Rodney Bowen-Wright

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NextPage - Groundbreaking Compliance and Risk Mgmt Based on SharePoint

One of the companies I have been recently engaged with as part of our Enterprise Incubation program is NextPage, a venture backed company building Compliance and Information Risk solutions based on our SharePoint Technologies. The company is lead by seasoned veterans that have launched prior successful startups - one a successful search business acquired by Fast Search and Transfer - which was later acquired by Microsoft.

In this new venture, NextPage have built a Tracking Platform that mitigates enterprise risk, increases document policy compliance and reduces the cost of e-discovery by tracking and managing documents no matter where they are located – hard drives, USB’s, Shared Drives, SharePoint, or Email attachments. Their technology is patent pending and proactively tackles the risk by tracking, classifying, executing policy, and reporting on the compliance of all documents across the enterprise. The NextPage suite of applications is being deployed across large enterprises to manage information risk.

I have been working with Darren Lee, President and CEO over the last several weeks on Engagement plan to get NextPage entrenched into the Microsoft ecosystem. The company has recently been accepted into the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program and will also be part of the Microsoft High Potential ISV program in the next fiscal year.The company is currently involved in joint sales activities with the Microsoft Life Sciences vertical and will be expanding to other verticals in the coming year.

The company is funded by Oak Investment Partners and Dominion Ventures and are currently engaged in joint Enterprise sector engagement activities with our Enterprise Partner Group (Microsoft's global sales force).

Check out more information about this company at http://www.nextpage.com and watch out for more updates on the successes of this great new innovative company.

Posted at 6/11/2009 4:32 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

gloStream - Transforming and Modernizing the HealthCare Industry with Microsoft Office Software

If you were paying attention to the US elections over the last year, you've probably heard a lot about how the healthcare system in the US needs to be modernized and transformed. With the US economy currently at an all time bottom, the Obama administration is making bets on a few industries to make the US more efficient and stimulate jobs. The healthcare industry is one place where billions of dollars (already allocated) will be spent over the next several years.

Microsoft has the right infrastructure and tools to make this transformation happen quickly. One company at the right place at the right time with the right solution is gloStream,.

gloStream provides physicians and healthcare facilities across the U.S. with electronic medical record software and practice management solutions based on the Microsoft Office suite - delivered and supported through a nationwide network of local technology partners.

gloStream applications are secure, easy-to-use and the only solutions on the market embedded with Microsoft Office. With a simple user interface, robust voice recognition technology, and single-click access to all patient data, gloStream products help doctors improve patient care by streamlining workflow and creating efficiencies in office administration.

gloStream’s deep healthcare experience and its utilization of Microsoft technology (and specific use of Microsoft Office) provide doctors and staff with a secure, reliable, scalable, customizable and affordable EMR and PM solutions. gloSuite is easy to learn and use so doctors and staff can limit training time and get up their full patient load in a matter of days, not weeks. The Obama administration is giving $44,000 to each doctor to implement an EMR and gloStream is at the right place at the right time to take advantage of this opportunity.

I have been working with CEO Mike Sappington and his team over the last few months as part of our Enterprise Incubation program and the company has just been accepted in the Microsoft Startup Accelerator program and shall be engaged with our High Potential incubation team going forward.

The company just closed on a $7.5 million series B financing round co-lead by Beringea (Michigan’s largest VC firm) and members of gloStream's executive management team. Stay tuned in the future for more news on this highly innovative company.

See more about the company at http://www.glostream.com

Posted at 6/9/2009 4:00 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Lattice Engines Poised to Take Predictive Analytics Market by Storm

Microsoft Startup Accelerator Partner Lattice Engines, Inc. has supplied large B2B sales organizations with Microsoft centric solutions since its inception in 2005.The company has built a CRM Analytics application, POET^SM, which has for the last couple of years helped large sales organizations achieve 5 to 15% growth in revenue by more optimal allocations of their sales people and sales and marketing investments.

POET utilizes the customer’s CRM & ERP data in conjunction with external data sources to model the buying behavior of the business customers and prospects of our customers. By developing a quantitative model of opportunity at each potential customer account, POET helps sales reps use their time more effectively in order to drive revenue.

I have been recently working with the management team of Lattice Engines to connect to our global sales force engine. The company is planning to do further integrations into the Microsoft stack around our latest technologies. This will enhance the product line and will also have the added benefit of creating the perfect partnership scenario between Lattice Engines and Microsoft

Up and coming startups and entrepreneurs should take note of this - Lattice Engines took an early bet on the Microsoft platform which has lots of documented benefits over open source.
They also aligning against the latest technologies which makes folks in the Microsoft ecosystem excited about their stuff (Microsoft is filled with techies who love that) and their heavy deep integrations into Microsoft platform products enhances the revenue potential in enterprise situations which makes the global sales force excited and will help them achieve scale.

So the formula for future entrepreneurs is as follows:

(1) Validate whether the solution you're building or interested in investing in aligns to opportunities identified in the enterprise. My organization can help you figure that out. We have access to opportunity maps which identify hotspots in the enterprise over the next 3-5 years.

(2) Align with latest Microsoft technologies. Microsoft's BizSpark program gives startups free software for the first three years with many additional benefits - which takes away the standard current argument as to why startups initially go to open source - Cost of software

(3) Get a few customer wins - preferably with large enterprises which validates the offering.

(4) Use the Microsoft Enterprise Incubation program to achieve scale and visibility.

For more insight into how to connect to the ecosystem - see my prior blog here.

Posted at 6/5/2009 9:53 AM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Connecting to the Microsoft Ecosystem 101

During my entire tenure at Microsoft, the most difficult problem for young companies has been connecting to the Microsoft ecosystem - more specifically our global sales force. We see this year after year in satisfaction surveys our organization does with startups.

The problem is a really complex one. In multinational conglomerates like IBM and Microsoft, its quite the norm for organizations not to be talking to each other. In the case of Microsoft, there are two organizations startups will interact with in the process of trying to get to the enterprise market place: Developer and Platform Evangelism Organization (DPE) - (my parent organization chartered with technology adoption) and the Enterprise Partner Group (EPG) - our global sales organization that has folks working with enterprises of all sizes around the world.

Having worked in the ISV space at Microsoft over the last 5+ years - I became aware of all the major issues and gaps in the current Microsoft ISV infrastructure which pose a barrier for startups. My experience over the last several years in trying to help startups make the required connections for success has put me in a unique position of understanding exactly what needs to be fixed. This is the task I chose to undertake over the last 2 years in the Emerging Business team.

As you can imagine - the process has been a long one. The key has been to get both business units (DPE and EPG) to realize that they have a common goal even though their objectives are different. The DPE organization had to realize that all their technology adoption efforts is really aimed at getting successful ISV scenarios (which implies companies eventually successful in the marketplace). The EPG organization based on their goals are very tactical and were traditionally interested only in situations that could bring revenue NOW. However its to that organization's best interest to also have a longer term view and put in place a process to nurture the next generation companies.

With a little bit of tenacity, I've gotten both organizations to focus - the EPG organization now realizes the startup ecosystem is where future revenue opportunities are going to come from in the next 3-5 years; and our DPE organization has realized it must go through the motions on making sure it provides the necessary infrastructure to make sure startups get on the latest technology quickly and are set up for future success in the marketplace.

We now have a well baked program which should assist strategic ISVs have a more predictable path through the ecosystem. I have defined a three stage process for this to happen:

(1) Defining Opportunities for ISVs in the Enterprise - the EPG organization has been investing resources over the last couple of years to determine the highest value gaps and opportunities that exist across various enterprise sectors. Our organization has collaborated with EPG in compiling these into "Enteprise Opportunity Maps" which are publicly available to ISVs, entrepreneurs, VCs and startups. If you're an entrepreneur wondering what the next opportunities are in the enterprise, you should check out these maps. Our organization will be making these available in the coming weeks and months.

(2) Validation with our Global Sales Force - once a company has begun to get some wins in the Enterprise, its best at this stage to find out what else they need to do to enhance their value proposition on the Microsoft stack. Each go-to market (GTM) segment identified by our EPG organization have global owners. My organization has been working collaboratively with these global leaders to advise strategic companies how to enhance their value proposition to make our field force excited. In many instances, this involves further integrations of our latest technologies to enhance the product line and upgrading any legacy technologies to the latest.

(3) Building an Engagement Plan - If there is consensus that the ISV solution represents a significant opportunity, the Enterprise Partner Group with their heavy footprint in enterprises can be a great avenue for scale and can assist startups go to market faster. In this stage of the process ,my organization works with the startup to put together a comprehensive engagement plan comprising of three components:

- A Business Development component - where we assess key programs the startup must align with to get traction in the ecosystem with our sales force

- A Technology Alignment \Development Component - where we spell out key enhancements to improve the product line. The plan typically includes timelines for adopting key technologies to enhance the value proposition

- A Sales Activation Component - commitments from the Enterprise Partner Group to expose the ISV solution to the worldwide marketplace

If a compelling plan is put in place, our organization will nominate the startup into our Accelerator program, where they will receive resources (and sometimes funding) to fast track the execution.

During the course of this past fiscal year, I took a number of startups through this process and they are now well on their way to success in the ecosystem. I will profile some of these great companies in the next few blogs.

Posted at 6/4/2009 10:49 AM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Under The Radar Cloud Summit Digest

Another belated conference digest (delayed due to me being down in the trenches with the Enterprise Incubation program I manage) :

A few weeks back I attended another great conference – the Under the Radar Cloud Summit in Mountain View, CA.
There’s been so much buzz about the Cloud in recent months with big players like Microsoft making a push into this new computing paradigm with its Azure Cloud platform, services and offerings.

Well, the Under the Radar organizers pulled in great set of companies from across the world (Spain, Russia to the United States). The event was packed – lots of VCs in attendance who are looking for the next big bets in investments.

A majority of the startups at the conference where infrastructure play companies in many areas like data storage and protection, managing cloud servers and virtualization.

Conference Logistics – Companies had to do an “elevator pitch” for a few minutes about their solution and why it was compelling. One of the things I loved about the format of this event was that they had a panel of industry experts and VCs who asked these companies tough questions about key competitors in the spaces, how companies plan to go to market and make money etc. There was also great audience interaction – each company was allowed to take a few questions from the audience – which was great. This was one key feature that I think was missing from the Finovate event ( a conference with a similar format that I just reviewed). The Finovate conference however had more in depth presentations from the companies and demos – which was missing from this event. My ideal conference would be a combination of the two – In depth presentations and demos(missing from Under the Radar), audience interaction and a panel of experts ( missing from Finovate but a great feature at the Under the Radar Cloud event).

Here are highlights of some of the startups that presented:

Abiquo - A startup based in Barcelona, Spain that are offering an open source cloud computing platform for managing virtual data centers. They are targeting enterprises who want to reduce costs by allowing technology like this to manage their complex inventory of information systems from one platform (networks, Apps, physical servers etc)

Cloud Kick – based in San Jose, CA. This company has a systems to manage Cloud Servers such as Amazon’s EC2.
The company has a monitoring solution to support production systems in the cloud as well as the ability to monitor the health of the servers and tools to keep information about what each server is doing. This company launched in March and in 3 months say they have gotten 1200 registered users and 6000 registered servers

Eucalyptus – Based in Santa Barbara, CA is a company that allows IT organizations to build and maintain on premise private and hybrid clouds. Their platform is an open source cloud infrastructure that supports multiple cloud APIs and virtualization platforms. The founder Rich Wolski who presented the solution is a Computer Science professor at the University of CA, Santa Barbara and the Eucalyptus solution originated from his research group.

He says he set out to build the “Linux of cloud computing” and the company is currently raising an Angel round of funding

Zimory – based in Berlin, Germany. Carsten Rudolph who manages the Microsoft Emerging Business ecosystem in Germany had asked me to look out for them at the conference. Their technology is aiming at enabling enterprises to make efficient use of their infrastructure resources – utilizing heterogeneous virtual servers across one- or -many data centers to build an “internal computing cloud”. This is a very interesting concept and definitely a company to watch. The cost savings and benefits in my opinion are obvious if this takes off – the big huddle this company is likely to face is convincing CIOs of large enterprises to put their enterprise data centers in

the cloud. I can see that happening with smaller companies looking to save costs and not wanting to worry about managing all their infrastructure with the added benefit of accessing their stuff anywhere – however in the immediate future I think this will be an uphill sell for large enterprises.

Twillo – San Francisco based company which hosts a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud. The company wants to allow web programmers to integrate real time phone calls into their apps. The company says its IP is patent pending and its

easy to use APIs should allow programmers to be able to build advanced voice communications applications that solve business problems. The founder used to be a Product Manager for Amazon’s web services division and also was the founding CTO of Stubhub, a $350M ticket exchange acquired by eBay in 2007.

Overall a great event, very well organized and a great pool of companies. Kudos to the Under the Radar organizers as they pulled of yet another insightful and successful event.

Posted at 5/13/2009 5:01 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Web Based and Online Startups Dominate Finovate Startup

A couple of weeks back I attended the Finovate Startup conference in San Francisco, which seems to be the premier event for new Financial Services innovations in the United States. There were a total of 55 startups presenting and showing demos at the conference from across the United States.

Conference Logistics – the format of this conference is similar to DEMO – each company gave a 5-7min pitch about their solution and tried to articulate what makes them unique and interesting. The only drawback is that there was no audience interaction and there was no panel to ask burning questions like how companies plan to go-to-market etc. However a great event overall with a wide spectrum of companies.

Key Insights – The entire Financial Services Industry is going through a transformation. I attended this event with colleague Victor Dossey, Strategist for the WW Financial Services Industry. What we saw were lots of startups with online or cloud type solutions with solutions which are really cannibalizing the main businesses of large banks and financial institutions as well as startups targeting consumers with online options to managepersonal finances ( where players like Intuit and Microsoft currently play).

There were also lots of Mobile Banking vendors – however majority of them have targeted the iPhone platform.
I only saw one with a Windows Mobile application – although all the companies I talked to expressed interest in building one for Windows Mobile. However it was clear this platform was not their main focus.

Here are a few interesting companies :

Mint.com – Mint.Com is a online personal finance service. I saw this company about a year back when they were just starting out. The company is now providing money management to over a million users and its services are free. I believe the company is targeting revenue through advertising and makes a fee for consumers adopting third party products and services. The company has some great investors – Benchmark Capital , Shasha Ventures and First Round Capital and has received great press coverage over the last year from Time Magazin, PC World, Kiplinger and has received two Webby awards.

MoBank – easy to use secure money management and mobile commerce application for the Smartphone.

Application looked great on the iPhone. This company was the Red Herring 2008 winner and are based in the
UK and US. Platform in non-Microsoft\heterogeneous. Their investors are the University of Oxford and 15
private seed investors and are located in Menlo Park and the UK

ZimpleMoney – SaaS company that aims to enable individuals, businesses, non profits administer financial agreements in a hosted, secure, private environment. Agreements include loans, leases, rents, billing, investments, contract collections and dedicated deposit plans, They’ve got apps like a Free Loan Tracker, Family and Friends Loan manager and a billing system. They are based in Costa Mesa California and have private investors.

Wesabe – based in San Francisco, this company has web based software to help consumers understand and manage their money. They’ve got a platform, Springboard consisting of personal finance management tools to financial institutions and their customers and also introduces social networking component with social personal finance community on the web. The company is funded by Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures and have raised about $5.7M in funding

SmartHippo.com – A social networking financial services company. This company has a platform aimed at empowering communities to save money when shopping for rates on financial products and services. This company is one of a growing list of companies giving consumers comparative shopping information when searching for financial services products. They list ING Direct and Fifth Third Bank as their current customers and are based
in San Francisco and Montreal , Canada.

Prosper – based in San Francisco, CA – allows consumers to bid on loans using their online auctioning platform. Auctioning and P2P lending seems to be another growing trend – I profiled another company MoneyAisle who are in the same
space but is more dynamic and interactive. Consumers create loan listings and set the maximum rate they are willing to pay and bid on loan listings they select. Lenders can bid down the interest rates and at the end of the auction, Prosper combines the bids with the lowest rates into one loan to the borrower and handles all on-going loan administration tasks. They unveiled some new product offerings at the conference and should be interesting to watch how they perform. They’ve got some high profile investors – Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital and Fidelity Ventures are among the investors.

Posted at 5/12/2009 1:28 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

SmartTouch SMS Browser - Redefining How We Will All Use SMS

As promised I will begin to profile some of the most interesting companies I met at the CTIA conference. One such is a great new San Diego startup called SmartTouch who are poised to take SMS to a whole new level with the introduction of their SMS Browser . I met the VP of Business Development at the conference who showed me a demo of this exciting new product.

The SmartTouch browser gives mobile users rich graphical access to their favorite web content and services entirely through SMS. There could be a huge market for this company as they target user without a data plan - which still happen to be the majority of all mobile phone users. In addition, given that no one has yet delivered a great mobile browser, there is also a potential to lure millions of consumers who are currently dissatisfied with their mobile browsing experience to their gateway to goods and services via their very easy to use SMS Browser.

The product I saw offers a seamless and graphical experience that shortcuts the inefficiencies of mobile web browsing. VP of Business Development Craig Braun says they've "wrapped shortcodes, keywords and SMS content in an interactive, intuitive, UI even our Moms can use" and based on what I saw this is indeed true.

Craig says the company's focus is on mobile users who want to do something specific, and do it quickly. Users who don’t want the whole web, but want to do simple things like updating Facebook, checking their account balance, ordering pizza, viewing their weather forecast, making purchases on Amazon etc. This of course happens to be majority of mobile phone users. Craig Braun says " SmartTouch is targeting mobile’s forgotten majority - those users without a data plan, or for people who are unsatisfied with the mobile browsing experience, SmartTouch is their shortcut to getting things done".

SmartTouch is currently enrolled in the Microsoft BizSpark program and was recently selected as "Startup Company of the Day" in February 2009

SmartTouch is based in San Diego, CA. You can find out more details about this company at http://www.smarttouchmobileinc.com/

Company Facts: John McDonough, CEO; Prashant Kantak, Strategic advisor; Craig Braun, Business development; Dave Change, Engineering lead

Posted at 4/26/2009 1:46 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Personalized Solutions: Making Money on Mass Customization

Last night I participated on a panel at the Fountain Blue High Tech Entrepreneurs Forum in Santa Clara, CA. There were a diverse set of entrepreneurs in the audience from folks starting new Web2.0 companies to folks in the Wireless\Mobile space. Linda Holrodyd CEO of Fountain Blue just sent me this nice summary of the event and some of the key take aways which I thought would be great to share:

• Facilitator Sara Rauchwerger, Managing Director, BG Strategy, Founder and Director, CCICE

• Panelist Rodney Bowen-Wright, Director, Business Development, Strategic and Emerging Business Team, Microsoft

• Panelist Leonard Greenberg, Founder and CTO of Assistyx LLC, past co-founder and CTO, Pathlore Software Corporation

• Panelist Henry Sang, Jr., Associate Director, HP Labs Technology Transfer Office, Hewlett-Packard Company

• Panelist Prashant Shah, Managing Partner, Hummer Winblad

Below are notes from the conversation.

With the rapid advancement of software solutions, the ready availability of storage space and technology tools, and the vast appetite for customized solutions, organizations large and small are cost-effectively providing customized, dynamically generated services to companies and individuals.

Thoughts on Providing Scalable Personalized Solutions

· The industry has evolved from providing one-size fits all SaaS (software as a service) solutions to providing APIs and other tools to make it easier for customers to customize the features.

· Architect your system well, to make it modular and customizable so that you can more effectively and nimbly serve the needs of your clients today and into the future.

o When architecting your system, consider which aspects of your solution should be static, and which parts modular and why. Consider also how this decision may need to change as you scale.

· With that said, don’t overdesign the code on the front end. Make it customizable so that customers can design it to THEIR needs. They may even have a different purpose in mind for your solution, which may open up new opportunities for new customers, new markets for your organization.

· Start always with the question ‘what is the problem you want to solve for whom’ and continue to focus on it.

· Making SaaS offerings which are modular and self-serve for customers is also easier and less expensive to support.

· Ensure that the service you’re providing: 1) has sound defensible technology, 2) has a market willing to pay for that value and 3) has a reasonable cost for customer acquisition.

· Plan for success and recognized the milestones for the next level of success. Plan your strategy based on those milestones, and proactively plan for the next growth point.

· It’s a good time to build a business! With the advances in technologies and online pay-as-you-go cloud and development offerings, the cost of building a personalized solution is much cheaper now than ever before. In addition, with the sour economy, the cost of great founders and staff is much more reasonable than in times of boom!

· Get your demo working and your first customer before seeking funding.

· Consider who your natural partners would be and integrate that into your strategy. It may be an exit option, a channel development opportunity, etc.,

· With that said, if you’re partnering with a natural partner that is a corporation, ensure that you have the resources to support potentially over-enthusiastic support of that corporation.

· Most generic concepts and ideas don’t need patents. For example, don’t get a patent for providing a SaaS model for ordering tickets, something other companies have been doing for quite some time. But do have enough patent protection to keep others at bay for a year or two.

· Secure a written release should you and your co-founders elect to go separate ways, to ensure that your company maintains full ownership and rights to any code developed during the partnership.

· Success in one vertical may position you for success in another one.

· In this market, ensure that your solution solves a real need – generating revenues, reducing costs. It may also be an inexpensive impulse buy.

· Ensure that your first customers don’t de-rail your overall company vision. If the ask for too much customized work, you might be in danger of becoming a custom-development house, for example.

Thoughts on Revenue Models for Personalized Solutions

· Selling personalized solutions month-to-month rather than in big installments may provide a conflict for sales execs.

· Having a hybrid of revenue models – both SaaS and single payment licenses may work for later stage companies, but bifurcating the revenue strategies may also strain the focus for early stage, resource-tight start-ups.

· Your sales strategy depends on your technology, your market, your cost for customer acquisition, etc., and should be fully in alignment with your overview company vision.

· Don’t count on the advertising model for revenue generation.

Thoughts on Opportunities Ahead

· With the rapid advancements in technology, there will be a fundamental shift in what we do with the data gathered from online behaviors. It will affect how we serve people, how we make decisions, what we are willing to share and why, etc., As this shift happens, who are the big players taking a leadership role in driving this shift, and what does this mean for YOUR start-up?

· As we collect more data on computer users’ behaviors, there will be a shift from more transactional to a more relationship-oriented strategy for interacting with clients. In other words, your personal shopper might not suggest another refrigerator for you, if you’ve just purchased one, but might start to understand you better as a consumer and build a profile of you which can help develop a relationship with you.

· Personalized intranet solutions are also a great opportunity. Be flexible about how you are going to solve the existing problem. Your personalized solution might be better suited for corporate intranets than consumer internets or vice versa.

FountainBlue fosters transformative leadership one conversation, one individual, one organization at a time through our monthly Silicon Valley events for clean energy, high tech and life science decision-makers, through dynamic communities, and through custom event consulting services.

For more information, visit http://www.fountainblue.biz or join the community at https://www.bigtent.com/groups/fountainblue

Posted at 4/14/2009 3:52 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

CTIA April 2009 Conference Digest

I attended the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas from April 1-3^rd. The show seemed much larger than the one I attended last fall in San Francisco. Contrary to all the media reports of an economic slowdown the entire city seemed to be buzzing – there were at least 4 conferences going on simultaneously and all the hotels seemed to be at capacity. This show seemed to be dominated by mobile phones and some new device releases from the likes of Samsung and LG.

On the first day of the conference, I walked around to different booths and checked out some of the new devices and also a few startups at the show. It seems the general sentiment among vendors was the notion that because of the current economic situation, consumers will not be shelling out money for new Smartphones – so most companies I talked to are hoping to sell applications through “mobile stores” probably due to the successful launch of Apples App Store and Microsoft’s recent announcement of the Windows Mobile Marketplace.

More big players are getting into the game. Research In Motion (makers of the Blackberry) used this conference to officially announced the launch of their Mobile App store which seems to have generated excitement among startups targeting business users with applications
.
There were some interesting new devices I checked out. The Samsung Impression and Magnet were two interesting devices. Being a business user, I liked the Impression phone better – it featured a slider design and a great display. The Magnet had a simpler design and both had a keyboard – which for me is a must. LG also release the Neon phone. This is an interesting device which seems to be a cross between an iPhone and a business phone (features a slider with a keyboard and a top display with touch screen icons – similar to what you will find on an iPhone).

Cool Startups I met at the conference:
The second day of the conference I reserved for meeting cool and innovative startups. The entire day was pretty much back to back meetings with the management teams of some very cool companies. In the next few blogs I will profile of some of the most innovative companies I met including Thumbplay, Swype, SmartTouch, 3 Deep,ExSafe and Amobee. Stay tuned over the next week or so as I profile these companies.

Posted at 4/9/2009 11:18 AM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Loss Prevention Technology For Retail Businesses - Agilence

Retail chains lose billions of dollars annually by items being stolen and slipping through Point-of -Sale cash registers. It is common in most retail stores for like Walmart, Target, Walgreens to see sophisticated camera systems implemented by in-house loss prevention teams at the point of sale terminals. Most are also using exception based reporting software to identify potential theft. Most of the these investments however exist in silos within these businesses, and are not fully integrated. Also, most of the exception based reporting systems implemented in these stores cannot do real time detection of lost items – but capture these after the fact.

Most of these businesses want to identify loss events early in the behavior cycle and correct them before a large scale loss occurs. Most of these reporting systems also only identify cashier thefts or “sweethearting”; however a lot of cases are also a result of lack of training, policy violations and operational inefficiencies.

Agilence has developed an operational intelligence solution that provides an answer to all these issues for Retail businesses. The Agilence solution combines point-of-sale data (and data from other systems) with raw video through item-level synchronization. Essentially their solution is capable of mapping key stokes at the point-of sales system with video. For example, for each key stoke on a typical receipt, the Agilence solution is capable of identifying an associated video frame or video sequence for the transaction.

This means typical fraudulent activities like the fraudulent use of someone’s credit card can be easily tracked by looking at video footage or frames associated with that particular transaction.
Most Retail businesses have already purchased the enabling systems (video cameras, reporting software) etc - Agilence just make them use those investments more effectively to identify fraudulent activities early.

The company is well funded by top tier VCs (Granite Ventures and Next Stage Capital) and in a couple of years have some impressive big name customers like Duane Reade and the Raley Supermarkets chain. Their video synchronization technology is patented and has applicability in other industries other than Retail. Retail however is the lowest hanging fruit and the company has decided to concentrate initial efforts in this industry. However they’ve also gotten other implementations of their technology in the transportation industry and recently added NJ Department of Transportation and MD Department of Transportation to their list of customers.

Technology Platform

The Agilence solution is developed entirely in Microsoft .NET framework 2.0, using tools like MSMQ and Microsoft web services. The solution runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases in a Microsoft Windows XP/Vista operating environment.

The market space is quite significant and I am currently working with the managment team of this company. Watch out for more updates as the productline is to be enhanced even further in the coming months with cutting edge Business Intelligence tools and more cool stuff using technologies on the Microsoft stack.

Find out more at http://www.agilenceinc.com

Posted at 3/23/2009 10:52 PM by Rodney Bowen-Wright | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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Rodney Bowen-Wright

Mobility & Vertical Markets

Rodney Bowen-Wright is a Director of Business Development and manages vertical markets and mobility portfolios in the Microsoft Emerging Business team. This includes vertical solutions targeted at Financial Services, Automotive, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical industries as well as horizontal solutions across industries...

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Recent Posts

NextPage - Groundbreaking Compliance and Risk Mgmt Based on SharePoint

June 11, 2009

GloStream - Transforming and Modernizing the HealthCare Industry with Microsoft Office Software

June 9, 2009

Lattice Engines Poised to Take Predictive Analytics Market by Storm

June 5, 2009

Connecting to the Microsoft Ecosystem 101

June 4, 2009

Under The Radar Cloud Summit Digest

May 13, 2009

Web Based and Online Startups Dominate Finovate Startup

May 12, 2009

Featured Startup

Avetrium Logo

The BizSpark startup of the day is Avetrium, based in Canada. You will find below an interview with Tim Smith, COO of Avetrium. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Rodney Bowen-Wright

Here are a few interesting companies :

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