Monetate, the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization for websites, is sponsoring the Email Marketing and Personalization Summit next week at eTail West 2011, a major conference for retail and e-commerce executives (www.wbresearch.com/etailusawest).

As part of this special one-day summit, being held on February 22 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs in Palm Desert, David Brussin, founder and CEO of Monetate (www.monetate.com), will be hosting a series of roundtables titled “How Message Targeting and Continuity Maximize Conversion.”

Brussin will share lessons learned from thousands of marketing tests conducted for more than 60 different Monetate accounts. For a multichannel retail perspective on email marketing and conversion rate optimization, David will be joined at the roundtables by Teresa Lee, Director of Marketing at Urban Outfitters.

“We see clear evidence, across a wide range of enterprises, that continuity and consistency between email and website, as well as appropriate segmentation and targeting, pay big dividends in terms of conversion rates and other key metrics such as revenue per session,” says Brussin. “I look forward to engaging directly with retailers at these roundtables and answering any questions they may have about how best to implement these winning strategies.”

’2011 WAN Acceleration State of the Market’ Report Links Strategic Use of WAN Acceleration Technologies to Improved User Satisfaction

MASSACHUSETTS  — Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimization solutions, today announced the latest report from Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE:HHS), entitled ‘2011 WAN Acceleration State of the Market’, indicates that WAN Optimization is a priority for operators of ‘best-in-class’ networks.

The Aberdeen Group report, authored by Aberdeen’s senior research analyst, Russ Klein, provides insights into the characteristics of top performing WAN Operators. The findings indicate that top performing WAN managers are addressing poor application performance with optimization and acceleration, rather than simply throwing more hardware and bandwidth at the problem.

“In the next year, over 30% of all respondents are planning to boost their use of APIs for network integration and also increase the centralization of WAN optimization and acceleration,” said Klein. “These steps will allow organizations to improve the effectiveness of their WAN acceleration solutions and also increase their ability to expand the benefits of optimization to emerging technology areas such as IP-based communications and mobile devices.”

“The Aberdeen paper reflects many of the issues and trends that our customers face today,” said Kevin Suitor, Vice President of Marketing, Exinda. “IT managers are demanding solutions that do more than blindly accelerate all applications traversing the WAN. They want the ability to see exactly what is happening in the WAN and how each application impacts the user experience, and to optimize the applications that are critical to their business. We are pleased to be working with Aberdeen to make this research available to network operators.”

The Aberdeen Group report is based on data collected from more than 200 enterprise network managers in 2010. To access a copy of the Aberdeen report, visit http://blog.exinda.com/special-report–2011-wan-acceleration-state-of-the-market-/.

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration products. The Exinda Unified Performance Management (UPM) solution encompasses application visibility, control, optimization and intelligent acceleration – all within a single network appliance that is affordable and easy to manage. Founded in 2002, Exinda is headquartered in Andover, MA and has established regional offices in Canada and the United Kingdom to support the growing global demand for its products and services. Exinda is a 100% channel business with products being distributed by a worldwide network of solution partners who offer local support and services. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Exinda and the Exinda logo are trademarks of Exinda. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

A self-provisioning system and secure networking links lets IT administrators easily build connections between a corporate data center and a virtual Skytap data center.

Skytap, a supplier of self-service cloud systems, is offering secure, two-way networking between an enterprise data center and a Skytap data center as a way to implement hybrid cloud computing.

The Skytap Hybrid Cloud announced Feb. 14 gives IT developers or administrators a point-and-click interface for setting IPsec VPN connections between their data center and a virtual data center that they build in a Skytap cloud processing center. The connection may be allowed to connect to various subnetworks at the destination, or be prohibited from touching certain subnets. Role-based privileges can be assigned to users.

At the same time developers or administrators may create via self service a virtual private data center of multiple virtual machines in the cloud. A user is given a search box with which to seek software components. He might, for example, ask for Linux-based virtual machines with four CPUs and four gigabytes of RAM. One might be designated to run Oracle 11g and be tied to another over a secure network connection. Certain insecure virtual machine configurations would be specifically prohibited from connecting to the database system.

The server templates provided by Skytap now have secure network connections built for operation between public and private facilities.

The goal, Sundar Raghavan, chief marketing officer, said in an interview, is to produce a hybrid cloud operation between two data centers in which IT management can have confidence. “We have taken the time to figure out how to make the process as simple and seamless as possible,” Raghavan said.

Skytap previously offered infrastructure as a service from its own publicly accessible data centers. Now the enterprise cloud administrator can connect to Skytap and treat it as a secure extension of his data center. It’s trying to tie the two together by allowing self-provisioning inside its public data centers, making virtual servers there an extension of its customer’s own data center.

The management console it supplies can also be used to manage virtual machines in Amazon Web Services’ EC2 and Google’’ App Engine as well as Skytap’s own data center.

Skytap supports virtual machines created under VMware’s ESX Server or Citrix Systems’ XenServer. It has said previously that it plans to add Microsoft’s Hyper-V, but no reference to Hyper-V was included in the Feb. 14 announcement.

Skytap claims 125 customers, with 25 added in the previous quarter. Some 40% of its customers use its self-provisioning system for development and testing; 25% use it for training users on complex software applications, giving each trainee his own virtual machine; and the remainder use it for IT operations and new product demonstrations by sales teams.

The Skytap Hybrid Cloud will become part of Skytap’s core system, which includes Skytap Virtual Private Cloud. The self-provisioning system also provides for hourly billing and charge-back, based on number and sized of server resources created.

An example of a Skytap monthly subscription allows 20-25 users using 20-25 virtual servers to compute for 1,000 hours or enough usage “to meet business needs” for $1,000 per month. A subscriptions for fewer users starts at $500 a month.

Skytap is a startup that was spun out of the University of Washington’s computer science department in Seattle in 2006. In January, it received $10 million in a C series funding from a new venture partner, Open View Partners, and previous participating venture capital firms Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and the Washington Research Foundation.

Monetate, the leading independent provider of testing, targeting, and personalization for websites, today announced that Onlineshoes.com, the nation’s first online shoe retailer, has deployed Monetate’s marketing platform to quickly and easily test product messaging, promotions, and website features.

Key Facts:

• Onlineshoes.com has joined Monetate’s growing list of customers that includes PETCO, QVC, Urban Outfitters, Green Mountain Coffee, Casual Male Retail Group, Sheplers, Free People, L’Occitane, The Sports Authority, Aeropostale, NASCAR.com Superstore, Brookstone, and many others.
• With Monetate, Onlineshoes.com will be able to deliver a more compelling, consistent, and personal experience to each site visitor, boosting online sales and increasing customer engagement.
• With Monetate’s easy-to-use dashboard, Onlineshoes.com can quickly test the impact of different website content, features, and offers on conversion rates, then instantly turn successful tests into profitable campaigns.
• Monetate will enable marketers at Onlineshoes.com to easily create consistent messaging from traffic acquisition through to the landing page and shopping cart, thereby maximizing ROI from affiliate, display, and search traffic (both organic and PPC).
• Onlineshoes.com will now be able to target content using segmentation such as “new versus returning customer” or more complex criteria based on business rules such as “Free expedited shipping on orders over $150 for Merrell brand winter footwear if visitor location is 100 miles or less from our nearest warehouse and it is snowing there.”
• Marketing and merchandising best practices like product badging, email echo, International messaging, and tax-free targeting can now be easily implemented on Onlineshoes.com without using any internal IT resources.

Quotes:

• “Onlineshoes.com is a true pioneer in the world of online retailing,” said David Brussin, founder and CEO of Monetate. “But Onlineshoes.com knows that consumers today have many choices when shopping for shoes online, so the company has implemented Monetate to deliver a highly personalized site experience to each visitor based on their unique behavior and preferences.”
• “We are delighted to add the power of the Monetate platform to our marketing and merchandising tool set,” said Lynn Stetson, Senior Director of Ecommerce at Onlineshoes.com. “Monetate will definitely help us maintain our commitment to delivering exceptional value and service to our customers.”

Seattle, WA – Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, is furthering its leadership in cloud automation with a set of usability and security features focused on self-service set-up and management of hybrid clouds. Using the new features, enterprises and software vendors can create and deploy hybrid clouds in under ten minutes. New features include:

• Self-service hybrid clouds with secure networking
• VPN-aware Skytap templates, configurations and snapshots
• Dynamic switching of network connections

These new capabilities come on the heels of Skytap’s $10 million series C round of funding, which is being used to accelerate innovation of the company’s flagship cloud automation platform.

Setting up and configuring a hybrid cloud has been a costly, complex, and time consuming endeavor for most enterprises and software vendors. Current tools in the market require additional investments in either VPN hardware and set-up, or significant configuration, coding and testing. Functional users, which want to use the cloud for development and testing and IT sandbox projects, have limited time and resources to overcome these challenges. They need a simple, secure, and self-service solution.

“Hybrid clouds promise the best of both worlds, i.e., enterprises can manage their cloud resources with the security of internal systems, but with the scale offered by a cloud service provider,” said Cameron Haight, research vice president, Gartner, Inc. “However, the complexity of deploying a dynamic hybrid cloud environment presents a barrier to adoption. In order to ease the burden, IT should look for technologies that enable the rapid set-up and operational management of this emerging unified computing infrastructure.”

With this new release, Skytap brings point and click set-up simplicity to enable rapid hybrid cloud deployments. Skytap administrators can manage the cloud as an extension of their data centers and empower functional users to create hybrid cloud environments without adding any IT support burden. Authorized functional users can create and use hybrid clouds with point and click ease. Using the new version, Skytap customers can:

Rapidly Deploy Secure, Self-Service Hybrid Clouds

Skytap accelerates cloud integration with in-house systems by providing administrators a graphical user interface they can use to set-up, test and configure IPSec connections from Skytap to their data centers. Once IT authorizes and provides IPSec set-up parameters, Skytap administrators can set-up, test and enable a hybrid cloud. Administrators can enhance security by restricting those connections to IP ranges permitted in Skytap. They can also explicitly include or exclude specific remote subnets. The new version provides the full visibility and control IT professionals seek to manage cloud environments, eliminates the need for coding to set up a hybrid cloud, and reduces support costs and maintenance time.

Create VPN Aware Skytap Templates and Snapshots With Point and Click Ease

Once set-up, authorized users such as developers and test engineers are empowered to create and connect their Skytap Cloud environments to in-house systems with a point-and-click ease. To ensure a seamless user experience and adoption, Skytap provides persistent connections across its templates, configurations and snapshots. Users can create multiple parallel environments with secure IPSec VPN connections using a template-driven set-up process and persist those connections across suspend/resume operations. These capabilities further accelerate application development and test cycles, improve the security of corporate assets and reduce the support burden on the IT team.

Switch Network Connections Dynamically

Skytap enables network connections to be switched dynamically, eliminating the need to stop a cloud machine to perform this task. This feature enables rapid test and development cycles and reduces a user’s reliance on IT.

“Skytap continues to rapidly introduce new innovations that accelerate enterprise cloud adoption and extend our leadership in delivering the industry’s most usable cloud solutions,” said Sundar Raghavan, chief product and marketing officer at Skytap. “Enterprise users can now secure their cloud environments, easily connect them to in-house systems, and reduce the time, cost, and IT support burden associated with hybrid clouds. We are taking yet another leap forward to deliver on the promise of cloud computing which includes business agility, IT productivity and cost savings.”

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, visit the website.

Skytap (see previous CloudAve coverage), Seattle based company focussed on cloud automation, today announced a move towards Hybrid clouds, clearly aiming to take advantage of the enterprise interest in hybrid clouds. They announced a set of security and usability features which will allow enterprise customers to create and deploy hybrid clouds very fast. As more and more enterprises jump into private clouds to optimize their existing infrastructure, the next logical step for them is to use a combination of private and public cloud infrastructure. Skytap is repositioning themselves to take advantage of this trend and hence the hybrid talk.

Recently we heard the news about Skytap’s $10 Million Series C funding round and today’s announcement could be seen as a push to take advantage of this fresh cash infusion and go deeper into the enterprise market. The new features announced today include:

• Self service hybrid clouds with secure networking: Once the IT have the necessary endpoint set up in the private cloud inside the enterprise datacenter, it is easy to use Skytap’s self service portal to set up the hybrid cloud. Using the UI, it is easy to set up, test and configure IPSec connections from Skytap cloud to the enterprise datacenter(s). The UI offers some really fine grained control over security and it is possible to set up a whitelist and blacklist of IP address (or subnets) from which the application can access the enterprise datacenter. This level of control is critical for enterprise organizations as they are wary of any access coming into their firewall from outside.
• VPN-aware Skytap templates, configurations and snapshots: Once this is set up authorized users including developers, testers, etc. can easily create and connect Skytap cloud environments to talk to their in-house systems, thereby, accelerating application development and test cycles. From the IT admin angle, they can give access to developers and test team the necessary access without compromising the security and without additional burden to them.
• Dynamic Switching of Network Connections:This is just the ability to switch off a network connection without any need to turn cloud servers off.

I see this as Skytap reacting to market needs and repositioning themselves to take advantage of hybrid cloud trends expected to be dominant this year and the next. This may very well suit the needs of their existing customers wanting to deploy certain production ready workloads on public clouds but I am not sure if this will be good enough to lure the enterprise customers in large numbers to using the public clouds.

Boston, MA – Do you know what is stopping you from having a successful corporate blogging initiative? Have you set the right goals for your blogging program? Do you know who should be responsible for blogging?

Recently the team at OpenView Labs tackled these critical blogging questions and many more in its new eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Corporate Blogging. The new eBook features checklists and step by step guides for the key roles to help you get started in as little as two weeks. (Visit OpenView Labs to sign up now).

Blogs have evolved. At first, they were a forum for individuals to express their thoughts. Then, CEOs and other executives started blogging in an attempt to establish themselves as thought leaders. Now, corporate blogs give every member of the team a voice and an opportunity to contribute. A corporate blog provides a forum for your company’s leaders and employees to discuss topics of interest to your target prospects and customers and the people who influence them.

A corporate blog consists of many individual blogs, each written by different employees or departments within your company and can also have a summary company blog that incorporates all of the individual blogs.

“Blogs written by your employees are important in many ways including generating leads through search engines, helping build your brand by demonstrating your team’s culture and expertise, and give your sales team a valuable vehicle to better connect with target prospects, customers, and key influencers,” said Brian Zimmerman, Managing Director of OpenView Labs.

Industry experts including Ann Handley of MarketingProfs, Joe Pulizzi of Junta42, and Jonathan Kranz, author of Copywriting for Dummies, have contributed unique ideas and insight to help you implement a successful blogging program.

“We must sell our expertise. We must do so by providing consistently valuable and compelling content to our prospects and customers. In doing so, we must leverage the greatest marketing assets we have (our employees). This presents both challenges and opportunities. And corporate blogging is one huge opportunity,” said Joe Pulizzi.

Visit the OpenView Labs to get your copy of the Ultimate Guide to Corporate Blogging to start and improve your blogging efforts today.

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.

Salt Lake City, UT – AtTask, creators of the first true social work management platform and worldwide leader in on-demand project and portfolio management software, kicked off the annual user conference and work management summit, WorkOut2011 today with the February 2011 Product release featuring TeamHome and Stream—new workspace features designed to help individual contributors better understand and organize their work.

Watch the WorkOut 2011 Live-streaming here

“The world of project management is currently dominated by a top-down approach that alienates team members and gives managers limited insight into everyday operations,” said Scott Johnson, AtTask founder and CEO. “Our approach to work management is designed to empower team members by creating an environment where they have more control over their work lives, while giving people and project managers a more detailed, real-time picture of what’s really going on.”

What are TeamHome and Stream?

TeamHome is a new workspace designed around the philosophy that work should be democratized and social. Users are able to see, organize and communicate around their work in a simple interface. New work items are presented as work requests, and team members have the opportunity to accept, re-assign or negotiate timelines and task details before they are added to their work list. In addition, team members can add their own work to the system to create a more complete picture of the things they are committed to.

Stream is the continuous flow of conversational (qualitative) information that comes from the comments and updates entered into the system by all team members and managers. The real-time data flows in Stream resemble those found in popular social media applications and give stakeholders the information they need to make informed decisions.

Clients participating in the beta release reported a dramatic increase in team productivity and engagement—helping projects stay on time and on budget.

“Our team members really like using TeamHome,” says John Gilmartin, Head of Programmes at business software giant Sage. “They like how they can add their own tasks, prioritize them on their homepage, and spend less time fumbling through the software wondering what their tasks are—everything is in once place and is easy for them to access.”

For more information about the February 2011 Release including TeamHome and Stream, click here or search for #WorkOut11 on Twitter.

About AtTask, Inc.

AtTask increases workplace harmony by enfranchising workers and informing executives. The company’s social Work Management software gives people at all levels of the organization tools to help them better understand and organize their work. Going social facilitates deeper worker buy-in, and delivers executives conversational insights into the work environment.