PHILADELPHIA — Monetate, the leading provider of multi-channel personalization for the world’s best brands, today announced an innovative new solution for marketers – Monetate for Mobile Apps. With Monetate for Mobile Apps, marketers can personalize and test any part of their mobile app’s user experience, run unlimited A/B/n tests, segment customers and instantly update the app – all without ever having to touch a single line of code.

As with all Monetate solutions, Monetate for Mobile Apps empowers marketers to personalize each customer’s experience based on data points such as past purchases, loyalty program status, preferred clothing size, browsing history, location, demographics and more.

Monetate for Mobile Apps seamlessly integrates a brand’s mobile apps with the Monetate personalization platform, enabling marketers to create dynamic customer segments, run in-depth tests, send behavioral push notifications and glean rich customer insights. Additionally, marketers can now make significant updates to their mobile apps while avoiding lengthy lag times associated with app approval processes, as well as instantly fix issues that are commonly caused by operating system updates.

“According to research from Google, 67 percent of people begin shopping on one device and continue on another. Multi-screen shopping is the norm – not the exception – and today’s customers expect a consistent cross-device experience,” said Lucinda Duncalfe, CEO, Monetate. “Combined with the full power of the Monetate platform, marketers can integrate custom data like past purchases, apparel size and loyalty membership to create, manage and deliver consistent, personalized experiences across web, email and mobile apps – side by side in one easy-to-use solution.”

A Finger on the Pulse of Customer Insights
Monetate for Mobile Apps gives brands the ability to analyze mobile app usage and performance to gain valuable customer insights. Through robust testing and Monetate customer data, marketers can understand who is using their app and identify similarities between those individuals who convert and those who delete the app after a short time.

Each test and experience provides insights into user behaviors based on:

• Customer engagement rating (number of sessions)
• Navigation path (and where users abandon)
• Account status
• Time since last login
• Geographic region
• Acquisition performance
• User retention and cohorts
• Detailed device and OS information

Monetate for Mobile Apps provides out-of-the-box integration with all major app analytics providers, enabling marketers to seamlessly import customer and performance data for measurement, and then easily export it for additional analysis and reporting. Monetate’s latest solution is the result of strategic collaborations between Monetate and Taplytics, a leading provider of mobile A/B testing solutions.

About Monetate
Monetate is the global leader in multichannel personalization for the world’s best brands. The Monetate platform is built for speed. It features an easy-to-use interface that allows marketers to create, test and deploy customized real-time experiences across web, email and mobile.

With Monetate, marketing is transformed from a world of discrete one-size-fits-all campaigns to one of always-on, personalized experiences that optimize the lifetime value of each customer.

Founded in 2008, Monetate influences billions of dollars in annual revenue for world-class brands like Macy’s, QVC, Office Depot, Patagonia, Sur la Table and The North Face. During Cyber Week 2014, Monetate influenced a third of all US e-commerce sales. Monetate is the industry leader, with more clients in the IR 500 than any other personalization software provider.

CHELMSFORD, Mass. – Intronis, Inc., a provider of world-classbackup and data protection solutions for the IT channel, today announced it has been recognized by The Channel Company’s CRN® with a 5-Star rating for delivering a channel enablement program that promotes the success of its MSP partners. Details about the Intronis 5-Star 2015 Partner Program can be viewedonline and in the April issue of CRN.

Additionally, for the second year in a row, CRN named Neal Bradbury, Intronis’ Co-Founder and VP of Channel Development, as a “mover and shaker.” The honor places Bradbury among the IT channel’s top executives as one of “50 Most Influential Leaders” in the 2015 Channel Chiefs List.

“Intronis is proud of its ongoing investment in partner enablement resources and programs,” says Rick Faulk, CEO of Intronis. “We are committed to helping our solution provider partners successfully market and sell cloud-based backup and recovery solutions, as part of their IT service delivery, and it is great to once again be recognized by CRN as one of the top-ranking partner programs in the IT channel. We are also excited to see Neal touted  as one of the industry’s most influential leaders.”

During 2014, Intronis continued to invest and expand in its Marketing, Partner Success, and Sales organizations. The company welcomed new team members and introduced new business-building resources designed to help Intronis channel partners generate greater awareness surrounding the increasing need for data protection, and make the business case for cloud backup and recovery services undeniable. Some of these resources include:

• Intronis University, which offers comprehensive technical and business training and certification resources that enable channel partners to deliver superior service and support to their clients
• Intronis Essentials, a web-based library of tools and resources designed to help partners achieve even more success in promoting, selling, and supporting their data protection solutions
• Intronis Partner Guide, which gives channel partners easy access to business basics such as onboarding instructions, marketing collateral, sales best practices, and technical information

 

“Solution providers have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting vendor partners. Identifying the right vendor with the right technologies and the right approach can make all the difference,” said Robert Faletra, CEO, The Channel Company. “Our annual Partner Program Guide and 5-Star rating recognizes the best channel programs available in the market today to help solution providers determine which vendors deliver the best partner elements for their individual business goals.”

To learn more about Intronis online, follow the channel-friendly cloud backup and recovery innovator on Facebook and Twitter, and read the Intronis Cloud Backup and Recovery Blog.

About Intronis

Intronis provides world-class data protection solutions for small businesses, delivered exclusively through the IT channel. The Intronis ECHOplatform securely protects physical and virtual data with native support for physical imaging, VMware, Hyper-V, Exchange, and SQL, all through a re-brandable central management console that integrates with major RMM and PSA tools. With Intronis’ unlimited and fixed-fee storage pricing per SMB account, IT service providers are able to rapidly grow revenue and scale profit. Through Intronis ECHOshare, channel partners can easily expand their IT services portfolio to include tightly integrated business-grade file sync and share. Learn more atwww.intronis.com.

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company, with established brands including CRN®, XChange® Events, IPED® and SharedVue®, is the channel community’s trusted authority for growth and innovation. For more than three decades, they have leveraged their proven and leading-edge platforms to deliver prescriptive sales and marketing solutions for the technology channel. The Channel Company provides communication, recruitment, engagement, enablement, demand generation and intelligence services to drive technology partnerships. Learn more at www.thechannelcompany.com.

BOSTON, MA (PRWEB) APRIL 02, 2015 — OpenView Venture Partners today announced an innovative redesign of its industry leading content resource site, OpenView Labs. The site serves as a portal for actionable tips and insight that help B2B expansion-stage software companies close deals faster, hire better talent, and scale more effectively.

The future-forward website is the result of a collective effort by OpenView and NorthPoint Digital, a leading provider of web design, development, and web experience management platform services. WhatArmy, a web help desk and support team for growth-focused marketing teams, also helped OpenView make a smooth transition to the new site design.

According to Rebecca Churt, who led the redesign for OpenView, the motivation to overhaul the site was driven by five key user experience objectives: Better content flow, clearer line-of-sight into authors and contributors, easier-to-access categories and sub-categories, more responsive design, and improved site search. Thanks to the collaboration with NorthPoint Digital and WhatArmy — along with UX testing help from UserTesting — Churt said OpenView has accomplished all of those things.

“The OpenView Labs mission remains unchanged,” said Churt. “What has changed, however, is our ability to deliver even more relevant, actionable content to our audience of expansion-stage B2B entrepreneurs, executives, and operators. The new site delivers the same level of content quality our visitors have come to expect — but in a much cleaner, more dynamic package.”

OpenView first approached NorthPoint Digital in late 2014 with the goal of designing and developing a site that was clean, bold, and capable of presenting content in a more modern style. NorthPoint Digital delivered, making it easier than ever for entrepreneurs and executives to find, access, and consume OpenView’s robust library of actionable sales, marketing, recruiting, product development, and finance thought leadership.

“We were proud to partner with our client, OpenView Venture Partners, and help take their site from having a traditional design experience to becoming a contemporary expression of the firm’s forward-thinking influence and thought leadership. “We gave the new site a stronger user experience while amplifying OpenView’s content and rich editorial community,” Richard Pasqua, Creative Director, NorthPoint Digital.

About OpenView Labs
OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture capital firm based in Boston that invests exclusively in B2B software companies. In addition to its investment team, OpenView also has a dedicated team of 15 consultants who work with its portfolio companies to help them scale faster and more efficiently than competitors (http://www.openviewlabs.com). Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has nearly $700 million in total capital under management.

About NorthPoint Digital
NorthPoint Digital delivers highly scalable technology and design solutions to transform user experiences in an evolving digital landscape. Founded in 2003, NorthPoint Digital has deep roots in web content management, experience design, system integrations and migrations, and has helped Fortune 500 companies deploy multi-channel, multi-faceted experiences.

NorthPoint Digital’s extensive knowledge stretches across various technical tools, integration points, frameworks, databases, languages, and business drivers – providing a unique perspective and great depth for all client engagements. Visit http://www.northpointdigital.com to learn how they help organizations drive results digitally.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — SwiftStack, the leader in object storage for the enterprise, today announced a strategic partnership with Redapt, a global systems integrator specializing in data center infrastructure and cloud engineering services. The partnership enhances Redapt’s already robust portfolio of data center infrastructure and cloud solutions by adding SwiftStack’s object storage platform to its SuperDense Storage solution, ultimately lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) and increasing storage scalability and flexibility for Redapt’s customers.

Redapt’s SuperDense Storage drives faster performance for information storage and retrieval across cloud and on-premise data centers. With the expanding amount of data companies are collecting daily, Redapt was seeking to expand its capabilities to offer customers more flexibility, scalability and cost-effective storage. Integrating SwiftStack’s object storage capabilities with Redapt’s SuperDense Storage solution creates one of the most cost-effective and scalable private storage clouds on the market.

“Deploying petabyte-scale storage on traditional SAN or NAS hardware is difficult to manage and extremely costly,” said Jeff Dickey, Chief Innovation Officer of Redapt. “By combining SwiftStack’s flexible and easy-to-use object storage system with the high-density foundation of our SuperDense Storage enclosures, our customers can now expand their data centers at an affordable TCO. This partnership enables SwiftStack and Redapt to give our customers a complete object storage solution that allows them to move toward closer toward a platform-as-a-service model.”

According to a 2013 IDC report, the file and object storage market will grow by 24.5% annually through 2017. Traditional archive systems and public cloud offerings are expensive, slow and fail to scale as data grows. Object storage gives businesses, especially those in industries with massive amounts of data, a simple, easy-to-use and flexible storage solution that helps lower TCO. SwiftStack’s object storage capabilities combined with Redapt’s SuperDense Storage provide a complete petabyte-scale enterprise storage solution, far exceeding the capacity of both internal server storage and scaled-out SAN or NAS hardware.

“Maintaining an agile, low-cost data center is challenging, especially when businesses are faced with an explosion of unstructured data, and customers requiring access to that data from any device anywhere. SwiftStack’s mission is to help these organizations face this challenge by bringing them a storage platform that is simple to manage, massively scalable, and accessible through any application cost effectively. This alliance with Redapt helps us do just that,” said Don Jaworski, CEO of SwiftStack. “Our partnership with Redapt gives customers the simplicity and low TCO they have been missing in their legacy storage architectures, as well as the enterprise-class reliability they require.”

About SwiftStack
SwiftStack is an industry leading object storage company. With OpenStack’s object storage project Swift at its core, SwiftStack offers a flexible and powerful software platform that allows operators to simplify management of massively scale efficiently. With SwiftStack, application developers and operations teams can leverage the power of an object storage infrastructure with the control, security and total cost of ownership their business demands. Launched in 2011, the company boasts support for large enterprise F500 customers. SwiftStack is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices globally, and is backed by top-tier investors, including OpenView Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Storm Ventures. Connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn, or please visit www.swiftstack.com.

About Redapt
Redapt is a global systems integrator focused on data center infrastructure and cloud engineering services tailored to meet client goals. We develop and integrate customized, best-of-breed, technology solutions that effectively address the business objectives of our clients, while lowering TCO and providing maximum investment protection. Our office of the CTO continually evaluates the latest hardware, software, and cloud technologies keeping Redapt at the cutting edge of innovation. For more information visit www.redapt.com.

BOSTON — CommonWell Health Alliance today announced the addition of five new members that significantly enhance the association’s nationwide footprint, share of the EHR marketplace and diversity across the care continuum. MEDITECH, Merge and Kareo join as contributing members while PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) join as general members.

With the addition of these new members, CommonWell membership now represents 70% of the acute care EHR market and 20% of the ambulatory care EHR market. CommonWell membership also represents market leaders in imaging, perinatal, laboratory, retail pharmacy, oncology, population health, post-acute care and others across the care continuum.

“We know it takes collective experience and dedication to break down barriers to nationwide data exchange, so we are especially pleased to welcome these industry innovators to the CommonWell family,” said Nick Knowlton, Vice President of Business Development at Brightree and CommonWell Membership Committee Chair. “Each organization will contribute to our effort by providing a commitment to action and new perspectives for additional use cases that will help us accelerate our current deployment of real-world interoperability services.”

• MEDITECH is one of CommonWell’s largest members to join since inception. It provides fully integrated technology solutions for hospitals, ambulatory care centers, physicians’ offices, long‑term care and behavioral health facilities, and home care organizations. MEDITECH’s membership increases CommonWell’s share of the acute care market from 50% to 70%.

• Merge is a leading provider of enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems that seek to advance health care. It offers solutions in radiology, eye care, cardiology, orthopedics and clinical trials—all of which provide the opportunity for CommonWell to develop new use cases across a broader spectrum of the health care continuum. Additionally, Merge has the most complete radiology solution on the market, from small-volume sites up to the largest practices and chains in the country.”Merge embraces the opportunity to join CommonWell at a critical moment in health care,” said Steve Tolle, Chief Strategy Officer at Merge Healthcare. “Industry leaders must actively come together to make interoperability real, and the Alliance provides an effective platform for meaningful dialogue and collaboration to help chart the future trajectory of the health care industry.”

• Kareo brings over 30,000 providers and 60,000 users of its cloud-based medical office software suite into CommonWell. As CommonWell continues to deploy services nationwide, Kareo’s ambulatory experience and reach will accelerate universal provider access to critical health care data.”Kareo believes the powerful combination of the more than 60% of U.S. doctors that practice independently with truly interoperable health care technology will drive breakthrough improvements in patient care quality and successful outcomes,” said Dan Rodrigues, Founder and CEO of Kareo. “We’re excited about the opportunity to contribute our efforts to the compelling vision of CommonWell.”

• PointClickCare’s cloud-based software platform helps more than 10,000 senior living and skilled nursing communities to achieve results that matter – enriching the lives of their residents for better outcomes, improving financial and operational health and mitigating risk. The company’s person-centered approach to managing senior care ensures providers can collaborate securely, across care settings with confidence.

• Surgical Information Systems (SIS) joins as CommonWell’s first vendor solely focused on providing solutions specific to the perioperative process. As CommonWell prepares to develop new use cases, SIS’ expertise and knowledge of the complex surgical environment will serve to enhance CommonWell’s ability to offer real-world interoperability services that are functional for specialty care settings.

To date, CommonWell’s services—patient identification, record location, patient privacy and consent, and trusted data access—are live in six states including North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois. More than 20 provider locations are using the services, and more than 26,000 persons have consented to enroll on CommonWell’s network.

For more information on participating and membership levels, visit the CommonWell Health Alliance website.

About CommonWell Health Alliance
CommonWell Health Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association of health IT companies working together to create universal access to health care data. CommonWell is open to all organizations that are committed to making patient data available to providers regardless of where care occurs. Members support the belief that provider access to this data must be built into health information technologies at a reasonable cost for use by a broad range of health care providers and the populations and people they serve.

To learn more about CommonWell Health Alliance, please visit www.commonwellalliance.org, and read the CommonWell blog. Also follow CommonWell on Twitter at @CommonWell, join us on CommonWell’s LinkedIn page, and like CommonWell’s Facebook page.

About MEDITECH
Today, more than 2,300 institutions worldwide use MEDITECH’s fully integrated, interoperable EHR to provide healthcare to the communities they serve. Their robust, patient-centered technology spans the healthcare continuum, including unique functional capacity for the following environments: ambulatory care, acute care, long-term care, rehabilitation services, behavioral health, and home health care. Learn more at www.meditech.com.

About Merge
Merge is a leading provider of innovative enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems that seek to advance healthcare. Merge’s enterprise and cloud-based technologies for image intensive specialties provide access to any image, anywhere, any time. Merge also provides clinical trials software with end-to-end study support in a single platform and other intelligent health data and analytics solutions. With solutions that have been used by providers for more than 25 years, Merge is helping to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and enhance the quality of healthcare worldwide. For more information, visit www.merge.com and follow us @MergeHealthcare.

About Kareo
Kareo is the only cloud-based medical office software and services platform purpose-built for small practices. At Kareo, we believe that, with the right tools and support, small practices can do big things. We offer an integrated solution of products and services designed to help physicians get paid faster, run their business smarter, and provide better care. Our practice management software,billing services, and free, award-winning fully certified EHR help more than 30,000 medical providers more efficiently manage the business and clinical sides of their practice. Kareo has received extensive industry recognition, including the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 500/5000, Forbes Top 100 Most Promising Companies, and Black Book #1 Integrated EHR, Practice Management and Billing Vendor. Headquartered in Irvine, California, the Kareo mission is to help providers spend their time focused on patients, not paperwork. For more information, visit www.kareo.com.

About PointClickCare
PointClickCare, the leading cloud-based software platform for the senior care market, helps healthcare providers meet the challenges of senior care by enabling them to achieve the business results that matter—enriching the lives of their residents, improving financial and operational health, and mitigating risk. Recently recognized as the 2014 #1 long-term care software vendor by KLAS Research, PointClickCare’s cloud-based software platform takes a person-centered approach to managing senior care, connecting healthcare providers across the senior care continuum with easy‑to‑use, regulatory‑compliant solutions for improved resident outcomes, enhanced financial performance, and staff optimization. Over 10,000 senior care facilities use PointClickCare today, making it the North American healthcare IT market leader for the senior care industry. For more information on PointClickCare’s ONC­‑certified software solutions, please visit www.pointclickcare.com, or follow us on Twitter @PointClickCare.

About SIS
Surgical Information Systems (SIS) provides software solutions that are uniquely designed to add value at every point of the perioperative process. Developed specifically for the complex surgical environment, all SIS solutions—including anesthesia—are architected on a single database and integrate easily with other hospital systems. SIS Anesthesia was notably rated #1 in the anesthesia specialty report by KLAS and awarded the Category Leader Designation in the 2014 Best in KLAS Awards.1 For more information, visit our website, SISFirst.com.

1 Anesthesia 2014: Putting Performance Questions to Rest.” December, 2014 and “2014 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services.” January, 2015. © 2015 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. www.KLASresearch.com

CommonWell Health Alliance and the CommonWell logo are registered trademarks of CommonWell Health Alliance in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.

PHILADELPHIA, March 31, 2015 — Monetate, the leading provider of multi-channel personalization for the world’s best brands, announced today that Scott Rogers has been named senior vice president of corporate development, and Michelle Curless has been appointed to vice president of services.

Rogers oversees Monetate’s corporate development functions with a focus on fostering new growth initiatives, and developing and managing the company’s partner ecosystem. Previously, Rogers was vice president of business development at Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formally ExactTarget) and led its expansion efforts beyond North America by launching operations in Japan, France and the Nordics.

In addition, Rogers spearheaded company acquisitions in Australia, Brazil and the UK. Prior to that, Rogers held senior business and corporate development positions at leading technology companies in Europe, including Urban Media, FreeRange and Webtrends. Rogers received an M.B.A. from the Thunderbird School of International Management and a B.A. from Vanderbilt University.

“One of the aspects that drew me to Monetate was the collaborative, driven nature of its partner ecosystem,” said Rogers. “It’s truly an amazing network of leaders who are dedicated to delivering and optimizing technologies that address our customers’ complex business challenges – in order to deliver the best digital experience for consumers.”

Curless leads Monetate’s customer experience areas focusing on the post-sale design and management of each customer’s experience, including professional services, global support, training, consulting partners, account management and services operations. Curless brings more than 20 years of customer experience and service operations expertise, having held roles in consulting, operations, leadership and business development at leading organizations and startups across industries.

Most recently, Curless held the position of vice president of customer experience at Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget). In this role, she established customer experience as a key business discipline across the company, establishing a benchmark for customer engagement and experience through VoC (voice of the customer) and leading the organization’s efforts to innovate through customer-focused solutions. In addition, she held senior leadership positions at ExactTarget where she oversaw professional services teams, delivered services engagements and established the company’s first project management office. Curless earned a B.A. from St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana.

“Monetate has a reputation for innovation and a world-class customer experience. I’m excited for the opportunity to apply my knowledge and experience to further deepen our commitment to customer success through all levels of Monetate’s services organization,” said Curless.

“We’re thrilled to welcome such high-caliber talent in the likes of Scott and Michelle into our expanding company,” said Lucinda Duncalfe, CEO, Monetate. “Their deep expertise in the marketing technology space, along with their strategic visions, truly reflect Monetate’s mission to continually add to our strong leadership foundation, which is focused on delivering the best possible value to our customers.”

About Monetate

Monetate is the global leader in multichannel personalization for the world’s best brands. The Monetate platform is built for speed. It features an easy-to-use interface that allows marketers to create, test and deploy customized real-time experiences across web, email and mobile.

With Monetate, marketing is transformed from a world of discrete one-size-fits-all campaigns to one of always-on, personalized experiences that optimize the lifetime value of each customer.

Founded in 2008, Monetate influences billions of dollars in annual revenue for world-class brands like Macy’s, QVC, Office Depot, Patagonia, Sur la Table and The North Face. During Cyber Week 2014, Monetate influenced a third of all US e-commerce sales. Monetate is the industry leader, with more clients in the IR 500 than any other personalization software provider.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 10, 2015 — Instructure, the creator of the Canvas learning management system (LMS) for K-12, today announced at SXSWedu that it has partnered with Pearson to integrate the Canvas LMS with PowerSchool, the largest student information system in the U.S. The independent software vendor (ISV) partnership agreement will enable two-way integration between the PowerSchool student information system and the Canvas LMS, allowing teachers to eliminate time-wasting duplicate data entry between the two systems.

PowerSchool, the most widely used Web-based student information system, supports more than 13 million students globally. PowerSchool enables today’s educators to make timely decisions that impact student performance while creating a collaborative environment for parents, teachers and students to work together in preparing 21st century learners for the future.

“This bi-directional integration with PowerSchool has been the most common feature request from Canvas K-12 customers,” said Mitch Benson, vice president of K-12 for Instructure. “We already have more than 30 school districts who’ve been working with us and successfully implemented the integration. By providing a more seamless Canvas experience for PowerSchool users, we’re giving educators the flexibility to choose the best tools for teaching, assessing and grading.”

More than 30 percent of U.S. school districts use PowerSchool, including more than 80 current Canvas customers. Starting immediately, any K-12 institution that uses the two systems can enable the passback feature, which allows teachers to automatically transfer assignments and grade data from Canvas directly into the SIS. Institutions can enable this feature through an implementation consultant. Following the implementation, teachers can simply click the “Post to SIS” button in their Canvas grades page.

The two-way integration between the systems also allows for schools to easily provision a Canvas account using the information they already have stored in PowerSchool. This new feature eliminates the usual struggle educators have when trying to make student information systems and learning management systems work together. Now any K-12 institution can get Canvas accounts and courses up and running instantly using their PowerSchool data.

VP of Product and Marketing for Pearson School Systems group, Oliver Wreford, stated, “Through our partnership with Instructure and our collaborative efforts to integrate PowerSchool with Canvas, we will enable teachers to more easily manage the instructional process, allowing them to spend more time working directly with their students.”

For more information about Instructure, visit instructure.com.

For more information on Pearson’s ISV program, visit www.pearsonschoolsystems.com/partners/current.

About Instructure

Instructure, Inc. developed the Canvas learning management system to make teaching and learning easier for everyone, everywhere. Canvas empowers learning in every context with open, usable SaaS technologies. And through Canvas Network, Instructure provides a cloud platform where teachers, learners and institutions worldwide can connect and chart their own course for personal growth, professional development and academic inquiry. Learn more at www.instructure.com.

About SXSWedu

The SXSWedu Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders across a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, film screenings, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social change. SXSWedu is a component of the South by Southwest family of conference and festivals that includes SXSW Music, Film and Interactive; SXSW Eco and SXSW V2V. Internationally recognized as the convergence gathering for the creative arts, SXSWedu extends SXSW’s support for the art of engagement beyond musicians, filmmakers and new media innovators to include society’s true rock stars: educators.

Join the passionate and innovative community at SXSWedu, March 9-12, 2015 in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit: http://sxswedu.com.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 9, 2015 — Instructure, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that created the Canvas learning management system (LMS) and Canvas Network, today announced the release of new education reform courses in partnership with the Foundation for Excellence in Education. The massive open online course (MOOC) series, titled “EdPolicy Leaders Online,” is aimed at policymakers and will be offered for free on Canvas Network.

The series will launch with three timely courses offering policymakers the opportunity to learn about the relevant education reform issues in the news today. Course topics include data privacy, national security and communications. The “EdPolicy Leaders Online” series also features nearly 40 experts and leaders across the education landscape from superintendents, teachers, parents and community leaders, to senators, policymakers, technology experts and CEOs.

“Since the company was founded, Instructure has been passionate about improving education,” said Melissa Loble, senior director of Canvas Network at Instructure. “We want to fuel the conversation around education reform from both ends of the political spectrum, and these free courses from the Foundation for Excellence in Education are designed specifically for that very purpose.”

“EdPolicy Leaders Online” is focused on providing in-depth knowledge, tools and key resources needed to advance and effectively implement trending reforms. The course structure will offer participants convenient, self-paced modules, as well as official certificates of course completion that can be displayed on a resume and social networks, such as LinkedIn.

“Online learning is expanding access to education opportunities for students.  We’re now leveraging that model to expand new professional learning opportunities for policymakers and their staff around the country,” said John Bailey, VP of Policy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education. “We’re thrilled Instructure has joined us in our quest to improve the education system in America, and we think Canvas is the perfect place for us to launch this new initiative.”

Canvas Network offers open, online courses taught by educators everywhere. Powered by the Canvas LMS, Canvas Network provides a place and platform where teachers, students and institutions worldwide can connect and chart their own course for personal growth, professional development and academic inquiry.

Since its launch in 2013, Canvas Network has offered more than 400 open, online courses designed and delivered by over 150 educational institutions and organizations throughout the world. Canvas Network is developed and supported by Instructure, the technology company that makes smart software that makes people smarter.

The education reform courses are open for enrollment now and the courses are set to begin March 23. Each course includes five to six individual, self-paced modules that require no more than an hour of time each. There are no restrictions on who can register or on the number of course participants. For more information or to enroll, visit excelined.org.

About Instructure
Instructure, Inc. is the software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology company that makes smart software that makes people smarter. Its cloud-based Canvas learning management system (LMS) now connects more than 18 million teachers and learners at over 1,200 higher ed and K-12 institutions throughout the world. Because learning doesn’t end after graduation, Instructure also offers Bridge, the modern learning and engagement platform that enables organizations of every kind to engage with employees by measuring and improving employee sentiment, alignment and knowledge in real time. Learn more at www.Instructure.com.

About ExcelinEd:
The Foundation for Excellence in Education is igniting a movement of reform, state by state, to transform education for the 21st century economy by working with lawmakers, policymakers, educators and parents to advance education reform across America. Learn more at ExcelinEd.org.

About SXSWedu
The SXSWedu Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders across a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, film screenings, early stage startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social change.

SXSWedu is a component of the South by Southwest family of conference and festivals that includes SXSW Music, Film and Interactive; SXSW Eco and SXSW V2V. Internationally recognized as the convergence gathering for the creative arts, SXSWedu extends SXSW’s support for the art of engagement beyond musicians, filmmakers and new media innovators to include society’s true rock stars: educators.

Join the passionate and innovative community at SXSWedu, March 9-12, 2015 in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit: http://sxswedu.com.