Socrata, Inc., a Seattle-based cloud software company focused exclusively on democratizing access to government data, today announced it has joined the membership ranks of the Open Data Institute (ODI), an independent, non-profit, non-partisan company founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt to promote and protect open data.

Socrata’s technology and expertise help organizations invigorate citizen engagement, strengthen government decision-making, improve the efficiency of government processes, and stimulate local economic growth through open data.

Socrata’s products offer:

• Open access in the cloud to government data that is available to citizens
• High-performance, ubiquitous, open-standard data APIs to create a local data economy
• Powerful management and communication tools to transform open data into fuel for better decision-making

“We are grateful to have Socrata as part of our organization, and equally appreciative that the company will provide some of the most important ingredients to help us fulfill our mission,” says Berners-Lee. “With committed partners like Socrata, it’s clear that we can keep open data progress moving ahead in a significant way.”

Kevin Merritt, Founder and CEO of Socrata, says, “Growing access to government data in the cloud creates an expanded platform for innovation. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re incredibly excited to be part of ODI, which has engaged and involved some of the smartest and most forward-thinking people in the entire open data ecosystem. We’re looking forward to being an active member of the ODI as we work collaboratively with other members, and on an international scale, to continue to promote of the value of an open data world.”

Socrata’s suite of cloud-based products, including its industry-leading open data platform, power data-driven innovation in some of the largest public sector organizations in the world. Socrata’s customers include the United Nations and the World Bank, as well as the ACT Government of Australia, Belo Horizonte (Brazil), the Country of Kenya, and Lombardia (Italy). In the U.S., Socrata’s open data portal supports programs for the U.S. federal government, the states of New York, Maryland, and Illinois, as well as U.S. cities and counties, such as New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago,Baltimore, New Orleans, King County (Washington), and Cook County (Illinois).

For Socrata, Inc.

Steven Gottlieb, 206-427-9591
[email protected]

Global digital marketing leader ExactTarget, a salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) company, announced that it won the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer Innovation Competition for its latest digital marketing innovation.

“Technology and digital techniques are changing the ways marketers design and manage multichannel marketing. The companies that come out on top will find out what motivates buyers, anticipate future customer needs and wants, and create a compelling online experience for customers, and they will do it better than their competitors”

Facebook awarded ExactTarget the honor for its forthcoming Active Audiences product, a solution that brings together ExactTarget email marketing with social advertising by Salesforce Social.com to create targeted Facebook advertising based on customer engagement across email, mobile, social and Web.

“In today’s connected world, customers are moving effortlessly between marketing channels to interact with brands before, during and after the buying process,” said Scott McCorkle, president of technology and strategy, Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. “Active Audiences will enable marketers to connect with their customers in new ways by optimizing Facebook ad campaigns based on customer interactions.”

When customers interact with a brand across ExactTarget powered email, mobile, social media or websites, Active Audiences will enable marketers to automatically add the customer to a unique audience within Facebook to use in delivering more relevant Facebook advertising.

Key uses of the forthcoming Active Audiences include:

• E-commerce: Power targeted Facebook ad campaigns to recommend complementary products post purchase and drive engagement from shoppers who abandon online shopping carts.
• Remarketing: Remarket offers to email subscribers who do not convert and target Facebook ads to customers based on segments created from mobile, email, web, social, and other customer specific data sources.
• Increase ROI: Reduce customer acquisition costs while increasing lifetime value by delivering more targeted, consistent 1:1 marketing across digital channels.

Currently in closed beta, Active Audiences is currently expected to be generally available to customers in Q1 2014.

“Technology and digital techniques are changing the ways marketers design and manage multichannel marketing. The companies that come out on top will find out what motivates buyers, anticipate future customer needs and wants, and create a compelling online experience for customers, and they will do it better than their competitors,” noted Gartner analysts Jennifer Beck and Adam Sarner, in the “Agenda Overview for Multichannel Marketing”, published January 2013.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase ExactTarget Marketing Cloud applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available.

About ExactTarget, a salesforce.com Company

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of cross-channel digital marketing software-as-a-service solutions that empower organizations of all sizes to communicate with their customers through email, mobile, social media, Web and marketing automation. ExactTarget’s suite of integrated applications enables marketers to plan, automate, deliver and optimize data-driven digital marketing and real-time communications to drive customer engagement, increase sales and improve return on marketing investment. ExactTarget is a salesforce.com company. For more information, visit www.ExactTarget.com.
Read more at http://www.adoperationsonline.com/2013/10/23/salesforce-exacttarget-marketing-cloud-wins-facebook-award-for-innovation/#RC74I8zDrWVPfMQs.99

Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service application development environments in the cloud, today announced the appointment of Wayne Monk as vice president of business development, and Andy Wright as vice president of marketing.

Combined, the two bring nearly 40 years of enterprise software experience to Skytap as the company positions itself for exponential growth in the application development industry. In his role at Skytap, Monk will be responsible for adding new routes to market through indirect channels and building a world-class partner program to expand Skytap’s customer base and accelerate revenue. Wright will lead Skytap’s overall corporate and product marketing strategy and execution.

“Skytap is a fast-growing private company with over 250 customers and proven leadership bringing enterprise application development to the cloud,” said Thor Culverhouse, CEO of Skytap. “Having Wayne and Andy as a part of our team will help us accelerate and take Skytap’s business growth to the next level. Both executives are armed with extensive backgrounds helping high-growth technology companies expand into new revenue streams, and are the perfect candidates to help Skytap achieve its true potential.”

Wayne Monk brings more than 27 years of experience in building and expanding partner programs in the enterprise technology market, and specializes in generating new revenue streams for high-growth businesses, particularly in the cloud computing and software development/testing markets. As vice president of worldwide channels at Informatica, Wayne was responsible for implementing and growing the data management leader’s channel program from the ground up. Wayne also served as the Director of Americas GSIs and US Business Partners at HP Software, where he led explosive growth of their indirect business by increasing revenue by nearly 5X while increasing partner contribution by 3X over a 4-year period. Before joining HP through their acquisition of Mercury Interactive, Wayne spent almost five years as a sales director for CA Technologies, and has previously served in executive positions for Physical Networks, MainControl, Inc. (acquired by MRO Software) and Western Micro Technology (acquired by Avnet).

“I’ve been very familiar with Skytap for a number of years, and have always found them to be far ahead of the competition in terms of bringing automation and self-service cloud functionality to their customers,” said Monk. “Their sustainable competitive advantage, combined with my passion for cloud technology and vast experience with the software testing community, will allow us to develop deeper partnerships quicker with many of the leading and most innovative companies. Together we will bring tremendous value to our customers while driving explosive growth and return to our mutual businesses.”

Andy Wright comes to Skytap with more than 14 years in product and marketing roles for major enterprise software companies. Most recently, Wright served as Chief Product Officer and co-founder of willbeHired, where he was responsible for building the team, developing the product line, and creating a marketing plan from the ground up. Prior to that, Andy served in executive roles at Hewlett-Packard and Stratavia (acquired by HP), where he led product strategy, product management, and sales enablement before becoming responsible for positioning Stratavia’s product within HP’s software portfolio.

“The application development market is experiencing a period of dramatic growth, particularly in the cloud, and Skytap has positioned itself perfectly to help enterprise companies create better software, faster,” said Andy Wright, VP of marketing at Skytap. “I’ve been a Skytap customer for several years now, and am looking forward to extending their great track record as the leader in cloud-based application development and testing.”

These appointments round out Skytap’s executive leadership team, which recently added software veteran Thor Culverhouse as CEO and Brian Barry as VP of sales. The company will continue to expand through the end of 2013 and into 2014, currently seeking senior level positions such as Principal Software Engineer, Senior Cloud Operations Engineer/Architect specializing in AWS, and a Senior Online Marketing Lead. Current open positions can be viewed here: http://www.skytap.com/company/careers.

About Skytap

Skytap is the leading provider of self-service application development environments in the cloud. Skytap Cloud gives businesses a fast, easy, and secure way to create complex computing environments in the cloud. Customers can run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations maintain full visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap Cloud to their data centers and create hybrid clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including development and testing, software demos and evaluations, and virtual training. To try Skytap Cloud and learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

uSamp, a leader in providing targeted audiences for global consumer and business insights, announced today that Andy Jolls, a senior executive with more than 20 years experience in both mature and high growth companies, has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Marketing.

He joins uSamp from Zumbox.com, the digital postal mail company, where he was SVP of Consumer Marketing.

Alan Gould, CEO, uSamp said, “uSamp provides market research capabilities to some of the largest brand names and renowned research firms in the world, and today is the fastest growing online market research company. Andy brings a breadth and depth of experience marketing in lead generation, e-commerce, software and hardware businesses of varied sizes. We are lucky to have him help take uSamp to the next level.”

Prior to Zumbox, Andy served as Chief Marketing Officer at Cooking.com (acquired by Target Corp.), and has held senior level marketing positions at MyFICO.com, a division of FICO, (NYSE: FICO); Move, Inc (NASDAQ: MOVE); and Black Sun Interactive. He was trained in classic management at Apple and Hewlett Packard early in his career and started out doing qualitative market research for Technomic, Inc. He also serves as an advisor for early stage startups and runs his own lifestyle blog.

Andy has a Masters in management, marketing, finance and organizational behavior from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA in Economics from University of Michigan.

About uSamp

uSamp is the technology leader in sample and insights solutions providing automation, mobile and global solutions for marketers. Based in Los Angeles, with five offices in the United States, Europe and Asia, uSamp has been recognized in Inc.’s 500|5000 exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.

For more information visit www.usamp.com.

Spredfast, the leading independent social relationship platform provider, today announced a deepened relationship with Twitter to offer first of its kind functionality on the platform.

Available exclusively through third party vendors, the new functionality enables brands to target organic tweets by country.

Marketers know social networks are powerful channels for building lasting relationships with customers and prospects. However, in order to build positive relationships, brands must reach the right audience with relevant content at the right time. Increasingly, brands are relying on targeting capabilities across social networks to better connect with consumers in a meaningful way.  For example, the new Twitter capability lets global brands ensure language-specific content is only being seen by the right audiences and that their followers can maintain a Twitter stream of highly compelling messages.

“We are constantly working with the social networks to provide our customers with new capabilities that allow them to create great social experiences,” said Rod Favaron, Spredfast CEO.  “The ability to deliver organic content by country on Twitter further empowers brands to do just that by ensuring they publish the right content to the right audience.”

With the introduction of tweet delivery by country in Spredfast’s social relationship platform, customers are now equipped with the most robust targeting options available on the market today to better reach niche audiences across major social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.  For more information about the new functionality, visit the Spredfast blog.

About Spredfast

Based in Austin, Texas, Spredfast provides a social relationship platform that empowers enterprise brands to build lasting relationships by creating great social experiences.  Spredfast enables more people, in more places, to engage in more conversations from a single software platform on supported social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Foursquare, and popular blogging platforms. Some of the enterprise and agency adopters on board with Spredfast include AT&T, Jason’s Deli, Warner Brothers, Whole Foods Market, AARP, AGAIN Interactive, Coty Beauty, HomeAway and Ogilvy. For more information, visit www.spredfast.com

Spredfast Media Contact:

Brittany Edwards Spredfast [email protected] (512) 359-6055

SOURCE Spredfast

Intronis, Inc., a provider of world-class cloud backup solutions for the IT channel, today announced the formation of its Partner Success organization. Led by Jasmine Lombardi, vice president of partner success, the new team is responsible for simplifying and accelerating the success of Intronis’ partners.

“This is a strategic move for Intronis and a significant gain for our channel partners,” says CEO Rick Faulk. “Hiring Lombardi and consolidating all our partner-facing operations within one team brings us closer to our partners’ businesses, provides greater accountability, and positions us to deliver an exceptional partner experience every step of the way — from onboarding new partners to better supporting and scaling success with our existing partners.”

Lombardi’s appointment comes on the heels of several company announcements that underscore Intronis’ growing leadership position in the cloud backup and disaster recovery market. In addition to the recent release of its next generation cloud backup and recovery management platform and its QuickSpin technology which supports the rapid adoption of virtualized IT environments, Intronis was also named one of the IT channel’s 2013 Top 100 Cloud Service Providers by Talkin’ Cloud. The company’s channel partner program also earned a 5-Star ranking in the 2013 CRN Partner Program Guide.

“Backup and recovery has become a big business opportunity for the IT channel and Intronis’ new Partner Success organization will certainly be a game-changer for our partners,” says Lombardi. “I am thrilled to join Intronis and looking forward to establishing a formal framework to help ensure our partners’ success by giving them the technology, tools, training, and business enablement resources required to capitalize on the market’s growing need for business availability services.”

Prior to joining Intronis, Lombardi led the product operations team at Aspen Technology and has held senior client services and technology roles at Mzinga, Prospero Technologies, and PAREXEL International. She has an extensive background in software development, information systems consulting, business process management, professional services, client relations and partner support. Highlights from her career include grass roots development and execution of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) licensing models, partner success organizations, and global process management.

“Enabling our channel partners to easily sell, deliver and support reliable and customizable backup and recovery services to small and midsized businesses has always been a top priority,” concludes Faulk. “These moves will radically improve how our partners engage with Intronis to get business done and position them for even greater success now and in the future.”

About Intronis

Intronis Cloud Backup and Recovery is a world-class cloud backup solution for the IT channel. Intronis provides the industry’s easiest-to-use secure data solution for offsite and local backup, which generates a monthly recurring revenue stream for your business. Intronis offers the best Exchange and SQL backup on the market, supports virtualized environments with native VMware backup, and is integrated with major solutions in the MSP ecosystem. Partners receive expert customer support from Intronis’ U.S.-based team. The solution has been field tested by thousands of MSPs, and the company has been named Best Revenue Generator seven times and Best Customer Support three times by members of ASCII. Learn more at www.intronis.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/IntronisInc.

Monetate today announced two revolutionary new products that will bring its marketing acceleration technology to retention and acquisition channels.

The addition of Monetate Email and Monetate Display significantly expands the Monetate Acceleration Cloud, making it the only technology that connects knowledge of the customer with real-time multichannel marketing, in one user interface.

Monetate EmailMonetate Email extends the power of real-time, personalized website experiences, enabling marketers to deliver email that is personalized at open-time, rather than when the email is sent. Monetate Email can be targeted to customer segments based on a deep knowledge of the customer — including behavioral triggers — and can synchronize the email-to-website experience with consistent messaging, offers, and content, all the way through to conversion.

“While email is still the workhorse of digital marketing, it’s been losing effectiveness because it lacks the in-the-moment relevance the customer demands,” said Dan Pingree, VP of Marketing at Moosejaw. “Monetate’s email product solves this challenge, allowing Moosejaw to display content and offers within an email that are relevant to the customer at the time they actually open the email, not when we send the email. As a recognized leader in online marketing, Moosejaw sees Monetate’s new email solution as the next generation of email marketing.”

Monetate DisplayMonetate Display enables brands to discover their most valuable customer segments and make targeted display ad buys to attract more of those high-value customer segments to websites. Through an integration with major display ad networks, ad buys can be made directly inside the Monetate interface.

Additionally, Monetate Display features a calculator that lets the marketer input a desired level of performance for each segment, and then automatically estimate the cost the marketer can spend to acquire that audience, in order to achieve the desired level of performance. Display synchronizes the customer’s ad-to-website journey, so visitors have a consistent, seamless experience from the click to conversion.

“The new rules of marketing are all about engagement and long-term relationships,” said Bruce Ernst, vice-president of product management, Monetate. “Smart markers realize that the consumer no longer reacts to disconnected brand messages designed to push a transaction rather than build a relationship. The new email and display products from Monetate will help brands gets a deeper understanding of their customers, and deliver consistent, winning experience across any screen, in any channel, in-the-moment and over time.”

About Monetate

Monetate is a marketing acceleration company that believes when the customer wins, the marketer wins.

A new kind of marketing technology, the Monetate Acceleration Cloud lets marketers understand their customers’ situations, behaviors, and preferences, and act on those insights with in-the-moment, relevant experiences, targeted to the right customer at the right time. The Monetate Acceleration Cloud runs above traditional infrastructure and is accessed through one seamless user interface.

Monetate generates billions of dollars of new revenue for businesses, helping them grow 33% faster than the industry average. Brands such as Best Buy, National Geographic, and Celebrity Cruises rely on Monetate to put the customer first, creating stronger relationships that drive a sustained, competitive advantage.

SOURCE Monetate

Copyright (C) 2013 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service application development environments in the cloud, today announced it was recognized by Seattle Business magazine as the cloud computing vendor in the 2013 Tech Impact Awards.

The awards program recognizes Washington-based software, information technology and mobile-app companies that are making an impact on business operations across various industries, including mobile, cloud and analysis. Skytap was honored at an awards ceremony on Thursday evening at the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, and will be featured in the October issue of Seattle Business magazine. Other winning companies include PayScale, Simply Measured, Tableau Software, and Zillow.

According to Seattle Business magazine, the Tech Impact Awards honor the creators and purveyors of technological innovations that affect how companies conduct business. The awards recognize the sort of outstanding achievement that informs and inspires even greater leaps forward in the future.

Skytap was chosen from a competitive group of nominated Washington companies by a panel of six influential thought leaders, including Elon Gasper, vice president and director of research, Corum Group; Ed Lazowska, chair, UW Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Sean MacLeod, president, Stratos Product Development; Matt McIlwain, managing director, Madrona Venture Group; Ken Myer, partner, Vantage Point LLC; Sujal Patel, former president, Isilon Storage Division at EMC.

This award continues a momentous year for Skytap, as the company was also named to the AlwaysOn OnDemand Top 100 list of top private companies for the fourth consecutive year. In addition to these accolades, Skytap announced earlier this year that the company had signed on more than 250 customers, which have combined to launch more than two million virtual machines in Skytap Cloud. This rapid customer growth and increasing usage has also led Skytap to significantly expand its infrastructure footprint to include multiple worldwide data center locations.

“Seattle is widely recognized as a leading technology hub, particularly in the cloud computing industry. It’s incredible to be honored in such a competitive market amongst providers such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services,” said Thor Culverhouse, chief executive officer at Skytap. “Our focus is to provide a unique cloud-based solution that helps enterprises build better software faster. We will continue to innovate with automation, tools and infrastructure focused on the development and testing of software applications.”

The winning Skytap Cloud offering provides enterprises with a secure extension of on-premise infrastructure, and is ideals for complex use cases including development and testing, IT training, and sales demonstrations.

For a full list of this year’s Seattle Business magazine Tech Impact winners, visithttp://seattlebusinessmag.com/.

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap Cloud gives businesses a fast, easy, and secure way to create complex computing environments in the cloud. Customers can run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations maintain full visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap Cloud to their data centers and create hybrid clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including development and testing, software demos and evaluations, and virtual training. To try Skytap Cloud and learn more, visitwww.skytap.com.