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Post by sandi66 on Jul 6, 2009 9:11:42 GMT -5
Marc Andreessen Joins Facebook Board of Directors PALO ALTO, Calif., June 30, 2008 /CNW/ -- Facebook today announced that Marc Andreessen has joined its board of directors. Currently co-founder and chairman at Ning, Andreessen is an investor in several Internet startups. "Marc is an industry leader, and we're fortunate to have him join our board," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "He has experience that is relevant to Facebook in so many ways: scaling companies that are experiencing extraordinary growth, creating successful technology platforms, and building strong engineering organizations. I know Marc will be a great mentor to me and our leadership team." "Facebook is one of the most innovative companies on the Web and it's an honor to join the board," said Andreessen. "I'm looking forward to helping the team as Facebook continues to grow." A prominent Silicon Valley veteran, Andreessen co-founded Ning as a complementary platform to Facebook that allows people to create their own social network with any design, any feature set, and in any language. He also authored early Web browser Mosaic and was co-founder of Netscape Communications. Andreessen's experience also includes his work as CTO of AOL, as well as chairman and co-founder of Web infrastructure company Loudcloud, later named Opsware and acquired by Hewlett-Packard. In addition to Zuckerberg, Andreessen joins current Facebook board members Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital and Founders Fund. Facebook board observers are David Sze of Greylock Partners and Paul Madera of Meritech Capital Partners. About Facebook Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a part of millions of people's lives all around the world. Facebook is a privately-held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. For further information: Facebook Press Office, +1-650-543-4811, press@facebook.com Web Site: www.facebook.comwww.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2008/30/c9050.html*************************** Marc Andreessen Raises $300M Venture Firm; Predicts Hundreds of Others Will Close Posted Jul 06, 2009 12:01am EDT by Sarah Lacy in Investing, Internet, Newsmakers, Products and Trends Related: TWX, ^IXIC, HPQ Marc Andreessen and long-time co-founder and co-angel investor Ben Horowitz have closed their new venture capital fund, and it’s a whopper: $300 million. Never mind the toughest fundraising environment in some 40 years thanks to the across-the-board financial meltdown, between them Andreessen and Horowitz have the rare accomplishment of having founded two companies to exit at more than $1 billion each, Netscape and Opsware. That, and they boast one of the hottest Web 2.0 angel portfolios in Silicon Valley with stakes in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Andreessen’s third startup, Ning. We sat down with the normally-elusive Marc Andreessen to get more details on his move “to the dark side.” In this clip, he explains how just two guys will invest such a large fund, and he makes it clear that his good news isn’t shared industry-wide. Andreessen predicts hundreds of venture firms will be out of business in the next five to 10 years. finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/274235/Marc-Andreessen-Raises-300M-Venture-Firm-Predicts-Hundreds-of-Others-Will-Close?tickers=TWX,%5EIXIC,HPQ&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:40:32 GMT -5
Apptio Announces Server Virtualization Cost Transparency Solution for VMware vSphereTM 4 Offering Provides Greater Visibility Into Physical and Virtual Costs, Simplifying Allocation, Chargeback, and ROI Analysis to Accelerate Enterprise Virtualization Deployments BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - July 29, 2009) - Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand IT Cost Transparency software, today announced general availability of a cost transparency solution for VMware vSphere 4. This offering complements the capabilities of the VMware vCenter™ product family, including the recently announced VMware vCenter™ Chargeback. The Apptio solution provides enterprise IT executives and financial managers comprehensive visibility into the costs of their physical and virtual IT infrastructure. The solution provides built in templates and best practices for cost allocation and chargeback of virtualization, integrated analysis of server cost and utilization to drive prioritization of virtualization targets, and ongoing ROI management of virtualization initiatives. While server virtualization has been broadly adopted across almost all enterprise IT organizations, according to Gartner Research, fewer than 15 percent of servers in the enterprise are virtualized today.* To get the most out of their investments in virtualization, enterprises need to understand how to manage and optimize the costs of virtualization in the context of their overall delivery of IT services to the business. Initial virtualization projects provided dramatic increases in utilization and clear reduction in overall costs. However, the movement away from the physical server as the unit of allocation introduced new considerations for IT organizations to take into account to accurately cost and chargeback for IT services across physical and virtual infrastructure. In addition to driving the next wave of virtualization, enterprise IT organizations find themselves in need of better analytics to identify high cost, low utilization targets, and more accurately quantify the ongoing ROI of these projects. To manage this virtualization driven business transformation, enterprise customers need visibility into the total costs of virtualization, including hardware, software, facilities and labor. IT and finance teams need the ability to easily integrate virtualization into their enterprise-wide IT services cost allocation and chargeback strategies, and the ability to continually analyze the cost and utilization of their server environments to optimize the ROI of virtualization. The Apptio Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution addresses these needs and helps IT departments maximize their investments in virtualization. VMware vSphere 4 provides powerful virtualization management solutions that accelerate deployment and simplify the management of virtualized infrastructure and the applications that depend on it. Apptio's new offering works with and extends the capabilities of these offerings to add actual cost data, an integrated allocation and chargeback view across physical and virtual infrastructure, and robust financial management framework that CIOs and senior IT executives can rely on to manage the business impact of virtualization. "As enterprise customers continue to expand their private cloud environments on the VMware platform, improved ability to manage, allocate and chargeback costs is an important ingredient," said Shekar Ayyar, vice president, alliances, VMware. "Apptio's solution complements VMware vSphere 4 and the new VMware vCenter Chargeback to provide additional cost visibility across physical and virtual infrastructures." "We are pleased to be working with VMware to provide our joint customers with the ability to leverage our combined solutions to get greater visibility into virtualization costs and proactively address the business transformations necessary to truly unlock the potential of their virtualization investments," said Sunny Gupta, chief executive officer for Apptio. Also announced today, Apptio Adds Server Virtualization Cost Transparency Solution to Out of Box Templates. About Apptio Apptio is the leading provider of on-demand IT Cost Transparency solutions. Apptio's IT Cost Transparency solutions provide greater visibility into the cost, utilization and operations of IT products and services so that businesses can identify ways to reduce IT costs, make better IT decisions and provide the business with a true Bill of IT. IT organizations such as Alaska Airlines, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, BNP Paribas, EMD Chemical and Razorfish use Apptio's IT cost analysis capabilities to reduce cost and achieve greater visibility into their IT costs and cost drivers. Apptio is privately held, backed by Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Ignition Ventures and Shasta Ventures. For more information, please visit www.apptio.com. * "New Technologies Showcase IT's Importance," InternetNews.com, May 18, 2009. www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3820691/New+Technologies+Showcase+ITs+importance.htm Contact: Karli Overmier Barokas PR for Apptio 206-264-8220 Email Contact www.marketwire.com/press-release/Apptio-Announces-Server-Virtualization-Cost-Transparency-Solution-VMware-vSphere-4-1214352.htm
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:41:14 GMT -5
Apptio Adds Server Virtualization Cost Transparency Solution to Out of Box Templates New Offering Helps IT and Finance Teams Evaluate, Prioritize and Track Virtualization Initiatives and Enable Chargeback of Virtualized Data Centers BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - July 29, 2009) - Apptio, the leading provider of on demand IT Cost Transparency software, today introduced a Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution to help IT and Finance teams evaluate, assess and accelerate expansion of virtualization initiatives. The new solution provides best practices for cost allocation and chargeback of physical and virtualized infrastructure, integrated analysis of server cost and utilization to drive prioritization of virtualization targets, and ongoing ROI management of virtualization initiatives. "Using Apptio, we achieved visibility into the cost of virtualization in our environment," said Brian Jeide, director, managed services architecture at Motricity. "It enables us to allocate the costs of IT services across both physical and virtual infrastructures, and provides us with the ROI quantification necessary to guide and accelerate broader adoption of virtualization across our data centers." Server virtualization creates a particular challenge for tracking infrastructure costs and managing cost allocation policies. When a physical server is dedicated to a single IT service, allocating the cost of a server is a relatively simply process. However, when a physical server is virtualized and provisioned out to many services, tracking and allocating the cost of that physical server is nearly impossible. When those virtual machines are dynamically moved from server to server, costs become even more difficult to track. Apptio's Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution applies a method of activity-based costing that works with automated data feeds from server virtualization systems to accurately allocate infrastructure costs in a virtualized world. For example, a Fortune 100 Internet media company reduced server costs by expanding its virtualization deployment based on information from Apptio's software. Having already virtualized 30 percent of its data center, the company wanted to maximize the ROI of further server virtualization, but needed better visibility into the cost and utilization of its remaining servers. Using Apptio as a single repository to show how cost and server utilization data across all physical and virtual servers are allocated to IT services and business units, they were able to understand the best case configuration, track utilization rates of all servers over time, assess resource needs, and identify servers with low utilization as candidates for consolidation. Running the Business of IT -- Virtualization ROI Apptio's Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution follows on the heels of its Cloud Cost analyzer and other templates that make it easy for IT managers to quickly realize value from Apptio's IT Financial Management systems. Apptio's software includes cost allocation modeling to assign unit costs to services, powerful analytics to provide deep understanding of fundamental cost drivers and opportunity scenarios, rich reporting to communicate among IT and across business leaders, and the workflow necessary to automate financial management processes. Together, these capabilities empower enterprises to "run IT like a business" while optimizing financial efficiency. Apptio's IT Cost Transparency software is purpose built to help IT professionals understand the total cost of IT services they provide to the business, and drive decisions that optimize the return on investment of IT. Spend data (hardware, software, facilities, labor) can be manually entered into Apptio, imported from standard file formats, or integrated to existing sources of data such as general ledgers and third party asset databases. As data enters the system, specialized algorithms help identify patterns that represent cost allocation relationships and accelerate model creation. Weights and filters can be defined and applied to encode the logic for translation between IT invoices and general ledger entries and IT services. Once that logic is established, it can be applied in an automatic fashion to ongoing data uploads to help enterprises maintain an accurate account of the cost of IT services, drive a process of continual cost optimization, and communicate the value of IT across the organization. "Apptio has encapsulated the best practices of tracking the cost and ROI of virtualization to help enterprises more effectively manage their physical and virtual infrastructure," said Eric Berg, vice president of product management at Apptio. "Our new Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution helps customers get beyond the early stages of virtualization to get the most of out of their investment, accelerate the cost savings benefits of virtualization, and track the allocation of those costs across both their physical and virtual environments." The Apptio Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution in combination with the Apptio platform provides the following benefits: -- Track total cost of ownership across physical and virtualized servers over time -- Easily and accurately allocate underlying hardware costs to virtual machines -- Provide an IT services and business unit view of virtualization cost and usage -- Analyze cost and utilization data to direct and optimize their virtualization strategy -- Provide a business unit "Bill of IT" that spans physical and virtual services Apptio's Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution is generally available for a variety of server virtualization technology including VMware vSphere™ 4. Also announced today Apptio releases Server Virtualization Cost Transparency solution for VMware vSphere 4. About Apptio Apptio is the leading provider of on-demand IT Cost Transparency solutions. Apptio's IT Cost Transparency solutions provide greater visibility into the cost, utilization and operations of IT products and services so that businesses can identify ways to reduce IT costs, make better IT decisions and provide the business with a true Bill of IT. IT organizations such as Alaska Airlines, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, BNP Paribas, EMD Chemical and Razorfish use Apptio's IT cost analysis capabilities to reduce cost and achieve greater visibility into their IT costs and cost drivers. Apptio is privately held, backed by Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Ignition Ventures and Shasta Ventures. For more information, please visit www.apptio.com. Contact: Karli Overmier Barokas PR for Apptio 206-264-8220 Email Contact www.marketwire.com/press-release/Apptio-Adds-Server-Virtualization-Cost-Transparency-Solution-to-Out-of-Box-Templates-1214349.htm
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:42:18 GMT -5
Apptio Announces $14 Million Series B Round of Funding Andreessen Horowitz and Shasta Ventures Join Greylock and Madrona to Accelerate Growth of the Leading IT Financial Management Provider BELLEVUE, WA--(Marketwire - August 18, 2009) - Apptio, the leading provider of on-demand IT Financial Management software, today announced a $14 million series B round of funding, adding two new major investors, the Andreessen Horowitz Fund and Shasta Ventures, to existing investors, Greylock Partners and Madrona Venture Group. Investor interest was extremely high in reaction to the tremendous market traction Apptio has demonstrated throughout the Global 2000 and across industry sectors. The additional funding will be used to accelerate Apptio's product development, sales and marketing efforts, extending the company's leadership in IT Financial Management and ability to realize the vision of helping CIOs everywhere more effectively Manage the Business of IT. "Apptio has the critical application set to usher in a new era for IT management. Their solution addresses the biggest challenge for today's CIO -- establishing the financial and performance management discipline necessary to run the IT organization like a business," said Marc Andreessen, second-time investor in Apptio and partner of the Andreessen Horowitz Fund. "Apptio has the right mix to become a major market force: a deep team with proven success in IT management, early technology leadership addressing real world problems, a $1 billion-plus market opportunity, and a winning SaaS delivery model. We're excited to have them as one of our first investments in the new fund." In today's world there are tremendous market and technology forces pressuring CIOs to transform their organizations from technology cost centers to internal service providers. The pressure to deliver the highest quality of service at the lowest possible price is critical, as business leaders now have a variety of options external to internal IT. SaaS, outsourcers and cloud computing providers offer very compelling options, forcing CIOs to understand their own cost per IT service. In addition, the adoption of game changing technologies such as virtualization are adding to the pressure for IT to adopt a shared services model, which includes taking on direct financial responsibility for a growing proportion of a company's technology assets. With this new responsibility, CIOs must thoroughly understand the fully-loaded cost of their IT services and the key cost drivers to stay competitive, systematically lower costs, price or allocate costs fairly and assure CEOs that they are providing a positive ROI to the business. Clearly, the role of the CIO is changing. As IT transforms into a service provider organization, the CIO will spend more time managing the financial performance of their "business" and will need to adopt the best practices and processes of leading P&L managers. With many Fortune 1000 companies spending over $1 billion on IT, often as much as any other function within the corporation, it is time that CIOs have the financial management and planning systems comparable to those used by manufacturing and supply chain executive for decades to run their business. Apptio provides CIOs of Global 5000 IT organizations with the insight they need to manage the cost and performance of IT services, reduce costs and make better decisions, automate financial management processes, and better communicate the value of IT. Since the company's launch in June 2008, Apptio's customer list has grown to include Alaska Airlines, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BNP Paribas, Cisco, EMD Chemical, Motricity, NYK Business Systems, Purdue University, Saint Luke's Health System, Starbucks, SumTotal and several other companies. Collectively, these companies are saving millions of dollars by changing the way IT manages the financial aspect of their organizations, through deep analysis of the cost drivers of IT, better decisions based on solid ROI calculations, clear cost transparency to the Lines of Business through a Bill of IT, and more accurate forecast and management of IT spend. "The market for Financial Management for IT is exploding as every CIO is looking to gain transparency into the costs of IT in order to become a more effective service provider to the business," said Sunny Gupta, co-founder, president and CEO of Apptio. "Securing new funding in this very tough economic climate is a great demonstration of the adoption of the Apptio on-demand solution by large numbers of customers across all verticals. This funding will allow Apptio to build the next large on-demand enterprise software company addressing the business needs of the CIO." About Apptio Apptio is the leading provider of on-demand IT Financial Management solutions. Apptio provides greater visibility into the cost, utilization and operations of IT products and services so that businesses can identify ways to reduce IT costs, make better IT decisions and provide the business with a true Bill of IT. IT organizations such as Alaska Airlines, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, BNP Paribas, EMD Chemical and Razorfish use Apptio's IT cost analysis capabilities to reduce cost and achieve greater visibility into their IT costs and cost drivers. Apptio is privately held, backed by Andreessen Horowitz Fund, Greylock Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Shasta Ventures. For more information, please visit www.apptio.com. Contact: Karli Overmier Barokas PR for Apptio 206-264-8220 apptio@barokas.com www.marketwire.com/press-release/Apptio-Announces-14-Million-Series-B-Round-of-Funding-1210272.htm
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:44:05 GMT -5
DataFlow Pioneer SnapLogic Closes $2.3 Million Series A Financing; Informatica Founder Gaurav Dhillon Named CEO Andreessen Horowitz and Maples Investments Join Brian McClendon and Naval Ravikant in the First Outside Financing Round for SnapLogic SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwire - October 29, 2009) - SnapLogic, the DataFlow pioneer, announced today that it has closed a $2.3 million Series A round of venture capital financing. The investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Maples Investments, Google engineering vice president Brian McClendon, and Vast chairman and Epinions co-founder Naval Ravikant. The new funds will be used to continue development of the company's pioneering DataFlow platform for on-demand data integration. The company also announced that Gaurav Dhillon, co-founder of SnapLogic and a founder and the former chief executive officer of data integration leader Informatica Corporation, has been named chief executive officer of SnapLogic. "The SnapLogic DataFlow platform is the future of data integration, making business data available when and where it's needed, flexibly and simply," said Ravikant. "I'm looking forward to working with Gaurav and the SnapLogic team as they take data integration beyond batch-oriented approaches and into the new realm of on-demand data flow." SnapLogic DataFlow uses Web technology to provide an open, scalable, and extensible data integration platform. It provides organizations of all sizes with the most complete, flexible, and cost-effective solution for on-demand data integration. SnapLogic DataFlow can read from and write to any data source, easily integrating data from SaaS applications, the Web, databases, files, and on-premise applications. Extensions for integrating data from NetSuite, SalesForce, SugarCRM, Twitter, and more are available now. More information is available www.snaplogic.com/products. "This round of investment from Internet veterans Marc Andreessen, Mike Maples, Brian McClendon, and Naval Ravikant is a gratifying endorsement of SnapLogic's mission and approach," said Dhillon. "The growth of Web data is rapidly changing the volume, composition, uses, and storage of business data, and the requirements for data integration are changing in lock-step. I'm excited to roll up my sleeves and step into a full-time leadership role at SnapLogic at this time of market acceleration and the rise of a new age of data integration." Dhillon co-founded SnapLogic in 2006, provided seed capital, and served as the company's chairman since inception. Prior to that, he was chief executive officer at Informatica, which he co-founded in 1992. As its first employee, he systematically grew Informatica from a startup idea to a leading software enterprise with customers and operations around the world. As the chief executive, Dhillon led Informatica through its initial launch, its successful initial public offering (IPO), and its expansion to Europe and Asia. And, by the time he left in 2004, he gained industry-wide recognition of his pioneering vision for data integration. Prior to founding Informatica, Dhillon held management and engineering positions at Sterling Software and Unisys Corporation. About SnapLogic SnapLogic advances the data integration market with its innovative DataFlow platform, open architecture, and simple subscription business model. The DataFlow platform connects to almost any SaaS, cloud, or Web computing application via open connectors and data pipelines, providing information as a utility to business users and applications. SnapLogic was founded in 2006 by data integration pioneers and is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. For more information, please visit www.snaplogic.com or call (650) 525-3540. Media Contact: Paige Schoknecht Prequent, Inc. (for SnapLogic) paige@prequent.com +1-408-275-1419 office +1-650-223-4085 mobile www.marketwire.com/press-release/DataFlow-Pioneer-SnapLogic-Closes-23-Million-Series-A-Financing-Informatica-Founder-1171485.htm********************* PayPal Launches PayPal X Developer Challenge Most Innovative Applications Will Win Prizes Worth a Total of $150,000 INNOVATE 2009, SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4, 2009 /CNW/ - PayPal today challenged developers to solve the fundamental problems people face when trying to pay or get paid. With prizes totaling $75,000 in cash and $75,000 in waived fees, the PayPal X Developer Challenge offers anyone with an idea the opportunity and seed capital to create a new business based on the PayPal open payments platform, PayPal X. Contestants must build their applications using the PayPal X application programming interfaces (APIs). The challenge: create the most innovative payment application for businesses in areas such as services, social media, gaming, mobile and consumer electronics. The first and second prizes are $50,000 and $25,000 in cash respectively and $50,000 and $25,000 in waived PayPal transaction fees. To enter the PayPal X Developer Challenge, log on to www.x.com, read the contest rules, and start coding. The deadline for final submissions is Feb. 1, 2010. The winners will be announced in March. Entries must include a link to a demo application and an accompanying video describing how it would work. Finalists will be determined by popular vote on x.com and a panel of distinguished judges including eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; PayPal president Scott Thompson; general partner of Andreessen/Horowitz, Marc Andreessen; and Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, who will choose the top two prize winners. "PayPal is putting developers in the driver's seat to enable new and emerging business models for their innovations," said Osama Bedier, PayPal's vice president of platform and emerging technology. "We're challenging developers to take PayPal X for a spin. And while the prize money is certainly an incentive, the real reward will be making payments easy, for the very first time, for an entirely new generation of applications built by our developer community." Follow PayPal on Twitter: @paypal, @paypalx, #ppxi09 and #changehowwepay. For more information on the PayPal platform, visit www.x.com About PayPal PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 78 million active accounts in 190 markets and 24 currencies around the world, PayPal enables global ecommerce. PayPal is an eBay company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payments platform, the Payflow Gateway, and Bill Me Later. More information about the company can be found at www.paypal.com. For further information: Media contacts: Chris Conrath, Environics Communications for PayPal Canada, (416) 969-2716, cconrath@environicspr.com; Nicole Tuschak, Environics Communications for PayPal Canada, (416) 969-2712, ntuschak@environicspr.com www.newswire.ca/en/search/index.cgi?Flags=31&Submit=GO&query=Marc+Andreessen+&GO=Go
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:45:24 GMT -5
Andreessen Horowitz, Meritech and Emergence Pick Box as Cloud Content Management Winner With $48M Investment PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - February 24, 2011) - Box.net today announced that it has raised $48 million in additional capital to transform how organizations ranging from SMBs to large enterprises share and manage business information in the cloud. Meritech Capital Partners led the Series D round, with new investment firms Andreessen Horowitz and Emergence Capital Partners joining previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Scale Venture Partners and US Venture Partners to fuel the next stage of Box's growth in the enterprise. Box finished 2010 with over 5 million users and 3.4X business revenue growth, driven by adoption of its cloud content management platform by enterprise customers like DreamWorks, Cisco and Dell. 60,000 companies, including 73% of the Fortune 500, use Box to share, access and collaborate on business content online, as well as from iPads, iPhones and Android devices. The company began the year by unveiling an all-new version of its service, bringing enhanced collaboration and real-time capabilities to users, along with a dramatically simplified user interface. "With this new capital and our current momentum, Box is positioned to redefine an industry, much as Salesforce.com has done for CRM and NetSuite for ERP," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO, Box. "We want to bring Box's cloud content management to businesses of all sizes, all over the world; we'll aggressively outperform legacy software solutions on cost, flexibility, user experience, and speed of innovation, while pushing on our freemium business model to make it incredibly easy for individuals and companies alike to adopt Box." Over the past year, Box has brought on senior talent from enterprise and technology leaders Salesforce.com, Google, Oracle, EMC, and Intuit, and with this new capital, the company will continue to hire aggressively to double its team of 140 employees over the next 12-18 months. Box will also invest substantially in expanding its mobile platform and partner ecosystem; the company has seen 400,000 app downloads for iOS and Android, and features more than 150 integrated partner applications such as Salesforce, Google Apps and NetSuite in the Box Apps Marketplace. Given increasing demand for Box's cloud content management worldwide -- businesses outside the US account for 15% of Box's customer base -- Box will significantly increase international capabilities in 2011. The financing includes $38 million in equity from the new and existing investors, along with a $10M commitment from Hercules TGC. "Cloud adoption in the enterprise is inevitable as IT leaders look to support their organizations with new solutions that address today's problems and anticipate tomorrow's," said Ben Horowitz, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. "Box has proven that it has the vision and the execution track record to be a leader in the new wave of enterprise solutions, and this infusion of capital will position the company for an explosive year." "Box has already inspired millions of individuals and tens of thousands of businesses to rethink the way they share and manage content," said George Bischof, managing director at Meritech Capital. "With this round of funding, Box is positioned to be the clear leader in cloud content management by continuing to challenge the enterprise software status quo with rapid, disruptive innovation and unparalleled user experience." "Content management and collaboration are core needs of every single business in the world, and unlike legacy solutions, Box can scale to meet the demands of organizations ranging from SMBs to Fortune 500s," said Jason Green, partner at Emergence Capital. "The global market potential for Box is massive, and by continuing to push its viral freemium model and investing aggressively in the platform, Box will be a leader in the cloud content management market." To learn more about Box, visit www.box.net, and to join the Box team, check out www.box.net/jobs. About Box Founded in 2005, Box provides cloud content management for more than 5 million users and companies ranging from small businesses to the Fortune 500. Box's dynamic, flexible content management and collaboration solution empowers users to access and share content online, and gives IT professionals unprecedented visibility into how content moves within their organizations and beyond. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone and Android applications, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps, NetSuite and Salesforce. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Meritech Capital Partners, Emergence Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners. About Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm that invests in high technology companies and is based on a vision for a new, modern venture capital firm that supports entrepreneurs through angel investments to large scale funding. Its general partners are Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and John O'Farrell, all widely recognized experts in the creation, scaling, and operation of high growth technology companies such as Netscape, Opsware, Silver Spring Networks, and Excite@Home. Andreessen Horowitz has more than 30 investments with companies like Facebook, Foursquare, Groupon, Kno, Rockmelt, Skype, Twitter, and Zynga. The firm was established in June 2009 and is located in Menlo Park, CA. About Meritech Capital Partners Meritech Capital Partners is a premier late-stage venture capital firm that invests in category defining private technology companies. With over $2.6 billion under management, Meritech seeks to lead investments in companies with proven and differentiated technology, strong market presence, accelerating revenue and seasoned management teams. As one of the most active late-stage investors, Meritech provides informed guidance on a number of issues that the most promising private companies face as they continue to rapidly scale. Representative portfolio companies include Facebook, Fortinet, Greenplum, Netezza, NetSuite, Riverbed, Salesforce.com, SpringSource and TeleAtlas, among others. Meritech is located in Palo Alto, CA (www.meritechcapital.com). About Emergence Capital Partners Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services companies. Its mission is to help build market leaders in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Emergence partners have funded and helped build more than 50 TES companies, more than any other early-stage venture firm. Emergence Capital has assets of over $325 million under management. Prior investments include companies such as salesforce.com (CRM), SuccessFactors (SFSF), HireRight (HIRE), Yammer, Veeva and InsideView. For more information, visit www.emcap.com. Media Contact: Cari Goodrich PR Manager Email Contact 925 789 0236 www.marketwire.com/press-release/Andreessen-Horowitz-Meritech-Emergence-Pick-Box-as-Cloud-Content-Management-Winner-With-1401456.htm
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Post by sandi66 on Mar 15, 2011 20:52:00 GMT -5
Ning Searches for Top Social Designers in $10,000 Competition Designers Can Now Develop Custom Themes for Ning Communities Using Real Fonts From Typekit PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - March 10, 2011) - Ning, the world's largest platform for creating custom social websites, has just opened the Ning Design Studio, enabling Ning Creators to style up their social experience with gorgeous layouts and advanced customization options -- breaking the mold for social websites. To celebrate the launch, Ning is calling for designers to show off their skills in the Ning Design Studio Competition where designers are eligible to win more than $10,000 in cash and prizes, while also submitting their work for sale in the upcoming Ning Theme Marketplace. People that enter will have the opportunity to get their work in front of a judging panel of world-renowned designers including Khoi Vinh, Dan Cederholm, Ethan Marcotte, Luke Wroblewski, Brian Hoff, and Elliot Jay Stocks. The Ning Design Studio provides designers with the power and resources to take social website design to the next level. Thanks to Typekit's sponsorship of the design competition, designers will also be able to choose from a large library of real fonts for use in their entries. "Social is becoming more and more mainstream and users are looking for new ways to customize the look and feel of their communities," said Jonathan Shambroom, Chief Product Officer at Ning. "We created the Ning Design Studio to weave together powerful design features and a marketplace of 90,000 Ning subscribers." To coincide with the launch of the Design Studio, designers are encouraged to submit their work to the Ning Design Competition. After submitting an entry, designers are eligible for a chance to win more than $10,000 in cash and prizes, as well as a chance to display their work to the panel of industry expert judges. In addition, all entries will be automatically be entered into the Ning Theme Marketplace review process, and be eligible for sale by the designer once Premium Themes become available (slated for mid-2011). Designers will also have access to showcase their work if they want to take on custom projects for Ning Creators. "The Design Competition is a great opportunity for designers to re-imagine how we look at social media platforms. By offering some of our favorite fonts, entrants will be able to create far more sophisticated designs than ever before," said Jeffrey Veen, Founder and CEO at Typekit. Competition Details: Designers can submit their entries by visiting www.ningdesignstudio.com from now until April 15th. Twelve finalists will be chosen on April 25, and then the panel of judges will make their final selections for the top prizewinners. The community will also be given the opportunity to vote for their favorite, resulting in an additional winner. Winners will be announced on May 10 and will receive: Grand Prize: $10,000 and a one-year Ning Pro subscription 2nd and 3rd Place: $1,000, a 27" Apple Cinema Display and a one-year Ning Pro subscription The top three winners and an additional winner selected by the Ning Design Community will receive a trip to New York City for a celebration dinner event with Ning and the judges on June 8th, 2011 All entries will be automatically entered into the Ning Theme Marketplace review process and be eligible for sale once the Premium Themes product becomes available Full rules and requirements can be viewed here: about.ning.com/studio/competition/rules.php The Ning Design Studio is only the beginning of what is coming from Ning this year. For additional information on these features and to learn more about Ning, please visit www.ning.com. About Ning Ning is the leading online platform for the world's organizers, activists and influencers to create social experiences that inspire action. For brands of all shapes and sizes, Ning makes it easy to build custom and powerful social websites. Ning Networks span categories like politics, entertainment, small business, non-profits, education and more, connecting millions of people every day around the topics they are passionate about. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ning was co-founded in October 2004 by Chairman Marc Andreessen and is privately held. For more information, visit www.ning.com. Stephanie Schlegel Email Contact www.marketwire.com/press-release/Ning-Searches-for-Top-Social-Designers-in-10000-Competition-1409455.htm
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