Monetate, a leading provider of cloud-based technology for online marketers, announced today that it has achieved Safe Harbor Certification, a designation that ensures compliance with the European Union’s Directive on Data Protection for EU-based companies.

The rapidly expanding online testing and personalization firm strengthened its presence in EMEA earlier this year with the opening of an office in London, under the leadership of Mike Harris, Vice President, EMEA.

“Monetate is dedicated to our expansion in Europe, and the Safe Harbor Certification allows us to serve our overseas customers while keeping them compliant with the Directive on Data Protection,” said Harris.

In addition to its Safe Harbor Certification, Monetate’s platform allows its customers to comply with the “Do Not Track” provisions of the Obama Administration’s “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” a framework for protecting consumer privacy in the online world. With this capability, Monetate ensures that its customers are prepared to implement recommended privacy guidelines.

(Click here to download “The Merchandiser’s Cookbook,” a guide to product recommendations)

“Monetate has always maintained a fierce dedication to consumer privacy,” said Bruce Ernst, Vice President of Product Management at Monetate. “We are committed to being proactive and remaining ahead of the consumer privacy curve.”

About Monetate

Monetate drives billions of dollars of revenue every year for some of the best-known brands in the world, including Best Buy, Comcast, Urban Outfitters, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority, and PETCO. The company’s comprehensive product suite and conversion expertise enable marketers to deliver a more relevant customer experience with unprecedented agility.

Leading marketers rely on Monetate’s cloud-based browser technology to achieve a new level of speed and control, allowing them to run 16 times more optimization campaigns compared to industry averages. The Monetate Agility Suite includes advanced products for testing, merchandising, targeting, and cross-channel consistency, providing an opportunity to bypass IT restraints and react in real time to customer demands. Monetate also helps marketers implement best practices and drive online revenue through its expert strategic services and content publishing teams. For more information visit http://monetate.com/ or follow us on Twitter @Monetate.

Skytap, the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced new hybrid cloud capabilities that make it fast, easy and secure for enterprises to adopt Skytap Cloud as a seamless extension of their VMware data center infrastructure.

The release offers new ESXi Multi-Machine Templates for ESX 4.1 and ESXi 5.0, and a virtual machine (VM) Import/Export REST-based API that automates the movement of existing VMs between on-premise infrastructure and Skytap Cloud. With this release, Skytap provides a simple and efficient way for enterprises to use a secure hybrid cloud environment as a complement to their use of on-premise VMware technology. Skytap will be unveiling the new features at VMworldon August 27-29 in San Francisco. Conference attendees are invited to visit the Skytap booth #525 for a product demonstration.

“Many IT organizations are adopting public cloud computing for IT services such as development and test applications, or for turnkey SaaS applications,” said Chris Howard, managing vice president at Gartner, Inc. “Hybrid IT is the new IT and it is here to stay. While the cloud market matures, IT organizations must adopt a hybrid IT strategy that not only builds internal clouds to house critical IT services and compete with public cloud service providers, but also utilizes external cloud environments to house IT services and increase IT agility.”

New features include:

• ESXi Multi-Machine Templates: Enables users to spin up a VM in Skytap Cloud that runs the VMware vSphere ESXi hypervisor and vSphere client in fewer than 60 seconds. Using pre-built and pre-configured multi-machine templates for ESX 4.1 or ESXi 5.0, customers can use ESX configurations to develop and test applications that run on ESX; train users in ESX and related applications; and test VM and application readiness for ESX 5.0 before upgrading on-premise platforms.
• VM Import/Export REST-based API: Introduces self-service automation features ideal for open cloud deployments from pre-production to production. The new features provide expanded rights for standard users to automate the import/export of VMs, including the ability to create configurations from VMs or save copies of business critical VMs for offline access.
• ESXi 5.0 and Hardware Version 8 Support: Skytap Cloud supports VMs created using VMware’s latest virtualization software, ESXi 5.0. Skytap users are also able to import VMs with Hardware Version 8 into Skytap Cloud environments.
• Cloud Foundry PaaS Integration: In a separate release, Skytap today announced a Virtual Private PaaS offering in Skytap Cloud. Developers interested in using leading development languages, frameworks and technologies can use the new, pre-configured multi-machine template to spin up a complete, self-contained Cloud Foundry development stack in Skytap Cloud in fewer than 60 seconds. The new capabilities give enterprise IT and development teams instant, on-demand access to a secure, network-isolated Cloud Foundry environment to experiment, develop, and test next generation applications.

While complementing existing virtualized data centers and infrastructure, enterprise end-users are empowered by the Skytap Intelligent Automation Platform™, which provides automation and self-service features to make cloud computing simple, easy, and intuitive. Users benefit from on-demand provisioning of complex computing environments, automated virtual networking and secure collaboration and sharing. Administrators gain IT policy management and controls common with their existing on-premises computing resources, including user and security policy management, usage quotas, and real-time reporting and alerting.

“The ability to use VMware’s latest hardware and software products in the cloud is in high-demand across our more than 200 enterprise customers,” said Brian White, vice president of products at Skytap. “This latest product release delivers on our mission to accelerate enterprise transformation to the cloud by providing an intuitive, fast, and secure hybrid cloud extension to their on-premise virtualized infrastructure.”

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, visit www.skytap.com.

NextDocs, the global leader in Microsoft SharePoint-based compliance solutions for life sciences industries, today announced its recognition as 2012 Microsoft U.S. Life Sciences Partner of the Year.

The award honors NextDocs’ innovative use of Microsoft technology in support of the life sciences industry. Winners and finalists were nominated and selected by Microsoft’s U.S. Life Sciences team working throughout the nation.

“It’s a great time to be a Microsoft partner and their support has been valuable in growth. In partnership with Microsoft, we’re continuing to enhance our customers’ investments in technology for the evolution and success of their businesses.”

This marks the third consecutive year that NextDocs has been named U.S. Life Sciences Partner of the Year for its continued demonstration of industry expertise, thought leadership, innovation, and commitment to the Microsoft partnership and platforms. The company has been accepted into the Global ISV Innovators Partner Program as well as the Windows 8 Early Adopter Program by committing to develop a clinical trials hub application to be released in conjunction with Windows 8. In addition, NextDocs recently launched its Compliance Cloud offering, which leverages Windows Hyper-V, System Center, SQL, Windows, and SharePoint.

“Life sciences companies are finding value in compliance solutions that help them go to market faster, and this award demonstrates our ability to optimize and accelerate their processes,” said Zikria Syed, CEO of NextDocs. “It’s a great time to be a Microsoft partner and their support has been valuable in growth. In partnership with Microsoft, we’re continuing to enhance our customers’ investments in technology for the evolution and success of their businesses.”

NextDocs’ software solutions help life sciences companies of all sizes reduce the cost and complexity of meeting compliance requirements. NextDocs solutions deliver a lower cost of ownership and broader area of applicability, leveraging Microsoft’s SharePoint platform. The company has over 100 customers in the life sciences industry, including pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology companies; contract research organizations; and university research foundations.

“Life sciences organizations are being challenged to deliver improved services while simultaneously cutting costs,” said Michael Robinson, General Manager US Health & Life Sciences at Microsoft. “Over the past year, NextDocs has shown how the innovative deployment of Microsoft technology can transform operations for our life sciences customers.”

The Microsoft Partner Program is designed for all partners who develop and market solutions based on Microsoft platforms, provide consulting or technical services on Microsoft systems, or recommend Microsoft technology purchases. Microsoft partners include consulting services providers, independent software vendors (ISVs), independent hardware vendors, large account resellers (LARs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), support providers, system integrators, system builders, training providers, value-added resellers, and value-added providers.

About NextDocs Corporation

NextDocs is the global leader in providing Microsoft SharePoint-based compliance software solutions including quality management software, regulatory document management, and clinical portals. Its solutions enable businesses in regulated industries to achieve compliance with FDA and other agencies while automating processes, improving efficiency, and dramatically reducing costs. NextDocs customers include pharmaceutical companies, bio-techs, medical device companies, and CROs. For more information on NextDocs Corporation and its software solutions visit www.nextdocs.com.

Contacts

Exinda, a global provider of next-generation WAN optimization and application performance assurance solutions incorporating the Exinda 360 Dynamic Policy Engine, has been selected by the Benelux dairy cooperative Milcobel to deploy solutions to help prioritise and manage business critical applications.

The Exinda solutions were deployed very quickly and within 48 hours the solution was operational. The implementation of the project will be done together with Exinda’s Gold Partner Securelink, a leading security and network integrator in Benelux.

For the last 5 years Milcobel has been using a competitive product, however this was close to end-of-life and no upgrade path was available. Milcobel needed to find a new solution quickly to replace the existing solution, and to add a new network site in the Netherlands. The main goal was to ensure that business critical applications gained priority on the wide area network. Milcobel chose Exinda because it could deliver exactly what the dairy company needed and will now be deploying Exinda products both centrally and at remote locations.

Prior to the Exinda deployment Milcobel had limited insight into what was happening on the network and was unable to fine-tune the WAN traffic. Exinda enabled Milcobel to solve this problem with its next-generation WAN optimization solutions. The company started with two simultaneous Proof of Concepts (PoC), one of which specifically focused on QoS/Visibility. Now Milcobel has real time visibility of what is happening across the network.

The Exinda solutions enable a consistent performance for business critical applications such as Citrix , ERP (Oracle), telnet, CIFS, Lotus Notes and VoIP, resulting in both application and performance assurance. Exinda ran the PoC between three sites (on Milcobel’s request) and succesfully extended this to four during the PoC. The overall reduction in traffic is now between sixty and seventy percent.

“Exinda really helped us to gain an insight into what is happening on our WAN. They provided us with the tools to understand the situation, and enabled us to prioritize our business critical applications”, said Kristof Pattou, Systems Engineer at Milcobel. “Our users are delighted with the performance improvements on the network which increase user productivity and satisfaction.”

Tim Hoefsloot, Sales Director Benelux and Nordics at Exinda: “We are very pleased that we could offer the solution Milcobel needed. Today businesses look for new opportunities to make use of bandwidth in the best way they can, but they also want to have control over what is happening. Exinda is the perfect partner for companies looking for this type of solution.”

About Milcobel

CVBA Milcobel is a cooperative of about 3,200 dairy farmers who jointly process 1.1 billion litres of milk annually. The group is involved in various activities and has nine sites in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. The milk is processed into milk for consumption, milk powder, butter, cheese and ice cream among other things. The corporate headquarters of Milcobel are in Kallo, Belgium. The group has about 1900 employees. More information about Milcobel at http://www.milcobel.com.

About Exinda

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next-generation WAN optimization and application performance assurance solutions. The company has helped more than 2,500 organizations in over 80 countries worldwide assure application performance, improve the end-user experience, contain recreational applications and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

According to a recent survey, almost half of consumers plan to spend more money this back-to-school shopping season than last, and 79% of back-to-school shoppers plan to purchase some items online.¹

Monetate, a leading provider of cloud-based technology for online marketers, stresses the importance of creating winning campaigns based on data to help retailers ace the back-to-school shopping season.

“It is critical for marketers to capitalize on the back-to-school spike in online shopping, and the best way to do that is by providing the most relevant and responsive online experience to the customer,” said Monetate Chief Marketing Officer Kurt Heinemann. “Monetate has been maximizing the revenue of major brands for years through testing, targeting and providing an agile marketing platform to make the most out of all opportunities. We are pleased to share seven proven ways to get the most out of the back-to-school shopping season.”

(click here to download The Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website for Back to School Traffic eBook)

1. Keywords are King: Pay attention to back-to-school keywords that visitors use when searching your website to identify when the season starts for your shoppers so you can respond at the right time.
2. Examine Website Behavior: Identify trends in behavior that can clue you in to what’s important to your visitors. Are visitors looking for specific products? Do they spend more time on product pages as they compare prices? Make sure to tailor your promotions to this specific segment of users.
3. Think Beyond August: Once you uncover back-to-school activity and trends, market to this segment of shoppers through the end of September.
4. Ace Your Offers: Back-to-school shoppers are price conscious, so identify which products you should offer deals on, and offer them early.
5. Run Targeted Campaigns: Once you’ve spotted a trend in customer behavior, focus your campaigns on being as relevant as possible throughout the user experience. Make sure to echo campaigns throughout the website experience and on subsequent visits to maintain the “scent trail” of your offer through to conversion.
6. Launch Flash Sales: Running a series of limited time “flash” sales on back-to-school products can help visitors convert faster and increase return traffic during the season as shoppers hunt for more surprise sales.
7. Watch Your Language: Simple language tweaks can have a positive impact on conversions. For example, change email acquisition offers to include language about back-to-school season in order to generate additional interest and capture more email addresses.

(watch the “School Is Now In Session” webinar for tips on how to boost conversions from back-to-school shoppers)

Monetate’s solutions, which combine A/B and multivariate testing with behavioral targeting, merchandising and product recommendations, are used by global brands across a spectrum of industries. The company enables brands to increase conversions and improve other key performance indicators by creating a more relevant online customer experience.

About Monetate

Monetate drives billions of dollars of revenue every year for some of the best-known brands in the world, including Best Buy, Comcast, Urban Outfitters, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority, and PETCO. The company’s comprehensive product suite and conversion expertise enable marketers to deliver a more relevant customer experience with unprecedented agility.

¹ PriceGrabber.com Back-to-School Shopping Forecast Survey (May 22-June 5)

Leading marketers rely on Monetate’s cloud-based browser technology to achieve a new level of speed and control, allowing them to run 16 times more optimization campaigns compared to industry averages. The Monetate Agility Suite includes advanced products for testing, merchandising, targeting, and cross-channel consistency, providing an opportunity to bypass IT restraints and react in real time to customer demands. Monetate also helps marketers implement best practices and drive online revenue through its expert strategic services and content publishing teams. For more information visit http://monetate.com/ or follow us on Twitter @Monetate.

 

Media Contact:

Marifran Manzo-Ritchie

Director of Corporate Communications

Monetate

[email protected]

215.987.4441

LaunchSquad for Monetate

Matt Calderone

212.564.3665

[email protected]

Acronis, a leading provider of disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments, today announced that it will be showcasing the newest beta versions of its Acronis Backup & Recovery and vmProtect products as a gold-level sponsor on booth #1701 at VMworld 2012, August 26-29, in San Francisco.

Acronis’ recently announced partner SolarWindswill also be at Acronis’ booth #1701 to demonstrate its VMware vSphere management solutions for channel partners and customers.

“In today’s dynamic network environments, enterprises’ IT needs are likely to be very different now than in six months,” said Dmitri Joukovski, Acronis Vice President of Product Management. “With rising storage costs and ever growing data volumes, organizations are looking for new strategies to manage their virtual, physical and cloud networks. But, even amidst such increasing IT change, this doesn’t mean enterprises’ backup and recovery needs to be equally complex. The ability to quickly and efficiently protect, find and recover both static and dynamic data in collaborative spaces is achievable with the right solutions and comprehensive planning.”

Alex Sukennik, Acronis Senior Director of Global Cloud Services, will also be speaking at VMworld 2012 on the panel “I Did It My Way,” Wednesday, August 29^th at 8:30am PDT. Alongside Vince Ada, WHA Insurance IT Director, and other prominent panelists, Sukennik will discuss how challenges of data migration and management can be overcome to achieve effective and efficient backup and disaster recovery.

If you are a member of the media or analyst communities interested in setting up a time to meet with Acronis while at VMworld, please contact Meredith L. Eaton by email at [email protected] or by phone at 617-960-9877, or feel free to stop by booth #1701.

Acronis is also issuing a survey about the backup and recovery needs for VMware ESX servers at VMworld. If you are responsible for IT within your company and interested in participating, please fill out the 10-question survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QR6NZCN.

About Acronis

Acronis is a leading provider of next generation data protection and disaster recovery solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. With Acronis’ backup, disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users can better protect and maintain availability of critical servers and data to achieve recovery point (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) while reducing total cost of ownership. With over a decade of investment in research and development, Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

Acronis^® is a registered trademark of Acronis International GmbH. in the United States and/or other countries.

QASymphony (qasymphony.com), developers of defect documentation and Quality Assurance tools, today announced a partnership with Atlanta-based VersionOne, a leading agile project management tool.

The relationship involves the integration of the qTrace intelligent screen capture tool with VersionOne’s agile project management tool, which helps organizations adopt and scale agile processes. The integration between VersionOne and qTrace allows users to easily submit defect reports directly to VersionOne from qTrace.

“The name of the game is agile,” said Vu Lam, CEO of QASymphony. “It’s about rapid and flexible responses, so that software can evolve organically via collaboration between cross-functional teams and end users, resulting in great software. The qTrace tool supports the QA team participating in their agile environment; testing quickly yet still being able to provide clear documentation that enhances communication and collaboration. We performed extensive testing on qTrace and worked closely with VersionOne and their customers to ensure we have the most seamless experience for the user.”

With support for agile software development methodologies such as Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Lean/Kanban, Hybrid and others, VersionOne is used by more than 50,000 software developer teams in 170 countries including such brands as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Oppenheimer, and Siemens.

“We are impressed with the defect capture and documentation capabilities qTrace has brought to market,” said Paul Culling, VP, Alliances at VersionOne. “qTrace goes beyond a simple screen shot utility. With their recent release, users can record screens and data in sequence, switching between four screen capture modes as needed. The easy integration with VersionOne helps to keep QA actively involved throughout the agile software process while improving team collaboration.”

More powerful than using simple screenshot or video for documenting defects, qTrace records all steps, screens, and system information associated with a defect. The tool tracks user’s interactions with the application under test and automatically creates detailed defect documentation.

Free and Pro editions of qTrace are available. Watch a short video by visiting www.qasymphony.com.

About QASymphony

Founded in June 2011 with offices in Dublin, Calif. and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, QASymphony is a software company built to revolutionize how software is tested, adopted, and supported. We are an early stage, self-funded, software-loving team, united by a common belief that software could be better, and better tested. For more information, visit www.qasymphony.com. Facebook: www.facebook.com/qasymphony | Twitter: www.twitter.com/qasymphony.

The QASymphony logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=12975

About VersionOne

VersionOne is recognized by agile practitioners as the leader in agile project management tools. By simplifying the planning and tracking of agile projects, we help teams deliver better software faster. Since 2002, companies such as Adobe, Boeing, bwin, NASDAQ, Lilly, Lockheed Martin, AAA, Qualcomm, Sabre and Siemens have turned to VersionOne. Today more than 30,000 teams from over 170 countries use VersionOne. Agile Made Easier @ VersionOne.com.

CONTACT:   Press Contacts: Josh Lieberman For QASymphony [email protected] Andrea Keeble Senior Marketing Manager For VersionOne Tel: 678.648.1275 [email protected]