SEATTLE — Socrata (www.socrata.com), the world leader in cloud solutions for open data and data-driven government, today announced a strategic partnership with Yelp (www.yelp.com), the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists.

The prime purpose of the new strategic partnership is to distribute important restaurant inspection information and help improve public health conditions in communities all over the world.

Under the terms of the agreement, Yelp will become a new member of the Open Data Network™ and join forces with Socrata’s government customers to get these critical ratings into the hands of consumers everywhere around the globe. Government customers of Socrata’s Open Data Portal™ solution can also receive free tools and guidance on how to connect their restaurant inspection data to Yelp.

Extracting restaurant inspections data from government databases is not always easy. Additionally, the majority of cities throughout the United States are not yet publishing their restaurant inspection information in a format that can be consumed by “business-to-consumer” solutions such as Yelp. The strategic partnership between Socrata and Yelp, as well as their new solution, is a first in that it helps governments unlock this data while normalizing and presenting it to everyday consumers in a way that is easy to understand and in a context with which they are familiar.

“We are very excited to launch this partnership with Yelp, the global leader in crowd-sourced reviews for local businesses,” said Kevin Merritt, the CEO and Founder of Socrata. “With this behind-the-scenes data integration, millions of people will be able to benefit from better health information, which will ultimately improve their lives.”

Adds Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO and Co-Founder of Yelp: “We’re thrilled to be working with Socrata and its network of partners to make this valuable information more accessible to the millions of people that turn to Yelp every month. This was a joint effort as part of Yelp’s Local Inspector Value Entry Specification (LIVES) open data standard, which enables local municipalities to accurately upload restaurant health inspection scores for display on Yelp business pages.”

LIVES is the key tool that Socrata will use to guide governments on data integration with Yelp. Pioneered by Code for America, LIVES helps software developers analyze the restaurant inspections that cities, counties and states perform everyday. This type of information is already being published on one of Socrata’s customer’s (the City and County of San Francisco) data portal, DataSF.

All Socrata Open Data Portal™customers will now have the option of linking their LIVES data to the Open Data Network™. Membership in the Open Data Network™ is free for all of Socrata’s government customers. Socrata’s recently launched Open Data Network™ (ODN) is designed to unleash the full potential of government data and help drive sustained prosperity in connected communities all over the world. Bringing together a vast and connected ecosystem of participants – governments that are open data publishers and consumers; businesses that incorporate and use government data; citizens; and civic developers and entrepreneurs who use open data to build service delivery apps – the Open Data Network will eventually encompass 25-30 industries, each with its own unique and valuable dataset.

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.

ABOUT YELP

Yelp connects people with great local businesses. Yelp was founded in San Francisco in July 2004. Since then, Yelp communities have taken root in major metros across 29 countries. Yelp had a monthly average of 139 million unique visitors in Q3 2014*. By the end of Q3 2014 Yelpers had written more than 67 million rich, local reviews, making Yelp the leading local guide for real word-of-mouth on everything from boutiques and mechanics to restaurants and dentists. Approximately 73 million unique visitors visited Yelp via their mobile device on a monthly average basis during Q3 2014**. For more information, please visit http://www.yelp.com/ or send an email to [email protected].

* Source: “Users” as measured by Google Analytics

** Average monthly mobile unique visitors based on the number of unique visitors accessing Yelp via mobile web and unique devices accessing the app on a monthly average basis over a given three-month period.

Spredfast Inc. has earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award as part of the ceremony held in Las Vegas during the International Consumer Electronics Show.

The award came in the area of “innovation in improving engagement around television and social media, which also recognized Twitter as a winner. The award was technically given to Mass Relevance Inc., which has since merged with Spredfast, for its work on campaigns such as President Barack Obama‘s Twitter town hall meeting to social media work focused around the 2014 World Cup.

Six-year-old Spredfast develops software designed to enable and manage social media marketing campaigns. It merged with Mass Relevance in April via a unique in-town merger.

Spredfast now employs 345 workers and operates offices in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, London and Sydney., Australia.

In August, it was among 30 technology companies a Washington, D.C., consumer advocacy group asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate for violating the Safe Harbor agreement between the U.S. and the European Union designed to protect of consumer information.

Skytap is a service that aims to help dev and test teams in the enterprise work more efficiently (and test their code more often). The company today announced that it has raised a $35 million funding round led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from all of the company’s previous investors, including OpenView Venture Partners, Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and Washington Research Foundation. Insight Venture Partners also invested in New Relic, which went public earlier this month, and Docker.

With Skytap, enterprises can re-create their production environments in the cloud to more effectively test their applications before they go live. The company says it will use the new funding to “fuel new levels of product innovation for enterprise-ready development and test environments,” and to expand its go-to-market capacity and bring more partners on board.

“Skytap matches Insight’s focus on supporting high growth SaaS and cloud companies,” said Deven Parekh, Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners, in a statement today. “Skytap is driving a transformative change in its industry by empowering companies to deploy innovative software more rapidly. With this funding we expect Skytap to continue on its current growth trajectory and further solidify itself as the leader in enterprise-ready development and test environments.”

The company says it has doubled revenue and headcount over the last year (though it didn’t share any actual revenue numbers, so we don’t know what the baseline is). Skytap currently has 275 enterprise customers (up from around 250 in January). Its partner program now features 12 business partners and 25 technology alliance partners, including the likes of Microsoft, HP, IBM, Oracle, Cloudera, CentOS, RedHat and Ubuntu. The company also recently expanded its support for using its services on Amazon’s AWS platform.

Skytap (which was originally called Illumita, previously raised $29.5 million in various funding rounds, starting with a Series A in 2007.

Irvine, CA – December 10, 2014 — Kareo, the leading provider of cloud-based medical office software and services for small medical practices, announced today that it has been honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing the Best Places to Work in the U.S. for 2015. The company ranked #22 among the 50 companies honored in the Small and Medium business (SMB) category. There are 325,000 companies on Glassdoor. The Employees’ Choice Awards program, now in its seventh year, relies solely on the input of employees who elect to provide feedback on their jobs, work environments and companies via Glassdoor’s anonymous online company reviews survey.

“At Kareo, we continually strive to create an environment where our employees feel valued, motivated and passionate about our core mission of serving as an ally for independent medical practices,” said Dan Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Kareo. “This award is testament to the fact that satisfied employees are the backbone for a successful company.”

“It’s easy to be motivated at Kareo knowing that our mission is to support doctors and other healthcare professionals,” said Elizabeth Krauskopf, manager of customer success at Kareo. “I love working for a company that is surpassing its goals while caring for the well-being and development of its employees.”

Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work winners are determined using company reviews shared by U.S. based employees who elected to participate in the survey between November 13, 2013 and November 2, 2014. Kareo’s ranking was based on employee satisfaction feedback on the company overall, including key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation, benefits, work/life balance, senior management, culture and values.

“I am proud to celebrate the Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award winners in earning this tremendous achievement,” said Glassdoor co-founder and CEO Robert Hohman. “Millions of employees around the world are turning to Glassdoor each month to share their work experiences. It is this type of authentic feedback that helps others find jobs and companies they love, and allows us to honor employers who stand out for their efforts in providing an enjoyable work environment and culture.”

To be considered for the SMB category, a company must have less than 1,000 employees and have received at least 20 company reviews from U.S.-based employees during the window of eligibility. The complete list of the Glassdoor Best Places to Work in 2015 in the SMB category can now be viewed here.

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 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 Glassdoor

Glassdoor, founded in 2007, is the leading career community designed to help job seekers find jobs and address critical questions that come up during the search, application, interview and negotiation phases of employment. Glassdoor provides the most transparent look at company culture, work environment, salary and compensation and the interview process thanks to the millions of insights shared by employees, job candidates and employers. For employers, Glassdoor offers recruiting and employer branding solutions to help maximize talent acquisition strategies and optimize results. As of October 2014, Glassdoor welcomes more than 26 million members to its desktop and mobile platforms. Glassdoor is backed by Benchmark, Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures, DAG Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group and Tiger Global. Glassdoor.com is a registered trademark of Glassdoor, Inc.

Socrata, the Seattle company making a cloud-based software platform for accessing government data, has raised an additional $30 million in a Series C round led by new investor Sapphire Ventures.

Earlier investors OpenView Venture Partners, Morganthaler Ventures, and Frazier Technology Ventures also participated. Socrata, founded in 2007, has now raised $55 million.

Jai Das, managing director of Sapphire Ventures (formerly known as SAP Ventures), joins Socrata’s board with the investment.

The funding round, first disclosed in an SEC filing last week, will fuel the company’s continued international expansion, and its cloud-focused technology development.

CEO Kevin Merritt says Seattle’s the right place to build that technology.

“Our business mission is hugely informed by the fact that virtually every significant technology company—including Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon—has based its cloud computing center of excellence in Seattle,” Merritt says in a news release. “One of the reasons that we’re able to offer the public sector state-of-the-art cloud-based open data technology that leads to data-driven decision-making is because we’re based in Seattle.”

Socrata said it added 36 new customers in the third quarter, and has more than 200 total. The company said it increased revenue 92 percent compared to the same period last year, though it did not provide baseline numbers.

For more on Socrata, see this opinion piece by board member Robert Runge on how the open data movement can transform government.

ATLANTA — November 20, 2014 — VersionOne, recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile lifecycle management (ALM) software solutions, has been listed as a Champion in Info-Tech Research Group’s Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Vendor Landscape. This report recognizes outstanding vendors in the technology marketplace. Assessing vendors by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise, Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape reports pay tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category.

Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape reports help enterprise IT decision-makers identify a short list of vendors for their IT programs depending on their needs. The report includes only vendors which the research group recommends to its clients.

According to Info-Tech, Champions received high scores for most of the evaluation criteria and offered excellent value. These companies have a strong market presence and are usually the trendsetters for the industry. In addition, VersionOne received a value score of 99 out of 100. The value score indexes each vendor’s product offerings and business strength relative to its price point. Vendors that score high offer more “bang-for-the-buck” (e.g., features, usability, stability) than the average vendor.

“Since our company’s inception, we set out to help companies achieve the benefits of agile software development faster, easier and smarter,” said VersionOne CEO Robert Holler. “We are honored to be recognized as delivering one of the most full-featured, high-value ALM platforms.”

Read the Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape Report at http://pm.versionone.com/versionone-info-tech-alm-champion.

About Info-Tech Research Group
With a paid membership of over 30,000 members worldwide, Info-Tech Research Group (http://www.infotech.com) is the global leader in providing tactical, practical Information Technology research and analysis. Info-Tech Research Group has a 17-year history of delivering quality research and is North America’s fastest growing full-service IT analyst firm.

About VersionOne
VersionOne is a recognized leader and visionary in agile ALM solutions. Our mission is to help companies envision and deliver great software. Our promise is to promote and serve the best interests of the agile software development community with genuine respect and humility. Every single day we work hard to make a difference both in our community and with our customers.

Today more than 50,000 teams, including over 35 of the Fortune 100, use our products to help them scale their agile initiatives faster, easier, and smarter. Whether a small team just starting out with agile or a global enterprise, VersionOne customers get the best software tools in the industry backed by the pioneers of agile project and lifecycle management. Follow us on Google+, Twitter, Facebook and our blogs.

King of Prussia, Pa. (PRWEB) November 20, 2014 – Xtium, Inc., a leading managed cloud hosting, online backup and virtual disaster recovery services company, announced today that David Rode has been named Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. A seasoned technology executive with a proven track record in field operations, sales, marketing and partner alliances, Rode will lead Xtium’s growth strategy.

“It is a top priority for many mid-market companies to move their critical IT infrastructure to the cloud,” said Scott Maxwell, Managing Partner at OpenView Venture Partners, Xtium’s investor. “By bringing on a new CEO with tremendous operational experience, we are making the right move to ensure we scale to win in this business. David’s expertise leading highly successful global sales and marketing efforts at international software companies will prove integral to Xtium’s mission in capitalizing on the cloud services market opportunity.”

Prior to joining Xtium, Rode was Senior Vice President of Sales for 1E, a London-based software company, where he grew revenues over 30 percent during his tenure. Before 1E, Rode served as Executive Vice President of Global Operations for Revitas, a leading revenue management software provider. Under his leadership, Revitas turned around and achieved 40 percent compound annual growth.

“I am absolutely committed to providing world-class service to Xtium’s existing clients as well as executing a growth plan that fuses high value managed services with the latest cloud technologies,” said Rode. “Xtium is poised to be a significant player in the Cloud 2.0 space.”

Rode’s leadership experience also includes Stockholm-based Intentia where, as the Chicago-based president, he drove the company’s expansion in the U.S., Canadian and Latin American markets. He managed the merger of field operations when Lawson and Intentia merged in 2006. In addition, he has deep experience in the business intelligence and enterprise integration markets, having spent five years running the international division of Information Builders, Inc. (IBI), a $300 million software company based in New York.

At Xtium, Rode plans to transform how medium-sized companies leverage the cloud by helping them to first optimize their overall IT estate.

“Most companies struggle to lower the cost of running IT, and ensuring that they are not overspending on infrastructure has become an overwhelming burden,” said Rode. “The typical cloud services model has been to migrate a client’s entire infrastructure to the vendor’s cloud. While that is economically beneficial to the vendor, it is not in the best long-term interests of the client. Xtium will become a leader in helping medium-sized companies rationalize, consolidate and optimize their IT infrastructure before we connect our cloud to their company. Once we have accomplished this, then Xtium will provide the most reliable approach for the on-going management of on-site and hosted IT services.”

About Xtium 
Xtium is a leading enterprise software and solutions company innovating managed cloud hosting, online backup and virtual disaster recovery services. We offer companies the most secure virtual private cloud experience, with flexible architecture, allowing customers to remain in control. We are the only enterprise service company certified to deliver, SAP®, VMware® and Riverbed® technologies. To learn more, please visit http://www.xtium.com.