attest to meaningful use under the government’s electronic health record (EHR) incentive program.

On June 6th, the hospital successfully attested to its meaningful use of the ChartAccess® Comprehensive EHR from Prognosis Health Information Systems (HIS), putting the Texas hospital in a position to qualify for its share of the $27 billion in incentive funds emanating from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

“The Prognosis EHR’s ease of use made it possible to get the clinician adoption needed to achieve meaningful use,” said Sabra Knox, CEO at Anson. “Prognosis worked closely with us to ensure we were gathering the data required to successfully participate in the attestation. They really partnered with us to make the whole attestation process an easy one.”

The successful attestation positions the hospital as a leader, when compared to progress being made by other providers. According to a press release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as of May 26th, the government had awarded a total of $158 million to qualifying healthcare providers, well below the $4.7 billion that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would be spent in FY 2011.  In addition, according to the American Hospital Association, just 1.6% of hospitals were ready for meaningful use at the beginning of 2011, although 95% ultimately plan to participate in the incentive program.

To qualify for the ARRA money, healthcare providers need to install certified EHRs and prove that they are using the systems in a “meaningful” way by attesting to the fact that they are meeting specific user requirements. For example, hospitals must ensure that more than 50% of patients’ demographic data is recorded as structured data, more than 50% of requesting patients receive electronic copies of their records within three business days and at least one clinical decision support rule is implemented.

Anson General Hospital documented its realization of the quantitative measures required for meaningful use in three months. A meaningful use dashboard in the ChartAccess system enabled Anson to easily monitor hospital progress in relation to required meaningful use measures.

A powerful EHR engineered for speed and available at an affordable cost, ChartAccess meets the needs of critical access and community hospitals such as Anson. ONC-certified, the flexible solution will be ready for all stages of meaningful use, enabling providers to qualify for ARRA incentive funds. The web-native solution 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. In addition, the latest cloud technology allows for a quick, easy deployment with low infrastructure and on-going IT costs.

“We provide technology that is truly tailored to user needs, making it possible for hospitals to quickly overcome the traditional physician and nurse adoption hurdle,” said Ramsey Evans, CEO of Prognosis HIS. “But we don’t stop there. We forge strong working relationships with each of our customers, ensuring that they understand the ARRA legislation in full.  And, then we work with them, side-by-side, to help them leverage our system and amass the data required to meet the meaningful use requirements.”

Although the Prognosis system has helped Anson quickly attest to meaningful use requirements, Knox expects that the clinical benefits will multiply in the future.

“With electronic records in place, information will be able to follow patients from provider to provider. And, eventually the universal use of EHRs will help all of us in the healthcare industry to provide a higher level of care to our patients,” Knox said.

About Prognosis Health Information Systems

Prognosis Health Information Systems, Inc., 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.

WAN optimization boxes usually don’t help with video traffic, even though streaming from sites like YouTube accounts for a huge and growing proportion of bandwidth. Some network managers might say that helping people watch online video isn’t a core IT function, but vendor Exinda disagrees.

Exinda last week introduced a cache for HTTP video into its products in a software update that also aims to boost performance and support for IPv6. The company’s product, in addition to the integration with WAN optimization, differs from the enterprise video products offered by other vendors such as Cisco in that it’s aimed specifically at Web-based video, with public Internet sites particularly important.

“What we’ve seen is that somebody will see something really funny on YouTube, then send a note saying ‘Hey, you gotta see this!’ You get this viral effect,” Kevin Suitor, Exinda vice president of marketing, said in an interview. “We see it a lot in the morning and just after lunch.” By storing a local copy of the video on a cache within the Exinda appliance, he said that total bandwidth consumption is reduced by 30% to 80%.

Called Edge Cache, the system works by recognizing content itself rather than just Web addresses, so it works with dynamic URLs, though not sites that encrypt video traffic. Unlike most of the techniques in WAN optimization, caching is asymmetric so only needs to be installed at one end of the link, meaning that it can support most major streaming sites such as Amazon and Brightcove. The big exception is Netflix, something Suitor said is due more to fear of violating copyright law rather than technical issues or lack of demand.

Caching large files at the network edge isn’t a new idea, of course, and it’s one that’s been enjoying a resurgence of late thanks to enterprise video. Last week, Cisco launched its Enterprise Content Delivery System, a product that aims to help enterprises build their own Akamai-style content delivery systems. However, this is aimed largely at internal enterprise video broadcasts for purposes such as training. Exinda thinks Internet video has broader applications.

“A year ago, I would have called YouTube pure social, one of those things you need to build tools to avoid,” said Suitor. “But increasingly, companies are using it as a business tool; it’s a very cost-effective way of distributing things around the world.” Enterprises that blocked YouTube or tried to work around it would have missed out on this potential.

Although Edge Cache is broad in the applications it targets, it is narrower in the technology it supports, only working with Web-based (HTTP) video. The Cisco system supports a wider variety of protocols, and also lets network managers control things like the timing of videos–for example, pushing content out in advance of when it is needed at times when bandwidth consumption is low. A potentially bigger weakness is that no kind of caching can work with videoconferencing or voice over IP applications like Skype, as these depend on live, two-way traffic. While some vendors such as Silver Peak do apply WAN optimization to real-time traffic, their techniques involve prioritization and don’t reduce the bandwidth required.

Exinda is adding Edge Cache to its existing WAN optimization hardware as part of its ExOS 6.1 release, which also adds other features aimed at improving performance. The most important is that its processes are now split into a greater number of threads, letting the software take full advantage of the multiple processor cores already in its hardware. This increases the number of concurrent optimized TCP connections that the box can support, giving it what Suitor claims is the industry’s lowest cost per session. Based on list prices, he says this ranges from $30 on the smallest box to $1.28 on the largest.

Exinda, a leading global provider of WAN optimization and application performance management solutions, today announced it achieved record sales growth and product development milestones in Q2 2011. Fueled by the expansion of its sales and support capabilities in both domestic and key international markets, the company achieved revenue growth of over 130% for both the three and six months ended June 30, 2011, compared with the same periods in 2010. The company also reported sequential quarterly revenue growth of 29% compared with Q1 2011.

“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,” said Michael Sharma, CEO of Exinda. “While we are excited about the rapid pace of our new customer growth, we are extremely pleased that a large percentage of our existing customers are placing follow-on orders for Exinda’s solutions. We will continue to invest in delivering the high level of service that our customers deserve as we build out our teams in key markets.”

Among the new customers that selected Exinda in Q2 2011 were higher education facilities including Ryerson University and Ball State University. Vodafone and GITN were among the existing telecommunications customers that placed follow-on orders for Exinda’s WAN Optimization solutions.

Q2 2011 Highlights

Exinda expanded its technology leadership and market presence during the second quarter of 2011. The company expanded the capabilities of its WAN Optimization technologies with the introduction of the Exinda Edge Cache™, the Network Reporting Centre, and its ExOS 6.1 software. The ExOS 6.1 release includes several key features and enhancements including the Exinda Edge Cache™, increased Optimization Scalability, and support for IPv6. These features address network issues including the increase in rich media such as video traffic on the WAN, the growing number and complexity of users and devices, and the rising demand for a better user experience.

“The Exinda Edge Cache and other features in our ExOS 6.1 software release address many of the specific challenges our customers are facing today, such as the growth of video traffic and virtualization. I am proud of our team’s ability to execute on our product development initiatives and deliver solutions that make a difference to our customers’ businesses,” added Sharma.

In Q2, the company strengthened its global sales capabilities with the addition of a new VP of Sales for EMEA; total company headcount has almost doubled in the past 12 months. Exinda also increased its market presence through its participation in several industry events including Interop in Las Vegas and HP Discover.

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.