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.

Further simplifying and accelerating real-time data recovery for channel partners, Intronis, Inc., a provider of world-class backup and data protection solutions for the IT channel, recently announced the Winter Release ‘15 of its Intronis ECHOplatform.

The Intronis Winter Release ’15 introduces several new business-building features and core functionalities. The enhancements are designed to help channel partners better support more complex cloud, virtualized and physical IT environments, grow their share of wallet with existing customers, and attract new business by offering a real-time, cloud-based data recovery solution that’s built to protect the business. New key features within the Intronis ECHOplatform include:

• Hyper-V Rapid Recovery: Enables channel partners to better support hybrid IT environments by offering Hyper-V environment recovery from local image-based storage in as fast as 30 seconds.
• Imaging Rapid Recovery: Supports and simplifies rapid recovery for physical server environments from local image-based storage, using a combination of advanced algorithms, native data formats and reverse incremental backup techniques.
• Object-Level Restore: Allows channel partners to retrieve specific files, folders, and databases from physical and virtual local image-based backups with greater ease, accuracy and efficiency.
• VMware 6.0 Ready: Ensures channel partners will be able to provide native backup for the upcoming release of the industry’s leading hypervisor platform.

Intronis channel partner Lloyd Cutler, president, Executive Network Services, Inc. was part of the beta for the 2015 Winter Release and likes what he sees in the new release. “We ran full backup and reverse-incremental backup to a network attached storage device, as well as to USB, and both were successful and completed in record time,” says Cutler.  “We’ll be switching our clients over from other platforms as soon as possible.”

“Intronis is continually looking for ways to simplify the backup and recovery processes our partners use, and the 2015 Winter Release is another dramatic step forward,” says Chuck DeLouis, vice president, product management, Intronis.  “The Intronis ECHOplatform offers one of the fastest recover time objectives in the industry, while at the same time offering channel partners greater flexibility in how and what they recover.  This combination of speed, flexibility, and reliability enables our partners to rapidly and efficiently get their clients back up and running in just minutes – when they need it most.”

Built exclusively for use by channel partners, the Intronis ECHOplatform sells for a fixed monthly cost, making it easier for channel partners to resell the managed service at a predictable and profitable price. With its new features and functionalities, the platform supports the broadest range of backup and disaster recovery (BDR) use cases for small to mid-size businesses (SMBs). It also offers channel partners the utmost speed, flexibility and precision recovery options including being able to recover an entire virtual machine or server for example, in minutes, or simply restoring the data by copying the files through the portal of any hyper-V or image backup, without mounting the image.

“The enhanced image-object level restore works very well,” says Intronis channel partner Alex Wilkins, president, Wilkins IT Solutions. “It’s extremely fast and easy, which will save valuable time in an actual crisis when every minute counts.”

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’ 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. For more information, visit www.intronis.com.

MENLO PARK, Calif. and SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 3, 2015 — Spredfast Inc., a leading social media software platform, and Silver Lake Waterman, today announced that the company has secured $24 million in growth financing. Focused on providing flexible expansion capital to later-stage growth companies in the technology and technology-enabled industries, Silver Lake Waterman is part of Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing.

The Spredfast software platform collects and analyzes social media content, enabling marketers to track, manage and amplify real-time conversations across the spectrum of social media using a single dashboard. Its latest round of funding will allow Spredfast to drive innovation by enhancing its platform technology, expanding internationally and recruiting top talent.

“Silver Lake’s deep experience in the technology space provides us with significant resources to fulfill our short and long-term goals,” said Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast.  “We’re proud to join such a prestigious group of portfolio company industry leaders that have benefitted from Silver Lake’s support and investment.”

Shawn O’Neill, Managing Director and Co-Head of Silver Lake Waterman said, “Integrated social media management and analytics has become a critical priority for companies worldwide. Spredfast has demonstrated a remarkable track record of product innovation and leadership that we believe will serve the company well as it continues to scale.”

About Spredfast
Spredfast gives marketers the tools needed to manage their brand and connect with consumers in an increasingly social world. The Spredfast Social Software Platform allows marketers to manage, integrate and amplify social content across any digital touch point. The solutions offer brands and media access to every piece of social data submitted in order to uncover conversations that matter. Spredfast customers manage over one billion social connections across 84 countries and have the power to process 650 million pieces of social content per day in multiple languages. Over 600 customers, including fifty percent of Interbrand’s 2014 World’s Best Brands and all five major broadcast networks and have partnered with Spredfast to create first-class social experiences. For more information, visit www.spredfast.com.

About Silver Lake Waterman
Silver Lake Waterman is part of Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing with over $23 billion in combined assets under management and committed capital and a team of approximately 110 investment and value creation professionals located around the world. Silver Lake Waterman focuses on providing flexible expansion capital to later-stage growth companies in the technology and technology-enabled industries. For more information about Silver Lake Waterman and Silver Lake, please visit www.silverlake.com.

Balihoo (www.balihoo.com), the premier local marketing platform helping national brands activate thousands of data-driven campaigns, was awarded the prestigious Aflac “Partner of the Year” award. 

Every year, Aflac, the leading provider of voluntary insurance in the United States, recognizes partners that goes above and beyond in helping the company meet their key objective of delivering exceptional level of service to all customers, employees, associates, and the community. The company reviews all of its partners and chooses one in each of four categories — Quality, Service, Technology and Value – as Partner of the Year. Balihoo took the honor in the “Quality” category.

When Balihoo joined forces with Aflac, the two industry leaders mapped out aggressive goals to simplify the process of local marketing to ensure that Aflac’s individual agents had comprehensive, easy-to-use tools, that were compliant with Aflac standards. In short, Balihoo and Aflac had to rethink local agent marketing, and leverage Aflac data to drive revenue as well as reduce costs. Aflac was looking to dominate Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when prospective customers search for supplemental insurance in local markets, and to turn thousands of Aflac agents and brokers into savvy local marketers.

Together the two companies created an online platform populated with legally compliant and professionally designed marketing materials that are customizable and accessible to every Aflac agent to meet their specific sales needs. Going in, Balihoo understood that the platform had to serve several purposes: it needed to be intuitive, give local agents the ability to financially manage marketing expenses from their commission accruals, and have the ability to execute the marketing from the agents computer, all in the matter of minutes. From this the Aflac Marketing Manager Program was born. To date, it has generated tens of thousands of orders for agents and saved them upwards of a million dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.

To say that the partnership has been successful would be an understatement. Balihoo and Aflac have a synergy that extends beyond a traditional national brand-to-platform relationship. Because Balihoo is poised to adjust to national brand needs and expansion in the market, we are able to create programs that grow and mold into what is most effective for our partners.

At Balihoo, our mission has always been to help national brands succeed in local marketing by providing brands with cutting edge technology that allows them to reach consumers and drive discoverability, drive sales/leads, and build lasting relationships with those consumers. We are committed to providing a stimulating work environment and contributing to our community.This is reflected in Balihoo being listed as one of the best places to work in Idaho year over year. For two consecutive years Balihoo has topped Outside Magazine’s prestigious “Best Places to Work”  in the U.S. list. We have also raised over $80,000 for community charities while contributing over 3,400 hours in volunteer services. By having true partnerships with companies like Aflac, whose core values are in alignment with our own, we can deliver the best work, an outstanding environment for our employees, and the foundation for decades of growth. Balihoo is honored to be named Aflac’s 2014 Partner of the Year.

SEATTLE, March 3, 2015 — Skytap Inc., the leading provider of on-demand Environments as a Service (EaaS), today appointed David Frost as vice president of professional services. David joins Skytap from Deloitte Consulting where he served as Managing Director leading SAP, Cloud, and Advanced Technology Services. At Skytap, David will head the company’s professional services organization, and spearhead a new consulting practice that will guide IT organizations through the adoption of DevOps best practices. David’s appointment comes on the heels of Skytap’s recent $35 million Series D funding announcement, and record growth in 2014.

A number of challenges face IT organizations when it comes to DevOps such as cultural resistance to change, lack of executive understanding and support, and acquiring the right skills and tool sets. Based on Skytap’s expertise in these areas, the company will work with customers to recommend improved processes, define best practice architectures and implement a roadmap for the progressive adoption of DevOps.

“Today’s enterprises are eager to adopt cloud and DevOps, however these are not easy undertakings due to the numerous organizational, cultural, and process challenges that must be addressed,” said David Frost, vice president of professional services for Skytap. “Our DevOps Consulting Practice and professional services offerings will allow us to be at the heart of this transformation and empower customers as they begin the DevOps journey.”

David is an experienced executive with strong professional services leadership skills, technology, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation background. He has built and transformed several consulting and professional services practices with hands on leadership for both traditional technologies such as SAP, ERP, and CRM – and the new disruptive capabilities of cloud computing- SaaS, digital, mobility and analytics.

“David brings deep experience in helping enterprises accelerate the adoption of innovative technologies and processes across their IT organizations,” said Thor Culverhouse, CEO of Skytap. “With David at the helm of our professional services organization, we can help customers more fully realize their vision for DevOps and how our offering can support a transformation across their environments.”

To learn more about joining Skytap, please visit the career page at http://www.skytap.com/company/careers.

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap provides Environments-as-a-Service (EaaS) to transform the software development lifecycle and help customers deliver better software, faster. Today’s enterprise is challenged to continuously deliver new customer-facing applications, while overcoming increasing change and complexity in IT infrastructures. Our customers use Skytap to manage, share, deploy and decommission on-demand environments that contain everything needed to collaborate at each phase of the SDLC, without unnecessary costs and project delays due to manual configuration and dependencies. Enterprise IT organizations maintain full visibility and cost control, while allowing dev and test teams to self-provision labs and share complex environments with ease, for a lasting boost to agile DevOps initiatives. To try Skytap and learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

Chelmsford, Mass. — February 26, 2015 — Intronis, Inc., a provider of world-class backup and data protection solutions for the IT channel, today announced it has been recognized by 2112 Group as one of the “Most Admired Channel Vendors”.

Annually, 2112 Group compiles its Channel Perceptions Report based on surveys completed by solution providers. The respondents identify which channel programs they admire most in terms of productivity, execution, consistency, and loyalty to channel partners. Intronis debuted on the “Most Admired Channel Vendors,” following analysis of research data collected for the report, which was published in January 2015.

“It is a great honor to be recognized by the 2112 Group, and the solution providers they surveyed, as one of the IT channel’s ‘most admired’ vendors,” says Rick Faulk, CEO, Intronis. “As part of our ongoing commitment to helping our channel partners succeed in growing their businesses, we introduced several new products and initiatives during 2014. We also invested in the development of tools, best practices, and online training and support programs. These programs are intended to help our channel partners successfully brand, market and sell complete data protection services as part of their ongoing managed services agreements.”

Intronis ECHOplatform, launched in June 2014, delivers the industry’s most secure, scalable, and comprehensive cloud backup and data recovery solution. It is available exclusively for resale by IT channel partners at fixed-fee storage pricing per SMB account. Intronis’ business-building resources for channel partners include Intronis University, which was launched in December 2014. Available at no additional cost, Intronis University offers comprehensive technical and business training and certification resources that enable channel partners to deliver superior service and support to their clients. Additionally, the Intronis Partner Guide, also introduced in 2014, gives channel partners easy access to business basics such as onboarding instructions, marketing collateral, sales best practices, and technical information.

“As part of 2112’s annual Channel Perceptions study, we asked scores of solution providers to name the technology vendors they admire the most in terms of productivity, execution, consistency, and loyalty to channel partners,” says Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst, The 2112 Group. “Vendors who made the cut clearly are working hard to earn and retain the loyalty and engagement of their reseller and solution provider partners.”

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. Offered with fixed-fee storage pricing per SMB account, it helps IT service providers 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 at http://www.intronis.com.

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 26, 2015 — Monetate, the leading provider of multi-channel personalization to the world’s best brands, today announced that premium eCommerce agency, Blue Acorn, has joined its Certified Partners network.

Monetate’s Certified Partner network is a collection of expert agencies, consultants and optimization teams. Monetate Certified Partners are personalization, user experience optimization and enterprise testing experts. Each partner maintains a team of professionals working on personalization, optimization, merchandising and testing strategies and has undergone rigorous training designing and deploying campaigns using the Monetate platform.

“The world’s leading brands trust Monetate to deliver highly personalized, customer experiences – across multiple channels, every day, for every visitor,” said Colton Perry, Vice President of Partnerships and Business Development, Monetate. “Their continued success, and ours, requires collaborative partnerships and innovative strategies to address complex business challenges. Blue Acorn is a perfect example of such a partnership and we’re thrilled to have them as the latest addition to our partner network.”

The Monetate Certified Partner network allows agencies and consulting firms to leverage the full power of the Monetate platform to quickly and easily deliver highly relevant and profitable digital experiences for their enterprise customers.

“Blue Acorn focuses on delivering data-driven solutions to our clients,” said Kevin Eichelberger, Founder and CEO, Blue Acorn. “Joining the Monetate Certified Partner network empowers us to create highly personalized, data-driven experiences that produce measurable results.”

One example of a retailer already realizing the benefits of this partnership is the Vermont Teddy Bear Company.

“Providing a customer experience that is as meaningfully unique as our products is a top priority of ours. We spend a lot of time vetting our technology partners to ensure that we can successfully execute on this goal,” said Ryan Dahlstrom, Director of eCommerce, The Vermont Teddy Bear Company. “We’re thrilled to see two of our partners join forces; the talent of Blue Acorn combined with the power of the Monetate platform will certainly result in a better, more personalized customer experience across our family of sites.”

For more information about partnering with Monetate, visit: www.monetate.com/partners

About Blue Acorn
Blue Acorn is a premium eCommerce agency dedicated to helping retailers and brands achieve revenue growth through data-driven design, development and optimization. Founded in 2008, Blue Acorn is a Magento Gold Solution Partner that maintains certified partnerships with Google Analytics, Monetate and Optimizely. Blue Acorn delivers innovative eCommerce solutions to clients such asRebecca Minkoff, Everlast, Live Nation and VIETRI from its office in Charleston, South Carolina.

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 U.S. e-commerce sales. Monetate is the industry leader, with more clients in the IR 500 than any other personalization software provider.

SILICON SLOPES, Utah, Feb. 26, 2015 — Workfront, the leading provider of cloud-based Enterprise Work Managementsolutions, today announced that John Knotwell, Vice President, Sales, was recognized by Utah Business Magazine as one of the “Forty under 40.”  The 13th annual Forty Under 40 program honors Utah’s up-and-coming professionals rising through the ranks at record speed.

“John is a key member of our sales leadership team and is well-deserving of being included in this elite category of business professionals within the state of Utah,” said Eric Morgan, CEO of Workfront. “Since joining Workfront in 2012, John has been a key part of building the Workfront sales organization and making it as successful as it is today. We are excited to see what the future holds for John at Workfront.”

In addition to having a hand in building the Workfront sales organization, he also played a vital role in creating new incentive policies that have led to high retention of the sales team. Under his leadership, the average deal size has increased over 400%, which has contributed significantly to Workfront’s near-50% cloud subscription year-over-year growth over the past two years.

Knotwell is also a member of the Utah House of Representatives, representing Herriman, and parts of Riverton and South Jordan. He was recently re-elected to serve a second term.

Workfront solves work management challenges by managing the full lifecycle of work, from initial request, prioritization and planning through coordination, delivery and measurement into a single tool.  By providing a single system of truth, teams are able to collaborate in the context of work and gain complete visibility into the work that is being done. This eliminates the need for unnecessary status meetings and gives teams time back to be more productive

About Workfront

Workfront is a cloud-based Enterprise Work Management solution that helps marketing, IT, and other enterprise teams conquer the chaos of excessive email, redundant status meetings, and disconnected tools. Unlike other tools, Workfront Enterprise Work Cloud is a centralized, easy-to-adopt solution for managing and collaborating on all types of work through the entire work lifecycle, which improves team productivity and executive visibility. Workfront is trusted by thousands of global enterprises, like Cars.com, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Covario, Schneider Electric and Trek. To learn more, visit www.workfront.com or follow us on Twitter @Workfront_Inc.