Datadog, which promises to let companies see how well (or badly) their various cloud deployments are performing, now has $31 million in fresh Series C funding, bringing its total to about $53 million.

The company, with offices in New York and Boston, will use the new funding to hire more people in sales and R&D, CEO Olivier Pomel said in an interview. This round was led by existing investor Index Ventures, with participation from RTP Ventures, OpenView Venture Partners, Amplify Partners and others.

“Our ecosystem is blowing up, in a good way,” Pomel said. “Two years ago it was all Amazon. Now there’s also Microsoft, Azure, and Google on the public cloud side. They’re building fast and are serious. On the private side, back then there was OpenStack on the private side, and now there’s an explosion of container technology driven by Docker and now CoreOS … Every single big software company has a container play and we have to support all that.”

The company, which claims Netflix, Spotify, EA, and, Mercadolibre as customers, has 75 employees now, up from 25 last year, and plans to double or triple headcount next year.

Datadog faces competitors including Boundary, Server Density and Stackdriver (which was purchased by Google last year). Pomel said many customers use home-grown options.

Seattle – January 28, 2015 – Socrata (www.socrata.com), the world leader in cloud solutions for open data and data-driven government, today announced two significant additions to its Advisory Board:

• David Eaves, an internationally-recognized open innovation expert

• Stephen Goldsmith, the Daniel Paul Professor of Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University who formerly served as Mayor of Indianapolis and Deputy Mayor of New York City for Operations

Eaves and Goldsmith join an Advisory Board that already includes Bill Bryant, a venture partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson who has had early and instrumental involvement in over 20 leading software and Internet companies, and François Steiger, a distinguished entrepreneurial leader in the global software and information and communications markets.

“All four members of our Advisory Board offer us an extraordinary wealth of diverse experience and expertise, and we will draw upon their deep and rich global knowledge to accelerate the revolution in data-driven government as well as our growth as a company,” says Kevin Merritt, Founder and CEO of Socrata. “François, Bill, David, and Steve have each been responsible for major breakthroughs in their respective careers, and now they’re going to help us bring change to governments around the world.”

Eaves – Pushing For Open Government and Open Data

David Eaves advises governments on open government and open data, and businesses and nonprofits on open source strategies and community management.

He was an affiliate with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where he analyzed issues surrounding the politics of data, as well as how negotiation theory can help improve online community management.

A Co-Founder of ReCollect Systems, a technology company specializing in digital solutions for the waste management sector, Eaves also writes on open innovation, public policy, public service sector renewal, open source and network systems.

In 2009, Eaves served as an adviser to the Office of the Mayor of Vancouver on Open Government and Open Data.

He is currently an Advisory Board Member for Code for All, an international network of people and organizations who believe that digital technology opens new channels for citizens to more meaningfully engage in the public sphere and have a positive impact on their communities.

Recently, in October 2014, Eaves was a featured speaker at Socrata’s first-ever Customer Summit (Watch the video here).

“I believe that the rapid spread of data-driven government throughout the world will benefit millions of citizens everywhere,” says Eaves, “so I look forward to working closely with Socrata. I think the potential for global change here is tremendous.”

Goldsmith – Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance

Stephen Goldsmith currently directs Data-Smart City Solutions, a project at Harvard that highlights local government efforts to use new technologies that connect big-data analytics with community input to reshape the relationship between government and citizen. The Data-Smart City Solutions project is powered by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

As Mayor of Indianapolis and Deputy Mayor of New York, Goldsmith earned a reputation as one of the country’s leaders in public-private partnerships, competition and privatization.

Goldsmith’s most recent book is “The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance,” co-authored with Susan Crawford. And he was a key speaker at Socrata’s Customer Summit in late 2014 (More info here and watch the video here).

“We now have the ability to transform how government works at all levels using open data and predictive analytics,” says Goldsmith. “And there’s a huge opportunity for the public sector to become internally proactive, and, simultaneously, leverage open data and transparency to more actively connect with the public. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m so pleased to collaborate with Socrata.”

About Socrata

Socrata is the world leader in cloud solutions for open data and data-driven governments. Its innovative customers include the cities of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Melbourne and Eindhoven; the states of New York, Illinois and Texas; US Health and Human Services; Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; the UN, the European Commission, and the World Bank. Socrata’s solutions – including the recently launched Open Data Network™ which unleashes the full potential of government data to help drive connected communities around the world – assist government leaders in improving transparency, modernizing citizen access to information and bringing data into every decision, all with unprecedented speed and cost savings. Delivered as turnkey services, Socrata’s technologies unlock data trapped in enterprise silos, mobilize and transform it into useful information that everyone can easily access, visualize, share and reuse. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com.

Boasting the largest user experience platform on the planet, UserTesting said today it has scored a whopping $45.5 million so it can better decipher why users do the things they do.

The Mountain View, California-based company, which says it has more than 30,000 client companies, pays real people to record their screens and voices as they try to complete tasks on sites, apps, prototypes, and sometimes physical products.

These videos plus online focus groups then become the basis for UserTesting’s usability experts to make recommendations about conversion rate opportunities, landing page effectiveness, Google search behavior, email campaigns, and other client goals.

“[Ticket service] StubHub turned to UserTesting to find out why customers weren’t completing their purchases,” CEO Darrell Benatar told VentureBeat. His company is all about finding out why customers are doing something, as compared to analytics firms’ emphasis on the what.

The answer, shown in the videos, was straightforward. “Users were confused about how to make a purchase,” he said.

No wonder. The link to the purchase page was called “See Details.” In response to the testing, StubHub simply turned that misleading link into a bright orange button that said, “Go.”

The result, Benatar said, was “a 2.6% conversion rate increase and millions of dollars in extra revenue.”

Why would StubHub need an outside testing firm to discover that a buy link shouldn’t be labeled “See Details”?

“Even though it might be obvious to outsiders,” director of marketing Phil Sharp told us, “it’s generally not obvious to companies.”

They’re “so wrapped up in the day-to-day, and looking at analytics, that it’s easy to lose sight of these experiences that are frustrating customers and preventing them from buying.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84838260&x-yt-ts=1422327029&v=aqC8NhPPbQw

UserTesting is also announcing today its new smartphone and tablet recording tech to facilitate the testing of mobile software.

The previous mobile testing process, Sharp said, “involved the use of a webcam to capture the screen and user’s voice.” The new mobile recorder “enables us to record video directly from the screen, and use the device microphone to capture the user’s voice and the device camera to capture the world around them,” such as in a real store.

The new funding — which brings the total raised to $53.5 million — will be used to expand the test participant panels so they reach “niche demographics and international users,” Benatar said. It will also be invested into creating new ways to measure a product’s user experience over time and against competitors, and for better testing what he described as “the complete omnichannel customer journey across different devices and locations.”

Benatar said that his company differs from other user testing companies — including TryMyUI, Userlytics, and Youeye — in that UserTesting clients “currently have access to more than one million users, [providing] a much more robust panel of test participants than the competition.”

Additionally, he said, UserTesting offers a test turnaround for most assignments of about an hour, “which is a faster turnaround time than any competitor offers.”

This Series C round was led by Accel Partners, with participation from OpenView Venture Partners.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California – January 28, 2015 UserTesting, the world’s largest user experience platform, announced today that it secured $45.5 Million in Series C financing led by Accel Partners with participation from OpenView Venture Partners. The new funding enables UserTesting to continue its triple-digit annual growth rate and expand its capabilities beyond app and website testing to cover virtually any user experience, anywhere, on demand.

With more than 30,000 customers—including Google, Facebook, The Home Depot, Verizon Wireless and Amazon—UserTesting provides companies with the fastest way to test user experiences across all channels and devices. Customers receive videos of real people interacting with their products and services while speaking their thoughts out loud—and the results come in hours, not days.

“Poor user experiences aren’t just frustrating for customers; they’re costing companies millions of dollars per year,” said Kobie Fuller of Accel Partners who will be joining the company’s board of directors. “Understanding why users make decisions and what they are thinking is a necessity in creating great customer experiences. UserTesting is transforming the way in which companies are able to understand their end user, resulting in anything from higher Net Promoter Scores to increased conversion rates. Companies simply can’t afford not to conduct user testing.”

“With UserTesting, we receive invaluable feedback, on demand, and across multiple browsers, operating systems and devices,” said VP of Product at Evernote, Philip Constantinou. “With UserTesting, I know we’re making a great product.”

“This financing is a milestone in the battle to get companies to start paying attention to the actual experiences of real people,” said Darrell Benatar, CEO of UserTesting. “Most companies rely solely on analytics and only know what their customers are doing. They don’t know why they’re doing it. This financing is going to help user experience testing become ubiquitous, so that all design will be user-centered design. UserTesting is trying to change the world, so that’s why we partnered with a world-class investor like Accel Partners and an investor with deep expertise in scaling B2B software businesses like OpenView Venture Partners.”

UserTesting Also Announces New Technology to Revolutionize In-The-Wild Testing

A key part of UserTesting’s expanded capabilities is its new smartphone and tablet recording technology, which allows companies to test user experiences anywhere, at any time. This technology makes in-the-wild testing faster, easier, and more realistic than ever before, as it gives companies access to users who are using their own mobile devices in brick-and-mortar stores, at live events, on public transportation, and in other real-world locations. This makes it easy for a company to test an omnichannel customer journey that includes the desktop web, mobile devices, and in-store experiences.

“UserTesting’s new mobile recorder technology gives us much more insight into our users,” said Gerry Chu, User Researcher at Zillow who piloted the new technology. “We can learn how people use our apps in distracting real-world settings, such as an open house, or while talking to a real estate agent. One of the surprises we already came across was how many users are multitasking by searching home listings while sitting on the couch and watching television.”

According to Forrester Research, 60% of customers will look elsewhere if they can’t find what they need on a mobile website right away, and 35% say that they will switch to a competitor’s app after a bad app experience. “Instead of causing churn, mobile interactions are an opportunity to build loyalty and business value,” wrote Forrester Analyst Deanna Laufer in the August 2014 report entitled The Right Mobile Usability Testing Tool. “That’s why CX Professionals should embrace tools and services available for testing the quality of their mobile user experiences … [These solutions] are faster, less costly, and more realistic than traditional usability lab testing.”

“By productizing what has traditionally been an expensive and time-intensive manual process, UserTesting gives anyone designing a digital experience access to feedback from real users on demand,” said Mackey Craven of OpenView Venture Partners. “Extending this to the physical world is a revolutionary idea, and UserTesting has established itself as a leading provider of user research to the world’s largest and most sophisticated organizations by turning these ideas into reality.”

UserTesting Milestones:

• Doubled its revenue year-over-year for the past 4 years
• Over 30,000 customers, including all of the top 10 web properties
• Provides access to over 1 million participants
• Ran over 500,000 user tests

UserTesting is Hiring!

UserTesting is looking for people to join their team of smart, hard-working, fun people as they help companies improve their websites and apps. Many positions are open across a wide variety of departments. Visit theUserTesting jobs page for more information.

About Accel Partners

Accel Partners is a leading early and growth-stage venture capital firm, powering a global community of entrepreneurs. Accel backs entrepreneurs who have what it takes to build a world-class, category-defining business. Founded in 1983, Accel brings more than three decades of experience building and supporting hundreds of companies. Accel’s vision for entrepreneurship and business enables it to identify and invest in the companies that will be responsible for the growth of next-generation industries. Accel-backed companies include Atlassian, Braintree, Cloudera, Dropbox, Dropcam, Facebook, Flipkart, Lookout Security, MoPub, Qualtrics, Slack, Spotify, Vox Media and others.

About OpenView Venture Partners

OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion-stage venture capital firm based in Boston that invests exclusively in 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 the teams scale faster and more efficiently than competitors (www.openviewlabs.com). Founded in 2006, the firm invests globally and has nearly $700 million in total capital under management.

About UserTesting

UserTesting is the fastest and most advanced user experience testing platform on the market. The company gives marketers, product managers, and UX designers on-demand access to people in their target audience who deliver audio, video, and written feedback on websites, mobile apps, prototypes, and even physical products and locations.

Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, UserTesting helps over 30,000 clients (including the top 10 web properties in the U.S.) get the user feedback they need to create an excellent customer experience. User panels are currently available in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. For more information, visitwww.usertesting.com.

Media Contact:

Jennifer Moebius

+1-617-922-8004

[email protected]

AUSTIN, TX–(Marketwired – Jan 27, 2015) –  UnboundID and its partners Advancive Technology Solutions, Ping Identity and Syntegrity will host a multi-city Executive Roundtable roadshow beginning in February aimed at helping marketing and IT leaders from large organizations understand and implement best practices for protecting and using consumer identity information. The details of the events are as follows:

Who: Lenny Blum, most recently VP of Collaboration and Identity & Access Management at NBCUniversal.What: These events will discuss why unifying identity data is crucial to realizing the full potential of consumer identity as a business enabler for driving revenues and improving customer retention. Blum will discuss why improving and managing data quality is central to these goals, by creating frictionless transaction processes using a modern identity management infrastructure. Blum will also discuss the security and privacy risks which come from today’s social/mobile/cloud silos of identity data, and the role that identity management plays in lowering these risks.

Where and When:

SILICON SLOPES, Utah — AtTask announced today its decision to rename the company under the new corporate brand Workfront. The name change is the foundation of the company’s branding efforts to better convey the enterprise nature of the solutions it provides to its customers.

“Simply stated, we have outgrown the AtTask name,” said Eric Morgan, CEO of Workfront.  “The company was founded in 2001 and has evolved significantly since then. We now have over 500 employees, and more than 1,000 clients. We are solving complex work management problems for companies such as Cisco, Comcast, Food and Drug Administration, House of Blues, and REI and we needed a name that conveyed the enterprise power of the solutions we deliver. Workfront, as confirmed by our market testing, is a name that is a much better reflection of the company that we’ve built, the leadership role we play, and the problems we solve for our customers.”

Under the leadership of Eric Morgan, Workfront has experienced significant company growth, including a three-year compound annual growth rate of 42%, over 135 clients paying in excess of $100,000 in annual recurring revenue, and the securing of nearly $50 million in venture capital funding. In addition, Workfront has been recognized as a leader in the Gartner Inc., 2014 Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Based IT Project and Portfolio Management Services for the third year in a row, ranked in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500™ for two years in a row, listed as one of Forbes America’s Most Promising Companies, and named a champion in the Info-Tech PPM Vendor Landscape for two years in a row.

Prior to choosing the new name, there was a rigorous process that was put in place to ensure the new name directly reflected the company’s values and direction. In addition to legal trademark and multi-country screening, the name was market tested to evaluate how well the name conveyed the nature of the business and the company’s desired brand attributes.

“The name Workfront just made sense to tell the story of what we do,” said Morgan. “And the lion mark that is part of the logo is symbolic of the power our solution brings to our customers.”

To find out more about Workfront and more information behind the name change, visit www.workfront.com.

Additional Resources:

• Find out more about the new Workfront name

Follow us on social:

• Follow @Workfront_Inc on Twitter

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, Covario, National Geographic, Schneider Electric and Trek. To learn more, visit www.workfront.com or follow us on Twitter @Workfront_Inc.

Contact: Shelbi Gomez
[email protected]
801-477-9813

Forbes released its 2015 America’s Most Promising Companies, an annual ranking of one hundred privately held, high-growth US companies they believe to have bright futures. Companies on the list are all private and generating under $300 million annually. Revenue growth plays a big part in choosing the ranking for America’s Most Promising, but that’s not all that they take into account. Forbes pays attention to growth rates, growth in employee numbers, how long companies have been doing what it is they do, operating margins, capital raised, product ideas, management and other factors.

Signpost, the cloud-based platform that makes digital and mobile marketing simple and effective for SMBs, came in at number 94 on the list reporting $7 million in revenue as of January 2015.

For more information about America’s Most Promising Companies including the complete list and qualifying criteria visit www.forbes.com or refer to the 2015 America’s Most Promising Companies Rankings.