SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Feb 24, 2015) – SwiftStack, the leader in object storage software for the enterprise, today announced that it has named Don Jaworski CEO. Jaworski assumes the new executive leadership role as SwiftStack prepares for rapid growth as a result of increasing demand for an enterprise-ready object store that delivers the scalability and flexibility required to enable the adoption of best-of-breed storage for large-scale environments. Jaworski succeeds co-founder Joe Arnold who will remain SwiftStack’s President and Chief Product Officer.

Today’s data footprints are growing exponentially, with greater complexity than ever. Beyond scaling data, IT must cope with changing business expectations that affect performance, impact virtualized IT landscapes and drive alternative service delivery models. Traditional storage solutions are no longer viable in this new landscape which is globally distributed and requires access from anywhere, on any device and using any application. SwiftStack provides the storage architecture needed to optimize application performance and the flexibility and choice of hardware required to increase efficiencies. With OpenStack Swift as its core, SwiftStack is delivering on the most widely accessible enterprise-ready object store available today.

“There is a global revolution in IT that’s driving a new organizational model to IT-as-a-Service. Object storage is enabling this transformation and only an open source model can deliver the rapid innovation and vendor neutrality needed to fuel this change,” said Jaworski. “SwiftStack’s purpose-built object store is uniquely positioned to address this emerging market opportunity. I look forward to helping chart the company’s growth during such a pivotal time in the history of enterprise storage.”

“During this time of true storage transformation, there is no better person to lead SwiftStack than Don,” said Arnold. “Don has been central to each major shift in storage. His insight, vision and leadership is exactly what we need for this next phase of rapid growth.”

Jaworski brings more than 30 years of product, engineering and executive management experience to SwiftStack. His career includes past executive positions with NetApp, Brocade, Engine Yard, CacheFlow Inc. (now BlueCoat), Nokia Internet Communications, Ipsilon Networks (Nokia) and Sun Microsystems (Oracle). In addition to serving as SwiftStack CEO, he also serves as an Advisor and Board Member for a number of early stage companies. Jaworski received a B.S. in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

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.

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 19, 2015 — Instructure, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that created the Canvas learning management system, today announced it has raised $40 million in a Series E round of funding. The pre-IPO investment is led by Insight Venture Partners with Bessemer Venture Partners and EPIC Ventures participating. The investment will finance the launch of Bridge, a cloud-based corporate learning and engagement platform that signals Instructure’s expansion into the learning segment of the enterprise market.

The investment brings Instructure’s total venture backing to approximately $90 million. Current investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, EPIC Ventures, Insight Ventures and OpenView Venture Partners. The funding will help the company continue to invest in the higher education and K-12 markets with its flagship product, Canvas, while expanding to help enterprises assess and improve employee engagement through Bridge. Foundation partners include CLEARLINK, OpenTable and Oregon State University.

“This funding allows us to continue to innovate in education while simultaneously expanding to the learning portion of human capital management market,” said Josh Coates, CEO at Instructure. “We believe Bridge makes it easier for businesses to improve employee engagement and learning, just as Canvas made it easier for educators to improve teaching and learning.”

Since its formal launch in 2011, the Canvas LMS has attracted 18 million students and teachers from more than 1,200 universities, colleges and K-12 school districts. Bridge, which Instructure launched in response to the increasing dissatisfaction in the marketplace with existing corporate learning and engagement systems, will help organizations and businesses assess employee sentiment, build knowledge and align employee and organizational goals.

“Education is no longer confined to academic classrooms, and we’re excited to partner with a leading technology company like Instructure to help respond to a corporate business need and expand its market footprint,” said Ryan Hinkle, managing director at Insight Venture Partners. “Instructure has already achieved a leadership position in cloud-based learning software for education, and the next logical step is to broaden its scope to providing learning technology to other markets.”

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 about Canvas at www.CanvasLMS.com and Bridge at www.GetBridge.com.

About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $8 billion and invested in more than 200 companies worldwide. Its mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. For more information on Insight and all of its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on twitter: @insightpartners.com.

Here’s an obvious acquisition and product enhancement story. Datadog is a monitoring service built for the distributed, cloudy world. Datadog aggregates data from servers, databases, applications, tools and services in order to generate a unified view of application performance. The idea being that in a highly distributed world, only through holistic monitoring will the root cause of any performance degradation be found.

Mortar Data, on the other hand, is a small startup that is focused on helping companies build and run big data applications and data pipelines. Their raison d’etre is to help companies capture large amounts of data and then derive some meaningful insights from that body of information.

Put the two together and you have a monitoring service that was formerly (with respect) simply a dumb mirror, all of a sudden become insightful. The idea being that not only the root cause for performance degradation, but also some deeper insights into application performance, can be generated. In generating these insights, the new Datadog should help customers continuously improve the way their applications work.

Mortar Data had raised $3.2 million in funding since its inception in 2011. For its part, Datadog has raised just shy of $55 million, most recently a $31 million Series C funding round. Datadog already boasts high profile customers such as Netflix NFLX +0.87%, EA, Spotify, MercadoLibre and AdRoll.

Of course this acquisition, and the expected integration of Mortar Data into Datadog, simply helps it play catch up to other monitoring services that have already been talking a big data analytics story – most notably the big elephant in the room, newly listed New Relic, has repositioned itself as an analytics company of late. Add to this the other vendors – Loggly, SumoLogic andSplunk, and you have a busy space.

That said, the sheer number of applications in existence is growing rapidly – there is plenty enough business for all of these companies and more – with Datadog’s recent funding, and the addition of Mortar Data into the mix, this company is well placed to grow strongly.

What’s the best way to decipher the nation’s $4 trillion budget? For the open data company Socrata, it’s through a new app that takes the president’s 2016 U.S. budget and plots it into interactive graphs and charts for citizens.

On Feb. 9, Socrata released the White House’s 2016 budget through its Open Budget app, part of the company’s new suite of financial transparency applications. While an advertisement for Socrata’s services, the app does deliver a significant amount of depth for citizens who can easily drill down through the numbers, starting with the overall budget, to departments, to the agencies housed within them and finally ending at the dollar amounts allotted for individual expense categories.

An immediate insight from the tool are the highest funded U.S. departments: the Department of Health and Human Services at $1.09 trillion, the Social Security Administration at $1.01 trillion, and the Department of Defense at $586.5 billion.

The app was made possible through the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which decided to release the president’s annual budget report as open data — information made available in a machine-readable format.

“Government budgets can be overwhelming to most citizens,” said Socrata in a statement to Government Technology magazine. “And, when you’re talking about a $4 trillion budget — [such as] the president’s fiscal year 2016 budget — it can seem like you need to be a financial expert to understand it. This financial transparency experience, and others like it, are helping government organizations across the country share their budgets in a meaningful way.”

Of equal note, the launch of the application also hints at Socrata’s partnerships with federal agencies through the recently passed Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, the first and only federal law mandating fiscal transparency through open data. Socrata CEO and Founder Kevin Merritt confirmed in December that the company is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Treasury to pilot a program that would help federal agencies comply with the DATA Act’s requirements to publish agency expenditures as open data.

In 2014 Socrata’s public-sector customers — from city, county, state and federal jurisdictions — totaled more than 200, and the company intends to double the number in 2015.

IRVINE, Calif. — Kareo, the leading provider of cloud-based medical office software for small medical practices, today announced it has entered into a partnership with digiChart, a provider of specialty-specific EHR technology for OB/GYN practices. Through this collaboration, Kareo’s cloud-based practice management and billing solutions will seamlessly integrate with digiChart’s specialty EHR to provide the OB/GYN market with a robust, specialized solution for managing the clinical and business aspects of their practice.

“OB/GYN providers often require specialized workflow and functionality, making it imperative that providers are enabled with innovative solutions suited to their specialty,” says Dan Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Kareo. “We are pleased to be partnering with digiChart as we work to help independent specialty practices spend more quality time with their patients.”

Integrating digiChart’s specialty-specific functionality—including formatted treatment plans, OB flowsheets, and an electronic antepartum record—with Kareo’s purpose-built practice management and billing solutions, will provide digiChart clients with the ability to optimize operations, achieve improved financial performance and enhance patient engagement.

“Kareo has proven itself as the true market leader in the small practice space,” says Rodney Hamilton, M.D., CEO of digiChart. “We believe Kareo’s unique mission and innovative technology combined with our knowledge of the clinical OB/GYN space results in the most targeted and comprehensive suite of solutions in the market.”

digiChart’s EHR, which serves more than 1,000 OB/GYN clinicians nationwide, is the latest specialty EHR addition to Kareo Marketplace, a curated listing of cloud-based applications and value-added services to support small practices. All of the solutions offered in Kareo Marketplace can be seamlessly integrated and build upon Kareo’s medical office software platform. Kareo Marketplace currently provides a curated selection of EHR partners that cover the unique requirements of more than 15 medical specialties.

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, fully certified EHR help more than 25,000 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 digiChart

digiChart delivers a comprehensive, specialty electronic health record (EHR) system, as well as practice management and revenue cycle solutions through strategic partnerships to help its practitioners improve quality, increase revenue and enhance patient relationships. The company’s flagship offering is tailored to the specific workflow needs of OB/GYN providers and is the EHR of choice for hundreds of practices nationwide. A privately held company, digiChart is based in Brentwood, Tennessee with investors including MedCare Investment Funds and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. For more information, call (877) 634-2727 or visit www.digichart.com. Follow digiChart on FaceBook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3, 2015 — uSamp, a leading supplier of market research sample, today announced the change of its corporate name and brand identity to Instantly, Inc. The rebrand unifies the company’s audience offerings with its consumer insights tools under a single entity and positions the company for continued growth and innovation.

“Changing our name to Instantly allows us to directly connect our sample business to our growing insights platform—and expand both business units together,” said Alan Gould, chief executive officer.

For more than six years, the company has provided world-class sample solutions to top market research firms and Fortune 500 brands. Since 2012, the company has also developed advanced automated tools that quickly and accurately deliver quality insights for brand managers and marketers. Today, Instantly starts its accelerated journey toward building a comprehensive consumer insights platform for marketers to gather data from consumers at exactly the right place and exactly the right time. Additionally, Instantly plans to invest further in its sample business and grow its audience offerings for the research community.

Under Instantly, the company will offer these products and solutions:

• Instantly Concept Test™: The automated insights tool for rapidly collecting consumer feedback on early-stage product concepts.
• Instantly Survey Tool™: The free survey authoring tool that allows marketers to create professional surveys quickly and easily and send them to a database or any desired consumer audience.
• Instantly Sample Service™: The trusted service for accessing high-quality sample for any research study.
• Instantly Automated Sample™: The automated, cost-effective platform for purchasing sample and managing a research study.
• Instantly Mobile Solutions™: The mobile research solutions revolutionizing ad effectiveness, in-home usage testing and shopper insights studies.

“We have an incredible wealth of data at our fingertips coming directly from the consumers that multinational brands want to reach,” said Andy Jolls, chief marketing officer. “In 2015, we plan to push the boundaries of consumer insights by finding new ways to collect answers before marketers even need to ask questions. We believe that today’s marketers need access to the data of now in order to keep up with the rapidly shifting consumer landscape and to use budgets efficiently to mitigate market failures.”

In celebration of the rebrand, the company has unveiled a brand new website, www.instant.ly, where information on all of its products and solutions can be found.

About Instantly, Inc.
Instantly™ is the world’s largest audience and insights platform, providing researchers and marketers with immediate access to consumers and automated insights tools to make faster, better decisions. Instantly is based in Los Angeles, with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.instant.ly.