Wins 7 of Top 10 Investment Banks as Customer and Highlighted Twice by Gartner
 Fractal:Edge Limited is harnessing fractal technology (the power of mathematically defined geometric curiosities) to solve the complex problem of how to present large amounts of data visually. Built using Microsoft® tools and the .NET framework, its Fractal Maps are dynamic displays that leave pie charts, bar graphs and pivot tables in the dust. Fractal Maps give users the ability to digest huge amounts of information faster and more easily than ever before. Explains Gervase Clifton-Bligh, Vice President of Product Strategy and Development, “People are having an increasingly difficult time turning the oceans of data now available to them into actionable information. And while the amount of data has grown massively over the last three decades, the way people access and examine the data has remained largely unchanged. So Fractal:Edge lets executives, managers, and analysts see hundreds of slices of information on one screen, allowing them to quickly and reliably identify facts and performance trends in their business.” So excited about the potential, Clifton-Bligh says he thinks “Fractal Maps are the most important development for GUIs since Windows 1.0.” The Microsoft Connection? The company met the Microsoft Emerging Business Team (EBT) through industry guru Esther Dyson who showcased its technology at her PC Forum event in 2003. EBT made introductions to the right product groups to help the company’s product development, and have also made introductions to Microsoft channel partners to help broaden its market reach. Right from its founding in 1999, the company said that from a user perspective it was essential to work with Windows and Internet Explorer technologies. “That’s pretty obvious,” says Clifton-Bligh, but more interesting is the fact that Excel and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 are the technologies most commonly used by its customers to store data for display in a Fractal Map. The company has specific editions of its enterprise products targeted at SQL users, and was a participant in the Microsoft Office 2007 Ascend Program. As a result of this participation, they developed an add-in for Excel 2007 that leverages the new pivot table controls, ribbon UI and open XML file format to let users quickly take advantage of Fractal Maps within that environment. By making Fractal Maps available as an add-in for Excel, the company has been able to extend the benefits of its technology to a much broader audience, and align itself closely with Microsoft’s positioning of Excel as a sophisticated reporting client for enterprise environments. Says Clifton-Bligh, of the role EBT has played, “In both cases connections established for us with the relevant product groups by EBT helped us develop a better product faster.” The company expects to start using more of the .NET Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation in its desktop products but, explains Clifton-Bligh, “The screen rendering speed we need means that our core Fractal Map components will have to stay in C++ for now.” Where are they now? Fractal:Edge has focused mostly on capital market. It has seven of the top 10 global investment banks as customers, including Citigroup, and a number of top investment managers, including Prudential. During the last year, the company started to move into other data intensive verticals such as retail, aerospace, and life sciences. It snagged Casas Bahia, the largest retailer in Brazil, as a customer, a large Japanese pharmaceutical firm and a large space exploration organization. “The best thing about the expansion into other verticals is that it has been driven by partners, and channel development is a key focus for us this year,” says Clifton-Bligh. “Of course we also love the fact that rocket scientists as well as businessmen are now using our technology.” Fractal:Edge was a finalist for Microsoft ISV Innovation Partner of the Year in 2007, and has been highlighted twice by Gartner in the last year, most recently at the Global BI Summit in Amsterdam, as one of a handful of upcoming vendors with technology capable of changing the business intelligence and corporate performance landscape. For the future, Fractal:Edge is looking to enable instant implementation of its products in a small selection of horizontal markets. Explains Clifton-Bligh, “We’re currently in the process of identifying the best host applications for Fractal Maps, the ones with the best market penetration and a progressive product strategy — the Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP products are definitely good targets.” For more information, visit Fractal:Edge online.
 Make your business run faster, with integrated financial data. That’s the value proposition of Star Analytics, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software to unify and share information across financial analysis applications. Its flagship product, Star Integration Server, allows corporations to extend the value of their investments in business intelligence and data warehousing. Star Integration Server is fully deployed in Fortune 1000 companies across a wide range of industries, and boasts more than 25 customers including Expedia, Levi’s, Mary Kay, Yahoo!, Symantec, Google, United Technologies, and Pfizer.
Founded in 2004, and funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, Star Analytics recently joined the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. From a Microsoft strategy point of view, Star Analytics allows us to integrate with and convert Oracle Hyperion databases (who currently own about 80% of the high end financial analytics space) to Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft PerformancePoint Server or native Excel Pivot Tables. Microsoft PerformancePoint is the office-based front end to this data once it is integrated or converted. Here is our conversation with Quinlan Eddy, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Star Analytics, as well as Suzanne Hoffman, Vice President of Worldwide Sales.
Microsoft Startup Zone: Our understanding is that you provide a comprehensive, integrated, and highly efficient development environment that allows companies to build products for the demands of an enterprise market quickly and efficiently. That offers great synergy with our heritage as the premiere development tool company in the world. Give us the 30,000-foot overview on your company? Quinlan Eddy: Star Analytics shares the premise with our clients that we need to ‘share’ finance and business intelligence data with a wider ecosystem, and make it deployable, usable, and maintainable throughout that wider ecosystem. What we're focusing on right now is the ability to tap into various enterprise software products, such as Oracle Hyperion, and make that financial data available for data warehousing and reporting solutions. That's our current product vision today, again with the focus on moving that strategy to other areas within the enterprise software marketplace. MSUZ: Why and when did you first choose the Microsoft platform? Eddy: We consciously made a choice to go with Microsoft as our primary development platform because of the flexibility that comes with the .NET Framework. .NET provides us a way to rapidly build highly extensible, highly functional code by using prepackaged processes. A lot of it is based around its plug-and-play components, and the whole Microsoft framework that has been very, very easy to use.” MSUZ: Was there one Microsoft technology that has been most critical to your business model—assume it was .NET? Eddy: Yes, relative to our current product development strategy, .NET has definitely been very critical. We do, however, work in a multi-platform environment where we need to have support for UNIX and Linux as well. For those environments, we interoperate between Microsoft and the native environment programming language, which might be, for example, C++. The flexibility that we get with .NET, plus capabilities such as the ability to spawn remote processes, has resulted in our using what we believe is one of the easier platforms for development. MSUZ: What kind of quantifiable benefits have you achieved by using Microsoft technologies, can you elaborate on this. Eddy: The ease of development inside of the Microsoft .NET platform has allowed us to build a full enterprise-class piece of software with a very limited number of developers. Our core technology was built with two developers, and that has been made available to a wide array of customers at this point. We’ve expanded our development staff since then, but back when we were first building the product, the.NET platform made it very easy for us to rapidly build software. MSUZ: How quickly were you able to get to market with your solution? Eddy: We came to market with our first release of the product probably four to five months after development or after the development initially began, and we actually had a GA product. MSUZ: What other Microsoft technologies are you looking at? Eddy: We continue to use SQL Server. .NET in conjunction with SQL Server has been very much a part of our development strategy. SQL Server has provided such things as the Express Edition, which allows us to bundle a ‘batteries included’ edition with our product, which eases the deployment of our software, so people can easily do proof-of- concepts or test out our software without going through a bunch of hurdles. The SQL Server platform will continue to be an important part of our development process. That's not to say that that will be the only relational database we support, but certainly it is the one with the least barriers to entry. Moreover, SQL Server is tightly integrated with the Analysis Services engine that is widely used and is one of the most powerful multi-dimensional databases in the market. As such, our product today can easily bridge multi-dimensional content from the Oracle Hyperion stack into the rich Microsoft relational and reporting environment with ease. Another product on the horizon is the Microsoft PerformancePoint Server. We plan to support that product in our development as well. Our plan is to provide and work with Microsoft, and to provide interconnectivity between Microsoft PerformancePoint Server and the wider ecosystem, including accessing applications from Oracle Hyperion. MSUZ: Is that underway now? Eddy: We have been in discussions with various people on the Microsoft PerformancePoint Server team for almost a year now. We’re optimistic about pursuing some joint customer opportunities later this year. MSUZ: If you had to do it over again, would you still select the Microsoft platform? Eddy: Absolutely. Again it's the ease of deployment or development that has really allowed us to be as nimble and agile as we are, while still developing high quality code in a limited amount of time. MSUZ: So, is there anything else that you would like to add? Suzanne Hoffman: I think that there's a great deal of synergy that will occur as PerformancePoint moves forward as the business intelligence strategy for Microsoft. For us to be able to work more closely with Microsoft’s field organization is critical — to enable interoperability between Microsoft’s customer base and the different financial applications that they have, and be able to migrate information from their legacy systems, from their Oracle Hyperion environments into their more forward-thinking Microsoft environments. I think that's really where the market is going and how we're going to help integrate. We want to be able to help drive performance and integrate more effectively with the Microsoft environment and their customer base moving forward. Why is this important? What’s often overlooked is how much technology innovation is being driven by finance departments inside these corporations. Visionaries inside finance departments are creating cutting-edge applications that help decision makers anticipate trends, adapt to dynamic changes in the business, and make rapid decisions that influence long-term profitability. There’s a very interesting discussion about this on a blog at http://www.financeinnovators.blogspot.com. We believe technology from Star Analytics and Microsoft will drive the next generation of these systems and raise the bar for effective performance management. We know that Microsoft holds this vision as well. One last point, we represent a great opportunity for the Microsoft partner base to be able to take advantage of our technology as well the Microsoft environment and offer game-changing functionality to their customers. We enable Oracle Hyperion customers to migrate to Microsoft PerformancePoint and become more nimble. As a software company we are not really delivering the services to implement PerformancePoint. We’re the first thing that partners who are implementing PerformancePoint are going to want to utilize to get financial data out of their legacy systems. It’s the broader Microsoft ecosystem that we impact. So, it's not just Microsoft, it's not just the customers, but it's the partner enablement, and it's also anybody who has access to the financial information or needs access to the financial information; we're enriching their ability to have an enterprise view. Quinlan Eddy’s Background
Quinlan began his career in financial and consolidations systems at Citibank as a financial analyst in Singapore where he pioneered the use of Essbase for Citicorp as a corporate standard. He joined Arbor Software in 1994, prior to its IPO and subsequent merger with Hyperion Solutions. At Arbor, Quinlan served many different roles in pre and post sales consulting, quality assurance and as Channel Sales Manager, North Pacific Rim where he managed sales and services for over 320 customers. In 1998 he founded OLAP Online, a consulting company based in Tokyo, Japan. Since then he has been one of the leading consultants in the Hyperion BPM market. He has over 15 years of experience with the Hyperion product suite and has provided consulting services to over 80 companies in 11 countries. He holds five Business Intelligence-related professional certifications and a BS in Business Administration from the University of Vermont.
Suzanne Hoffman’s Background
Suzanne has more than 25 years of Business Intelligence sales and sales management experience. For that past eight years, Hoffman has served as vice president of global sales with both publicly held and private companies, primarily in the Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing markets including: Applix, Metaphor (IBM), and most recently, HyperRoll. She spent five years with Arbor Software and Hyperion in both direct and channels as a regional and global manager. She has a degree in Economics and Mathematics from Smith College and a Certificate in Management from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.  For more information, visit Star Analytics online.
 The way digital identities are used and managed has become a strategic imperative. And one that Ping Identity set out to address—developing the world’s first rapidly deployable identity federation software, PingFederate. It provides users throughout an organization with safe access to Internet applications without the need to re-login.
Ping Identity’s dedication to delivering secure Internet single sign-on software and services for more than 250 customers worldwide has established the company as a market leader in federated identity management. With PingFederate and PingEnable, Ping Identity’s expert support, services, and methodologies, external connections can be operational in less than a week. Here is our conversation with Patrick Harding, Chief Technology Officer at Ping Identity. Microsoft Startup Zone: Ping Identity's partnership with Microsoft has resulted in multiple points of interoperability between your products and ours. Based on your experience, what advice would you give to startups that are evaluating whether to build Microsoft interoperability into their products? Patrick Harding: I believe Microsoft interoperability is a must, not a should. With Microsoft's market share, you really ignore Microsoft at your own peril. So I think that Microsoft itself has actually come around slowly to realizing, and this goes back over 20 years, that it will never be 100 percent of all of the IT spend within any organization, and that they're going to have to live with the fact that these organizations are going to have heterogeneous environments. I think that has been partially in response to their customers, and Microsoft has made a far greater effort to ensure that their products can be integrated with non-Microsoft infrastructure and applications. To Microsoft's credit, they've done this by leveraging standards that they might develop, or that other people develop, which really reduces the cost of doing that interoperability for all involved, including themselves. So given any startup with a technology that's coming to market, more likely than not, it will need to integrate with other things. And more likely than not one of those things is going to be some sort of Microsoft product. It's not even a question anymore that they must build Microsoft interoperability into whatever they're developing. MSUZ: Could you share with us what you learned from producing the Open Source CardSpace C Library, and what are the expected benefits for you and other startups? Harding: Yes, we’ve actually developed a number of open source tools in both Java and C that can be used to interoperate with Microsoft products. So the Open Source CardSpace C Library was actually maybe the fourth or the fifth time we'd done something very similar. We did this because we found that the specific technologies that we've built Open Source, Java and C alternatives for have tended to be technologies in the early adoptive phase. So we've done this primarily to educate ourselves as well as to gather market feedback on the utility, and the readiness of these technologies. We find that by developing something ourselves—even if it's just for our own internal experimental use—is the best way to learn about these new technologies that are in the early adopter phase. And that by open sourcing them, and making them available to the public at large, we get feedback, and this can actually drive lead generation for us, and things like that. MSUZ: So what are the benefits for other startups? Harding: We’ve done it partially to gather this feedback, so it's lead generation, it's market feedback, and we do this before we start commercializing this technology in our own products. So it's really our first opportunity to put our toe in the water and get a feel for what the market thinks of this stuff. I think Microsoft has realized that not everybody can deploy some of these new technologies on Microsoft infrastructure, and that non-Microsoft tools are very valuable for promoting these new technologies, so they can really be shown to work in this heterogeneous environment that Microsoft has realized is out there and important. MSUZ: What impact has Microsoft's posture on OpenID and Information Cards had on the development of these emerging technologies, and what do you believe their future trajectory is? Harding: We’re very positive on Microsoft's posture here. We have worked very closely with Microsoft on the Information Card Initiatives from the very beginning. We really partnered with Microsoft to ensure that there are Java alternatives, and have helped promote that technology. So I am very positive about the trajectory of information cards, in terms of where it's going. It has a much longer timeframe attached to it to really see some market share—that’s because of its inherent nature. It is somewhat disruptive to the way people are used to doing things. MSUZ: How far out do you see? Harding: Our expectation is we'll start to see people actually leveraging this in GA and applications next year, in 2009. I think the market, in relation to information cards, has been waiting for Microsoft to release their CardSpace Server, which I think will complete the two sides of what they need, including the CardSpace Client. That I think, in and of itself, will start to make people feel comfortable that Microsoft is really behind this. That's why we're thinking that next year is when we'll start to see more deployment of this stuff, and I see it really starting to take off in 2010. From an OpenID perspective, I think the fact that Microsoft has started to embrace it is very positive. We have been involved in OpenID since early on, and have implemented an Open ID provider as an experiment, really to ensure that we understand the ramifications of that technology. The fact that Microsoft is involved here now, I feel more comfortable that it's going to be taken in a direction that will make it more useful in the enterprise setting, that the PIN tends to target. And that's where we actually really focus our technology, and that's where our market is. Again, very positive on Microsoft's involvement, and the fact that Microsoft is embracing this technology, and Open ID, again, is something that going forward will serve a different market segment, and serve a different need, but will be very important as a component of the identity meta-system that Kim Cameron [Chief Architect of Identity in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft] likes to talk about. For more on Microsoft’s OpenID strategy. MSUZ: Which Microsoft technologies do you plan to support or integrate in the future (if any), and why? Harding: In the context of Internet identity and Internet single sign-on, we've already integrated with a bunch of Microsoft technologies, including .NET, and Internet Information Server (IIS), SharePoint, CardSpace, ADFS, Active Directory—it's a lot that we've integrated with. As we look toward the future, there are a number of reasons for us to integrate with Microsoft technology. First, there are strategic reasons, an example CardSpace . A second reason is driven to us by our customer base. That's why I think as Ping Identity starts to think about issues around Internet provisioning, and federated authorization, we'll start to look at other Microsoft technologies—as an example, the Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) product. We'll have to look at the Authorization Manager (AzMan) product and the ADFS V2 when it comes out next year. I think we'll also be moving toward thinking about the cloud model that Microsoft has in terms of running services in the cloud, both the equivalent of Office in the cloud. We've been asked to integrate with Microsoft Live, and the Live team, and the partners that Microsoft Live has in the consumer space. Then also BizTalk Services, which I think is a new cloud computing initiative that's occurring within Microsoft, as well. So as I said, Microsoft touches everything in some way, and given the nature of the departmentalized enterprise, and the nature of distributed applications, and the fact that everybody wants these things to work together, and it's always going to be heterogeneous, we'll have a role in integrating these things together. MSUZ: What one thing could Microsoft do better that would help startups out technically? Harding: Just continue to be as open with their APIs, and interfaces, as possible, to foster interoperability, full stop. I think that fostering relationships with startups that are willing to reach out to them, and having an avenue for these startups to reach out to Microsoft really helps foster a lot of creativity and a lot of value in the marketplace. Patrick Harding's Background
 Patrick Harding is the Chief Technology Officer of Ping Identity, responsible for Ping Identity Labs, emerging technologies, architecture and standards, and developing the technology strategy for the company. Previously, Harding was a VP and the Security Architect (Enterprise Architect Division) at Fidelity Investments where he was responsible for aligning identity management and security technologies with the strategic goals of the business. Harding was instrumental in the implementation of federated identity technologies at Fidelity -- from concept to production. Harding has over 15 years experience in software development, networking infrastructure, and information security. His industry experience includes financial services, travel services, and consulting. Harding has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
 For more information, visit Ping Identity online or read the success story "Ping Identity Secures Your Digital Identity.”
 In early August 2008, Kris Olson stopped by the Cambridge Mass office of Dharmesh Shah, Chief Software Architect and Founder of Hubspot. Hubspot is designed to provide “a (killer) marketing application and great advice to small businesses enabling them to ‘get found’ by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers.” Dharmesh has founded three startups and chose .NET for Hubspot. His advice to startups: choose a platform that removes the technology risk; don’t pick something on the bleeding edge that will not necessarily be around in 5-7 years. Choose a platform that helps you get to market as fast as possible. Hear why Dharmesh likes Microsoft technology for his startup; read the full transcript below. (Dharmesh also has a great blog on startups called, what else, On Startups).
Kris Olson, Microsoft Startup Zone: I'm Kris Olson with Microsoft's Emerging Business Team, and I'm here today with Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot. We're in lovely Cambridge, Massachusetts—we'll see if we can see this out the window for a sec—right across from Boston, great weather, and this is Dharmesh's second startup? Dharmesh Shah: This is my third officially. Olson, MSUZ: So, Dharmesh, can you tell us a little bit just about what—tell us about yourself for a second, first, and then a little bit about Hubspot, what it is, what it does, so people get the context. Shah: Sure. I'm a career software startup guy. So, I did my first startup back in 1994, which I ran as a CEO and founder for 10 years, and sold it. More recently—I sold that company, went to MIT for grad school, focusing on entrepreneurship and business essentially, so graduated there a couple of years ago. And my current startup, called Hubspot, is a small business market software platform that's provided on an on-demand basis. Olson, MSUZ: And it helps people— Shah: It helps people find more customers online. So, if you're a small law firm or you're a small consulting firm or you're an enterprise software company, it helps you use the Internet to get more customers to your Web site, and just basically convert them, and so you can find more customers online. Olson, MSUZ: Yeah, I looked at it for our Web site actually. Okay, so, what we wanted to talk to you a little bit about was what you are using, what's Hubspot using for technology, so both to build your Web site and to run it. Shah: Yep. So, the Hubspot software originally was actually started when I was in grad school. So, to rewind a little bit, so my first startup I had 15 years of experience on the Microsoft platform. I've been using Microsoft technologies for most of my professional career. So, when I first started software for my current startup, Hubspot, it was all built on the Microsoft stack. And my rationale for that was twofold. One is it's a relatively good, safe bet, in my mind, for startups, because from a business perspective, and I'm a practical business kind of guy, it just makes sense to pick something that you know that you're going to be productive in, number one; and then number two is pick a language platform and an ecosystem that you know is going to be around, because, you know, you see lots of religious kind of platform and language wars going on. I think that's a nonproductive use of founder time to try and get to those choices; pick something that's relatively safe that you know you're going to be productive, and get started, which is essentially what Hubspot did. So, we picked—or I picked the Microsoft platform then, and kind of grew the software from there. Olson, MSUZ: So, what particular software do you use—did you use to build the site? You mentioned .NET. What else? Shah: Yeah, so we picked an Open Source platform, .NET for some of the core kernel type stuff, but we use C# as our primary language, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server happens to be our database, Windows 2003 is the primary production servers. So, that's up and down the stack I think that's -- Olson, MSUZ: So, what have been the benefits for you of using that: time, money? You know, what— Shah: Yeah, so the interesting thing about the Microsoft stack, in my mind, is that the constraints are actually valuable in terms of, okay, so once you make that particular choice, you know, the database and the language and the operating system and all these things kind of fit well together. You're not going off and saying, okay, well, there are times when you don't want 14 choices for a given later in the stack. There are times when, you know, having that decision kind of premade or having an optimal decision already there saves a bunch of time in terms of trying to figuring out tradeoffs. I think options are nice in some regards, but a lot of times they're just a waste of time, because you have to make a bunch of selections. And the database and the language and the platform overall on the Microsoft stack work well together, so it was— Olson, MSUZ: So, that saved you—that was faster for you to get to market? Shah: Yeah, it was—our time to market was, you know, in our minds, crucial. I think it's important for lots of startups, which is essentially today in the software business—this is one of the things that I addressed in my graduate thesis was we don't have a kind of—kind of a technology challenge anymore. It's not—people can write the software, can build a product; the issue that most startups face is a market adoption problem. It's market risk, not technology risk. And so the idea is to kind of get a product out there as quickly as possible, and figure out and get that market risk out of the equation as early as possible. And so what the Microsoft stack did for us is essentially allowed us to get something to market very, very quickly, and then figure out whether people would actually pay for what we were building, and learn that as soon in the process as possible, rather than two years into it. So, we wanted to get something out there quickly, which we did, and Microsoft was a good choice for that. Olson, MSUZ: What piece of technology in the Microsoft stack is the most important to you or the most strategic to you? Shah: That's a very good question. I think I'd probably say C# the language is probably the most important, because I think that's what led to a lot of the personal productivity in terms of I was a bit C++ guy. I think the language is a first class language. So, there were no real downsides to that. And the second would probably be the .NET platform more broadly in terms of the APIs are robust, it does the stuff we need it to do. So, those are probably the top two. Olson, MSUZ: Have you added in other technology as you've grown or the product has gotten bigger, or do you interoperate with any other technology? Shah: We do. So, we've actually had—and so the original decision was four years ago, and the actual startup didn't—or the company didn't start until two years ago, but more recently we've started to introduce some Open Source technologies, PhP and Java being the primary ones, kind of into the Hubspot mix. The motivation for that is interesting. It's what we're finding now is that as we're out there recruiting and bringing employees on, we're finding folks that are more familiar, more comfortable, and quite candidly want to work on Open Source technologies. And so one of the prices that, you know, we paid, and we're trying to kind of balance that out a little bit, is that there are some people that are awfully passionate about Open Source technologies, and say, okay, well, I love Hubspot, love what you guys are doing over there, but I just can't—I mean, I've heard this from, you know, candidates and recruits, but, you know, I just can't see myself working on a closed source product. And so we've been more open to kind of bringing in some of the Open Source technologies into the—kind of the Hubspot mix of things, and say, okay, well, let's try it, let's find out, you know, what the kind of tradeoffs are and play it through. Olson, MSUZ: So, it's helped you recruit certain key engineers that you really wanted? Shah: It has. And then—and the second part of it, and one of the arguments in favor of some of the Open Source things, is that we're seeing an increased need to run things in the cloud, right? So, that's been one of the primary kind of instigators, just like, okay, well, we have—as far as a lot of our back-end stuff we do some relatively heavy duty kind of computationally intensive, bandwidth intensive things that we want to run, so we use Amazon's EC2 right now for some portion of our kind of server side stuff, and in order to kind of take advantage of some of the cloud computing stuff right now, de facto you're going to have to pick some kind of Open Source type stuff in order to get that to happen. So, that's part of the value that we get out of taking some portion of our core server side stuff and moving them to Java, let's say, because it's just so much easier— Olson, MSUZ: To find an open cloud—a cloud platform for them. Shah: Yeah. Olson, MSUZ: So, if they're a cloud platform built from Microsoft stuff, that would make it maybe— Shah: It would be hugely attractive, yeah. So, if I were, you know, providing advice to Microsoft, one of my key things would be strike some higher end partnerships where like folks like Amazon or those that are getting into the cloud computing platform, you know, support, you know, the Microsoft stack as easily. So, for instance, right now I can fire up an EC2 instance with, you know, Java, PHP, and MySQL in minutes right now. I can't accomplish the comparable thing with the Microsoft stack. I can't say, give me a Windows 2003 Server with this version of SQL Server, and .NET version X, and just spin it up in 30 seconds. It doesn't exist yet. It could; it just doesn't. Olson, MSUZ: Got it. I guess in the future are there other technologies you're thinking of moving to or adopting, or are there Microsoft things you're looking at? Shah: So, it's interesting. So, we deal primarily in the small business communities. One of the things that—so two things. Number one, the parts of Microsoft that are the most interesting for us from a technology perspective are anything related to small business. So, as kind of Microsoft Office evolves is, you know, better integration into things that small business owners are using, and Microsoft Corporation has a very large footprint there. And the second thing is because we're in the Internet marketing business is connectivity into kind of the search group and what Microsoft is doing with kind of Live and MSN Search and those kinds of things, and the APIs that are opening up there. One of the things I kind of like about being on the Microsoft stack there is that naturally Microsoft is going to open up or make it easier or simpler to get started if you're on the .NET platform;, you know, there is—there's an advantage there to us as well, so we're following that. Olson, MSUZ: Okay. So, one other question for you Dharmesh, is, did you guys ever look at something like Salesforce.com as a platform? Shah: We did. So, Salesforce.com has been kind of spreading the message around platform as a service, and they've got App Exchange and lots of money in PR, and investment going into Salesforce App Exchange. And the reason we're—we weren't interested or I didn't really pick it, because I think from a strategic perspective for a startup, picking a company like Salesforce.com as a platform provider is a relatively dangerous bet. And the reason I say that is because although it's—you can build a company relatively quickly, there's lots of things that Salesforce.com would kind of bring to the table, I think there is an upper limit to the kind of company that's going to be built on a platform like that, like App Exchange. So, I can envision a company growing to 10, 20, $50 million in revenue, and they have access to a market, they can get started very quickly, it's a great way to get started. I can't envision as it currently stands App Exchange as a true blue platform on which I would build a startup or build a—you know, I want to build great, big, successful companies, and I don't see App Exchange as a platform like that, and I don't see Salesforce.com as a platform provider the way I see Microsoft. I think one of the things that Microsoft has done exceptionally well over decades is demonstrated the ability to make software developers' might. So, you can build companies, and people have built hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of businesses on top of the Microsoft platform, and I don't think they have been worried, because there's been oceans of opportunity to create very, very successful companies. You're not, you know, gated by some upper limit that I think exists on things like App Exchange. I just—that could change in a decade. Right now if I were a startup founder, which I have been, looking to build an exceptionally big business, the kind of billion dollar category, I just don't think the likelihood of that on App Exchange exists right now. Olson, MSUZ: You might have answered this question already, but what—if you were going to give advice to an entrepreneur who's just starting his or her first startup, how do you make a platform selection? What would you consider? Shah: Yes. So, my answer is to be practical in terms of if you are a startup person, I think you have to make practical choices. And when you're making those choices, think three, five-plus years out, because if you're a software founder, the reality is when you build a software company, your margins really start showing up in the later years. So, you want to build up on something that essentially you have compelling evidence that it's going to be around and still quote/unquote in fashion, and that you're going to be able to find resources, you're going to be able to find support and third parties to kind of help you keep that company going. So, that's number one is be practical, don't get into religious battles around language and things like that. In the long run those things rarely end up mattering a whole lot. What does matter is longevity. So, you want to make kind of a relatively safe choice, and that's why I like Microsoft and things with large ecosystems that, you know, it's a relatively safe bet. So, that's number one. And number two is, you know, software time to market. And so what—so this is one of the reasons I am very shy of kind of truly cutting-edge, like oh my God, you know, this is the most exciting language platform in the world, and it's in beta build 362. I just don't think startup founders should take that risk. I think it's picking technologies because you want to learn something, because it's cool, all those things are great. If you're looking to build a business, my advise would be make the practical choice, something that's going to be around five years from now, because you want your business to be around five years from now, and something that you can get a product to market, in production relatively quickly. That's not the time to beta test software; it's the time to make money and profits and test out your market. So, that would be my advice is be practical and choose wisely. Olson, MSUZ: Cool. Shah: Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about the startup market. So, while I spent a year working on my grad thesis, kind of looking at the economics of the software business, particularly for startups, and the conclusion I arrived at was that—so, if you divide the software industry or the software market into three categories, one is enterprise software, you write software for really big companies, and sell it for hundreds or thousands or millions of dollars. Lots of money got made in the '80s and '90s in the enterprise software market. I don't think there's that interesting of a market anymore for startups. And the reason I say that, it's really hard to break into that market now. Enterprise buyers have lots of power and influence. It's just really hard to get started and break into that particular market. Then you look at the flip side of it, you look at the consumer Web market or consumer software market, most of that is Web-based now. The issue that I have with the consumer Internet market, which is great, lots of fun, exciting things happening there, but most of those business models are all advertising subsidized. So, you have this kind of binary startup model that's like either you're going to make it big because you're going to become a YouTube and sell for a billion-plus dollars, or you're going to crash and burn because you had no revenue in between, there was no kind of step-wise in that you slowly start making money. And so I'm a big advocate of the small business market. And the reason I say that is because it has the attraction of the consumer Internet market or the consumer software market, because there's lots of potential customers, hundreds of thousands and millions of customers, but it doesn't have the economic problem in terms of you can actually write small business software that you charge real money for and sell it to real businesses. So, I think that's where the real market opportunity is for I think lots of startups, and lots of money that will get made over the next decade. This is another reason why I think Microsoft is an interesting choice for startups, because Microsoft has—similar to how they had in the kind of Windows world, from a platform perspective they had all these customers that when you wrote for Windows, you had access to this market for your Windows software. Microsoft has such a strong presence in the small business community from a marketing and presence perspective, startups that choose Microsoft or kind of partner with Microsoft on that have access to a market I think that's very interesting. So, I think my advice to startups would be take a look at the small business community as a potential market, and see if there are solutions you can build on that, in that category. And if you're looking to build it in the small business, there are very few companies that have the reach in that market that Microsoft does. Olson, MSUZ: Great. Well, thanks. I really appreciate the time. Shah: Thank you, thank you.
Dharmesh Shah’s Background
Prior to HubSpot, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, an enterprise software company selling to large financial services companies. Pyramid was a three time winner of the Inc. 500 award and an industry leader in providing innovative web applications available to millions of consumers. The company was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. Prior to Pyramid Digital Solutions, Dharmesh held a number of technology management and development positions. Dharmesh also runs OnStartups.com, an online community for entrepreneurs, which is one of the top 10 most read startup blogs and receives over a thousand visitors a day. Dharmesh holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Alabama and an M.S. in the Management of Technology from MIT. For more information, visit Hubspot online.
 Kris Olson stopped by the Aras headquarters in Andover Mass in early August to talk to Marc Lind, VP Marketing. Marc covered Aras’s choice of .NET for their SaaS application; their decision to drop Oracle as a platform and support only Microsoft (research showed that all companies small to enterprise had Microsoft-knowledgeable IT staff)—a decision which has paid off for them by clearly qualifying prospects; and finally their decision to turn their product into an open source offering – another decision that has paid off with increased revenues: CTOs no longer need to fork over $500K to start—they can download the product and get real business value before buying support and services. Hear it in Marc’s words or read the transcript below.
Kris Olson, Microsoft Startup Zone: Hi. I'm Kris Olson from the Microsoft Emerging Business Team, and I'm here today with Marc Lind, who is the vice president of Marketing from Aras Software. And Marc is going to talk to us about what software they use from Microsoft, and a bunch of other cool things about his company. Marc.
Marc Lind: Thanks, Kris. So, I'm Marc Lind. I'm the head of Marketing for Aras Corporation, and I have a background in industrial engineering, and find myself here in the high tech enterprise software world for the past 15 years. So, I am attuned to the different dynamics that are going on in our Marketplace, and the implications that those have for startups all over the world, because we are a startup. We've been in business for a while, but we are venture funded, and are growing here as an enterprise Open Source company that's enabled exclusively on the Microsoft platform, so that's a bit different as well. And there are really a lot of benefits that combining Open Source with the Microsoft platform have brought to the equation for our company, and so I'm going to talk a bit about that as we go through. Olson, MSUZ: So, first you want to tell -- just talk -- what's Aras? Tell people a little bit about what you do, what the company does. Lind: Certainly. We're an enterprise software solution provider and the type of software is product lifecycle management. So, it helps companies manage their product development and quality compliance processes, assisting companies like Motorola, Lockheed Martin, Delphi, Ingersoll Rand, so enterprise companies, as well as smaller businesses like Fox Electronics and Acco Swingline, the staplers. And these companies are trying to innovate and collaborate more effectively, managing things like their bills of materials and their specifications and the change processes associated with these through the development process, and Released to Manufacturing overseas. So, our software enables them to manage these processes more effectively. Olson, MSUZ: What software did Aras use to build your solution—to build it and run it.? Lind: Well, we've used Visual Studio Team System for the development of our applications, and we use the SQL Server, Windows Server, .NET Framework for the underlying foundation, with integrations to MOSS or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and some of the other Microsoft products like -- well, we have Office Business Application capabilities with Excel, Word, Outlook, and PerformancePoint for dashboarding. So, we really take advantage of the different Microsoft products that can enable our customers to have better manageability and visibility into their processes. Olson, MSUZ: So, how did you guys choose Microsoft as your platform? Lind: Well, what we did was we initially had developed multi-platform. So, we were on J2EE, Oracle, and IBM WebSphere, as well as having an offering simultaneously on the Microsoft technologies that I spoke about. We were looking at picking a platform here after a couple of years of development and sales, and what we found was that companies, enterprise customers, as well as small businesses, were really asking for the Microsoft technologies, and that really helped us make our mind up, and we heard the same thing over and over again, which is that companies had their big, monolithic systems in, and that they were enabling key business processes using the Microsoft technologies. Olson, MSUZ: So, basically when you were selling to IT pros, that Microsoft technology was pretty prevalent there? Lind: Yes. Basically what we found was that every company, large or small, had people on staff that knew the Microsoft platform technologies. So, they were familiar with SQL, with working with .NET, with the Office capabilities, and with other server products in the back office, and with Visual Studio. So, what we concluded after talking with a lot of different companies was that looking at other technologies, some of the Open Source technologies, as well as the Oracle and the IBM technologies, not everybody had the skill sets necessary to deploy and take advantage of, you know, our solutions if we were on other platforms, whereas with Microsoft every company that we talked to across the board around the world had Microsoft skill sets; it's really prevalent. Olson, MSUZ: So, earlier we were talking a little bit about database choice, that maybe SQL, SQL Server is the most important Microsoft technology you're using? Lind: Yes. We had enabled on the Oracle database previously, as well as Progress and SQL Server, and that was prior to the release of SQL Server 2005. And what we found was that this was simultaneous with our dropping support for the other platforms. SQL Server's 2005 release was really the pivot point for us. The capabilities are really a significant advancement over the previous capabilities in SQL Server. So, it's given us and our customers enterprise scalability, manageability, as well as security, which are really key, because our applications not only can be deployed on-premise but also up in the cloud, and companies need to be able to have that confidence and assurance, as well as the scalability that's associated for say a multi-tenant operation. Olson, MSUZ: And are you using SQL Server 2008 at this point or planning to? Lind: We've enabled on SQL Server 2008. The business intelligent capabilities in the new SQL Server are really important to us. These are something that we look to take advantage of here, and increasingly embed into the application. But at this point what we've done is ensure that our solutions run on SQL Server 2008. Olson, MSUZ: And so no second -- I mean, no looking back and wishing you'd stuck with Oracle for your customers? Lind: No, not at all. We have found that the move to exclusively support the Microsoft platform is one of the best moves we've ever made. What we really had keyed up on was the ability for us to sell, and the technology, by utilizing the Microsoft platform, has really enabled us to drive revenue and increase our momentum in the Marketplace, because of the pervasiveness not only of the IT skill sets, which I was talking about before, but also basically every company either already has Microsoft technologies or has purchasing agreements with Microsoft or one of their resellers, so it's very easy for them to get it. And they trust it, they're qualified platforms within companies. So, at the enterprise level they've qualified on all these different platforms from Microsoft across the board. In smaller companies they already have them running and have confidence in them, and that's important to us. Olson, MSUZ: So, tell us -- you made another decision that was really important to your company about going Open Source. Can you talk a little bit about what that means for Aras? You know, it's not just Open Source, but how you did it, and what the rationale was. Lind: Yeah, sure. So, we have taken a bit of a twist here insomuch as we took our enterprise solutions and we Open Sourced those, but exclusively on the Microsoft technologies, which is a bit different than most of the other Open Source companies out there. This was a decision that we made from a business standpoint because we saw it was a compelling format to customers and very disruptive to competitors. Our solutions are a modern, model-based enterprise SOA, so they can be deployed either on-premise or in the cloud, which means that we were making a decision on whether to keep it proprietary and have it hosted up in the cloud as a multi-tenant solution, or -- and this is what we wound up deciding, to Open Source it and make it freely available, and then to use a Red Hat business model where what we're doing is selling the enterprise software maintenance or support subscriptions, consulting and training. And this has really been a dramatic increase in our sales and probably one of the profound movements that we've made with the business to ensure the fastest path to profitable growth. Olson, MSUZ: So, Marc, so why have your customers -- why have you gotten more customers, and why have your revenues increased since you went Open Source? That's really interesting to me. Lind: Well, what we found is that the Open Source business model is very appealing to enterprise customers, as well as to midsized companies. The fact that they don't have to go get a capital budget, that there's no upfront capital that's necessary in order to begin using the software, and solving real business problems, has been very appealing. What this means is that we're selling support subscriptions, effectively enterprise software maintenance, so they can purchase the subscription agreement when they receive value. So, it's real risk sharing with the customer as opposed to a kind of one-sided relationship that most enterprise software vendors, even the SaaS vendors have, where you have to pay a fair amount of money in order to even get access to the software or make long term commitment, when you don't know whether it's going to work for you. With the Open Source business model you basically have access to the software, you can make sure that it's going to work for your company, that you can prove it out, and then you can acquire the services that you need and the support on a pay-go basis, so to speak. Olson, MSUZ: And so why does this work better than doing a sampling or a trial version or an express version or some sort of limited version compared to just pure Open Source give it away? Lind: Yeah, sure. What we found was that especially for applications where you're going to have a lot of users, like our application, customers are smart; they basically would say, "aha, this is a gotcha," that they would recognize if it was a crippled version of some sort, that they would have to pay and probably pay substantially, you know, when they got the software that they really wanted. And by using a Red Hat business model, what we've been able to do is make the software readily available to everybody, so that they can download the enterprise production ready system with complete access for unlimited users, and that basically means that everything else is optional, and it's their prerogative what they purchase. So, they can use the software forever and never talk to us, but effectively people just pay for our time. They are more than willing to engage for value-added services like support subscriptions where you have security patches, hot fixes, certified versions of the software, live hotline is very important, especially to bigger companies, and then other things that are bundled in there, things like productivity utilities that help IT administrators. So, they can really see the benefits of subscription, but they didn't have to pay for it, nothing, they’re not being held over a barrel. Olson, MSUZ: So, is it more predictability, do you think, like they're going to end up paying the same amount of money, but they can make a full decision going into it? Lind: Yeah. I mean, I say this to our customers all the time. We're not free and we're not cheap. The software is no charge, but the services are priced over and above what most of the services from other companies or comparable companies would be, and we've priced the subscription agreements so that they are at par with maintenance of our competitors or just below, so that we can be disruptive. The aspect of the total cost of ownership comes in significantly lower because you've removed the upfront licensing expense. Again you've gotten rid of the capital expenditure, which is very appealing to companies, because they don't have to go to their CFO and make a case for another big outlay on another package, and they are able to get the services which are going to help them be successful. Olson, MSUZ: One technical question I was going to ask -- Interoperability: Is there any Microsoft, non-Microsoft software, Open Source, Oracle, et cetera, or Java, that you interoperate with in particular? Lind: We really made a dedicated decision here. We've committed exclusively to the Microsoft technologies, and the Microsoft platform. We do not run on any other technologies other than Microsoft. From a business standpoint, this actually helps us screen out companies that may be looking for something. There are so many technologies out in the Marketplace today that many -- every customer is going to have a different combination or permutation of technologies that they want to deploy. By being exclusively Microsoft based, it has to be very clear upfront, it's a qualifying criteria: if you're not interested in Microsoft, our solution is not the right one for you. And what we've found, and we knew this before we actually made the commitment to the Microsoft platform, was that Microsoft is the most pervasive platform in the Marketplace globally. And so more often than not, this is a non-issue for us, and in fact, it has helped us reduce our sales cycle significantly, because we're able to key up on people who find the Microsoft platform appealing and have it as their corporate standard there. Olson, MSUZ: Huh, that's cool. And so what about -- any suggestions that you have for young entrepreneurs? Like if you were going to start a startup again or join a startup again, what guidance would you give someone who's going to start a new company? Lind: Oh, sure. Well, definitely high tech is an exciting business, and that's why I'm in it. Especially in the startup world there's always something new. You get out of bed with a purpose. My advice would be, just to quote Thomas Edison, it's 98 percent persistence. You really have to be committed, and be ready to have some failures along the way, and adapt to the changing conditions in the Marketplace, and to what your customers want, because that's what's really important, that's what's going to make you successful is finding that right mix of solution technology and end user application that is going to provide value for your end customers. You've got to find something people are going to pay for. Olson, MSUZ: So, in your case, if you were going to do Aras again, it sounds like you would use the Microsoft platform, but there might be cases when there's a different choice would be what the customers would want? Lind: Well, from my perspective we have basically aligned our business strategy, and that includes our technology choices, with the largest segment of the Market, and that happens to be the companies that are using the Microsoft technologies, that different segments, different use cases, different scenarios, you know, there's pros and cons with every selection decision, with every technology decision you make, and you really just have to weigh those tradeoffs and find out what's going to be right for your business. Olson, MSUZ: But you've been happy with your decision to adopt Microsoft, it sounds like? Lind: Oh yeah. It has made a world of difference to us, both from a development standpoint we've been able to develop our products significantly faster, bringing new releases to Market with new features, new innovations, especially in an Open Source format we've been able to incorporate new innovations that we're getting from the corporate community into the software. So, using Visual Studio Team Server, using the code profiling capabilities there, using SQL Profiler for some of our testing activities, and other Microsoft developer technologies, we've really been able to cut the average development cycle time by over 30 percent. Olson, MSUZ: And what is it about Visual Team Studio or Visual Studio that makes -- that reduces the cycle time, the development time so much? Lind: Well, in part it's some of the organizational features in Team System that have really helped our development team stay on top of things, but also it is the additional capabilities. I named the code profiling capabilities, which I know that our architects and our developers are using on a daily basis for builds. This has really been a big enhancement in terms of productivity, and we're really, really excited about the fact that it's been built into the Visual Studio environment. Olson, MSUZ: That's great. And then one last question was really we talked earlier about the Microsoft Partner Program. Can you talk a little bit about the value that you've gotten from that for your company? Lind: Yeah, sure. We signed up to be a Microsoft partner, and have worked our way up the food chain, so to speak, from Certified Partner through to a Gold Certified Partner. If I'm not mistaken, we're the only enterprise Open Source company that's a Gold Certified Partner. What that means is that many more benefits are available to us. There are a number of programs from a Marketing standpoint that we've had the opportunity to take advantage of, things like telemarketing campaigning that we worked with the SQL Server team on. We have taken advantage of Market Accelerator programs where we've done search engine Marketing and pay-per-click Marketing. We've taken advantage of go-to-Markets for public relations and analyst relations, coordinating with the Microsoft teams, different product groups as well as the industry groups. We have also taken advantage of the developer enablement. So, the access that the Microsoft Partner Program gives you to developer licenses, to in-company use licenses, we use the Microsoft Partner -- or excuse me, the Microsoft technologies here at Aras for doing our day-to-day work, as well as our developers are using the full suite, and we're developing on the latest platforms. And because we're a Gold Certified independent software vendor, we have been able to get into Early Adopter Programs, Technology Adoption Programs, that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to have access to. So, it's really been beneficial to us to make sure that we're current with the latest technologies, that we have early looks to the roadmap, and that we can, you know, provide the latest technology benefits for our customers. Olson, MSUZ: So, definitely something worth doing for a startup, too? Lind: Oh, yeah. I mean, the amount of software licensing access that you gain just simply by signing up for the registered partner level is literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of software access. We have basically been able to take advantage of a wide variety of technologies, like I said, both for development purposes, but also for our own internal use as a software company, you know, using Exchange Server for e-mail and using all the Office and Windows and Vista capabilities here on the desktop, as well as then server side with multiple instances of SQL Server, both from a dev standpoint and from a test standpoint, and in an operational sense. And then there's the CRM, the Dynamics CRM that you have access to licenses to use as well. So, I mean, this is all free use, which you'd have to pay for otherwise. Olson, MSUZ: Great. Well, hey, Marc, thanks. I really appreciate your insights today into working with Microsoft, using technology, and your company. Marc Lind’s Background
Marc Lind brings 15 years experience in enterprise software and manufacturing and draws on a customer-centric perspective to create revenue-driven marketing strategies. Most recently Marc was President of PartsDriver, an enterprise supply chain solution provider to the automotive aftermarket. Previously, at Analog Devices he helped build relationships with major customers including Intel, Lucent, and Nortel and led a division-wide reengineering project. Earlier in his career, Marc was a consultant in world-class manufacturing and quality systems. He holds a BBA in Operations Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and is a member of the AME [Association for Manufacturing Excellence], APICS, and PDMA [Product Development and Management Association]. For more information, visit Aras Corp online.
 Tu Nguyen always believed in the promise of document management. After winning the Microsoft 2003 Imagine Cup programming competition, a lot changed for him. Inspired while working in his parents' Vietnamese restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska, Nguyen developed an application designed to bridge the language gap between English-speaking waiters and Vietnamese-speaking chefs. His solution ran on Pocket PC devices, enabling the restaurant's staff to communicate more effectively by translating food orders into each person's native language. Waiters entered orders into devices that transmitted data to a local server. The data was then translated from English into the chef's native language and sent to a printer in the restaurant's kitchen. By automating the ordering process, the application eliminated the dual-entry process and inconsistency of paper tickets, saving the staff time and the restaurant money. And while that experience may be a far cry from the company Nguyen is with today, DOCCENTER, it inspired Nguyen to want to start his own company — and to build it on the Microsoft platform. He started as an intern at DOCCENTER, and not long after winning the Microsoft award, he convinced the company to expand its vision, build a product on the Microsoft platform, and make him vice president of information technology. DOCCENTER provides a complete solution for document management on demand. Its flagship product, EDDS Vault (Electronic Document and Digital Storage) is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that frees companies from the headaches of a paper-based storage solution and enables them to collaborate with trusted associates, manage compliance requirements, and know that their files are being backed up. Just recently, the company became a member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program. Here is our conversation with Tu Nguyen, Vice President of Information Technology at DOCCENTER. Microsoft Startup Zone: So, having won the Imagine Cup, you had experience with Microsoft technology. Talk to us about the decision to build the company’s SaaS solution on the Microsoft platform? Tu Nguyen: While at the University of Nebraska, and getting ready to apply for my internship, I realized that I needed something to really make me stand out from the rest. Getting A’s in math wasn’t enough. So I focused on this new Microsoft .NET technology that had just come out. My first application was for my parents’ restaurant—the application I designed won the Microsoft 2003 Imagine Cup. My version of the IPOD, for Intelligent Pocket Order Delivery System, was created with a simple UI that allowed waiters to take an order, and then once they got the order, it could be translated into Vietnamese in the kitchen. With that simple application, I was able to use the Microsoft .NET Framework, Compact Framework, SQL Server, Web Services, and then the whole .NET C# environment. After learning all about the technology, I realized the potential of what .NET could do versus other platforms—where I’d still be learning how to do things. So, when I joined DOCCENTER, we were already using third party software, and some open source. I suggested to the president that we build our own product, and focus on the Microsoft platform because it was so well documented, and had a lot of community support around it as well. We chose .NET for our current technology called EDDS Vault because it enables us to focus on what we want to do, and not worry about the whole plumbing of the technology itself. We’re also using SQL Server 2005, and the Internet Information Server (IIS) 6.0 environment. And we have a team that’s focused on Silverlight 2.0 technology. We used it to build our front-end capture so we could create one single platform that could be used for either the desktop or a Web environment — without worrying about browser-based support. We are really a big fan of Silverlight. MSUZ: What Microsoft technology has been most critical to your success? Nguyen: . NET is our primary critical technology that really helps our product in development. It really helped us to develop our product faster and get to market faster. But I can't say the same with the Silverlight yet, because it's very new. We still have a big learning curve. And I think, as the whole, we still have a lot of things that we wish were available in Silverlight — I hope that technology will get as good as the whole .NET and the Visual Studio environment.” MSUZ: Are there technologies that you're going to look at integrating or supporting in the future? Nguyen: Yes, we are now investigating how we create a mash-up between SharePoint 2007 with our front-end capture. We did our research to find that there are a lot of companies solely embracing SharePoint as an Internet content management solution, but when they started looking at it in the form of document management solutions, SharePoint has limitations in terms of how an office will scan hundreds of thousands of documents into SharePoint effectively. So, we’re looking at how we're going to integrate our capture with SharePoint in a seamless solution. Also with SharePoint when it comes to document management in terms of searching, record management, and retention, there are some limitations there as well. For instance, if I’ve already taken time entering indexes in the front-end−entering the indexes for each invoice or document−I need the ability to quickly find them. I want to use the indexes I have already created; I don’t want to go into a full text type of search, which is what SharePoint requires and is a limitation we see. We also have a team actually doing a proof-of-concept on how we can do integration with that, and why our product brings value-add to the SharePoint platform. Second, with all the cloud-based services available on the Web today, and because our business is going to go more to online cloud storage with our document management capability, we want to leverage the Windows Live SkyDrive technology when they make it available—more like the Amazon S3, the API for storing and retrieving data on the Web. And since Microsoft just released an SQL database service in the cloud, we realized that all of this really brings value to our system. We want to focus on our core, which is to deliver productivity and application and collaboration tools to the Web user, and don't want to bog down on infrastructure. The more we can outsource this with partners like Microsoft, trusted by the industry, the better. We have all this redundancy and infrastructure, and are now ready to grow to a million users, thousands of terabytes, but the reality is people are not going to trust us in terms of that since we’re just getting started. But if we have SkyDrive behind our name and Microsoft SQL data service, I think we can gain more acceptance in that area. MSUZ: So where are you in terms of product launch? Nguyen: We’re getting ready to launch our SaaS model sometime in mid September (2008). We have customers using our application from 1,600 users to small firms with just five to 10 users. And our customers span a range of industries from healthcare to financial services. MSUZ: From a technical point of view is there anything that Microsoft could do that would really help you out more technically? Nguyen: Yes, on the technology side, we know we’re able to use Visual Studio, but would like to see more on UI testing tools, some type of automation macro type of tool that our testers don’t have to know how to write script, they can just click the UI and have the automation. MSUZ: The above Visual Studio issue was resolved and announced at TechEd last week.
Tu Nguyen’s Background
As Vice President of Information Technology at DOCCENTER, Tu Nguyen helps emerging to mid-market businesses efficiently manage and protect their digital assets. Since 2007, he has led the team in development of its SaaS Web 2.0 product, EDDS Vault (Electronic Document and Digital Storage). In 2006, he was recognized by the Midlands Business Journal as one of Omaha’s top 40 executives under 40 years of age. In 2003, he was the inaugural winner of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup for his Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) software application that took restaurant orders in English and converted them into Vietnamese for his family’s restaurant.
 For more information, visit DOCCENTER online.
Ravenflow Has 100+ Customers, 3x Revenue Growth and $10M in Funding
 What’s the biggest risk in developing a new business application? If you guessed programming, you are wrong. It’s in the requirements. And according to Adam Frankl, Vice President of Marketing at Ravenflow, this is where most projects fall short. They fail to clearly define, communicate, and validate the complete business requirements from the beginning. Ravenflow set out to solve this problem. Launched in 2004, and based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, the company enables enterprises to deliver applications faster. Ravenflow’s solution helps companies do requirement elicitation and definition quickly so they can build consensus on requirements, reducing the time required for stakeholders to approve specifications, reducing developer rework due to requirements errors, and seamlessly integrating requirements and testing. The company’s flagship offering, RAVEN, integrates requirements elicitation and definition with the application lifecycle management platforms from IBM Rational, Telelogic, HP Mercury, and Microsoft Visual Studio. Privately funded by investors including Alloy Ventures, Palomar Ventures, and The Roda Group, Ravenflow has a long history of working with Microsoft. The Microsoft Connection? Ravenflow started working with the Emerging Business Team in 2005. EBT arranged a meeting with Rick LaPlante, then General Manager of Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), and a couple weeks later, a two-day session was set up for all of the key product managers within TFS. Out of that meeting came a four-step plan for integrating the Ravenflow product with Visual Studio, a move that has turned out to be instrumental to the company achieving its business goals. At the same time, Ravenflow was pursuing its first round of venture financing and found that Microsoft’s commitment was crucial to its ability to secure a sizable $10 million round of funding from Alloy and Palomar Ventures in November 2005. Read what Phil Trapp, then Ravenflow’s Vice President, Business Development, had to say about the early Microsoft relationship. In April 2006, Ravenflow announced integration with the Visual Studio Team System, and in May, had their first customer in production with RAVEN Visual Studio Team System. Once EBT learned that Ravenflow was talking with Bowne & Co. (NYSE: BNE), the group connected Ravenflow with the Microsoft sales team in New York City. Adds Frankl, “The Microsoft relationship was key to us in a couple of ways, notably that they made introductions for us that hooked us up with the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server group. Since quite a few of our customers are using it, being able to integrate our products seamlessly with Visual Studio is a big advantage for us. And making introductions and recommendations to the VCs gave us a lot of credibility in the VC community and enabled us to raise money from several top-tier firms. We’ve now raised more than $15 million — another $5 million was raised in January 2008.” Where are they now? With more than 100 customers worldwide using its software, Ravenflow tripled its sales in 2007 over 2006. Key customers include Boeing, New York Life, Charles Schwab, Citco, Accenture, Halliburton, HP, World Savings Bank, and state and local government and federal agencies. Ravenflow was included in the list of "Cool Vendors" in the "Cool Vendors in Application Development, 2007" report by Gartner, Inc. in 2007, and just this year, market analyst firm IDC named Ravenflow the fastest growing vendor in its first assessment of the Requirements Definition and Management software market.  In July 2008, the company announced general availability of RAVEN Express, a new Microsoft Word add-in for requirements definition module.
Explains Frankl, “Besides integration with Microsoft Visual Studio, we also integrate with Microsoft Office, Word and Excel, and our collaboration system is based on Microsoft SharePoint Services so we’re integrated with Microsoft products across the board.” Since Microsoft is the leading producer of development software, it’s in keeping with our strategic vision to support startups such as Ravenflow that add real value to Visual Studio. For more information, visit Ravenflow online.
 You’ve got mail. From anywhere, at any time. And not just email—we’re talking about postal mail. It’s all going online, if Earth Class Mail has anything to do with it. Founded in 2004, the company wants to change how postal mail is delivered, for the betterment of individuals, businesses, national post offices, and, most importantly, the planet. Instead of making physical postal deliveries that are so dependent on fuel for planes and trucks, this company delivers postal mail online—where people can deal with it instantly, anywhere in the world. Since launching its product in April 2006, the company has accelerated sales in the business-to-consumer space, is in the process of providing its service to all employees of a Fortune 50 customer, is deploying with other enterprises and is in talks with several national posts. In October 2007, Earth Class Mail teamed up with Microsoft at Post-Expo 2007 in Barcelona, Spain. According to Maxim Lesur, Worldwide Postal Industry Managing Director at Microsoft, “The company’s technologies facilitate Microsoft’s vision of the secure digital delivery of postal mail. The savings in time, money, and to our environment are significant and allow the business model to evolve to a receiver-pays model.” In 2008, the company’s goal is to recycle more than 200 tons of paper—and it says this is just the beginning. It has developed the first online postal-mail delivery system scalable to handle an entire country’s postal mail. Here is our conversation with Paul Irvine, Vice President of Customer Engineering and IT at Earth Class Mail.
Microsoft Startup Zone: Give us a 30,000-foot overview on Earth Class Mail. Paul Irvine: In a nutshell we've put postal mail online. We allow you to receive and manage your mail, no matter where you are in the world. It's stunningly simple in concept, and amazingly huge and vast in areas it can touch, and how it can grow. We have major marketplaces. Our customer base is everything from direct B2C sales, road warriors, snowbirds, and then we scale up through small and mid-sized businesses, enterprises, and government organizations. They all take a slightly different approach to managing and deploying. Right at the very top of this is managing digital mail for national post offices. We think it is a digital mail revolution. MSUZ: What’s your business model? Irvine: We offer a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model for a monthly plan. Your plans are priced according to the amount of mail that you need to have managed. An individual can go with one of the entry-level plans for just a few dollars a month, and larger operations can buy a bigger bulk package that gets them a better per-piece price rate. MSUZ: Why and when did you first choose the Microsoft platform? Irvine: I joined Earth Class Mail as VP of Engineering the end of November 2006. The prototype had already been up in running in PHP and MySQL. It really was a prototype in that it worked clearly, but wasn't built to scale. It was designed to get sales traction and funding. With PHP and MySQL, like many open-source technologies, you can build systems that scale, no question; I wouldn't argue otherwise. But our particular prototype was not able to scale. It had some architectural deficiencies that just meant that the best route was to really throw it away, use lessons learned, and build a completely new one right. Having got there, it was just so clear to me that the .NET 3.5 platform gave us so much of the plumbing code right out of the box, and that it would accelerate our time to market. We were already seeing massive growth in increased sales for the business-to-consumer retail marketplace, and we were clearly nervous at the time that we had to have a solution that would scale to support these people, and that the existing platform was starting to creak around the edges. With having to rewrite an entire application with all its attendant business rules and unwritten assumptions, it was nontrivial. So, anything that saved us time was a huge factor in our success. MSUZ: So it sounds like the .NET platform was the most critical to your success—can you elaborate on that? Irvine: Yes, the key technology for us was .NET 3.5. There are so many components, not just the framework. LINQ (a set of extensions to the .NET Framework) made a significant impact on making it simpler for our development team to work almost entirely in the service layer, and we didn’t need a raft of serious SQL developers on the team to make this all fly. But the big difference was clearly the .NET Framework Class Library, the out-of-the-box capability that .NET brought to the table. We could then focus on the business services and the contracts and, not the nuts and bolts and plumbing. MSUZ: Can you quantify the benefits in terms of what it helped you achieve? Irvine: It took us about five months to completely rewrite the system with a relatively small group of engineers. Scalability and the ability to maintain high performance were key imperatives in our rewrite. You have to remember that our business model isn't linear growth, as most other company’s experience, and this was a key thing. For our retail service, direct customer sales for small and medium business, and the local plans, our growth is accelerating on a fairly predictable curve. But each new Fortune 100 enterprise or government mail facility that we bring on pushes our mail-handling and delivery services up in a single big jump—it’s like a huge stair step. So for a large organization of, say, 20,000 employees, we’re handling roughly in the region of 300,000 pieces of mail a month. When we bring on an enterprise, it may suddenly jump up to 300,000 pieces in one day, figuratively, and that's the sort of scaling and performance management that we had to architect into the solution. We had to make sure we could scale up for massive jumps in operational performance, not just in the usual predictable growth curves. As a result, we went from a couple of Linux boxes with PHP and MySQL to a multiple redundant Microsoft Windows Server architecture, which addresses all of our current needs. We have Windows Server 2003 for our Web tier and for our application services tier, and those are in a redundant configuration. Each of those tiers can be transparently expanded basically without any application changes. We use Windows DFS for our image storage tier, which is also architected out separately. So, again imagine storing all of those images of the envelopes and their contents. We really do need something that's robust and scalable, and Windows Distributed File System (DFS) and Windows Server 2003 give us that. We're also using some secret sauce in there to ensure that the imaging server is fast, and that we can scale the image services independently over the Web for all of the other tiers that we're working with. We're also going to be engaging with Microsoft through the Startup Accelerator Program, which is a fabulous opportunity for us, so that we can really learn more and take advantage of DFS in our expansion strategy. A key part of this architecture was to take advantage of SQL Server 2005 64-bit and running in mirrored mode for redundancy. Another key technology with fabulous results has been using SQL Server 2005 for our Business Intelligence strategy as well. That's been so wonderfully successful. It enables us to have the ability to create reporting portals quickly, and to deploy self-serve OLAP cubes for our operations and our finance teams. In a nutshell, I mean, you can't fly an airplane without a good instrument panel, and SQL Server 2005 and the business intelligence suite on that is fabulous. MSUZ: Are there Microsoft technologies you’ll be looking at using and/or integrating in the future? Irvine: SharePoint is up and coming on the integration path, because so many enterprises already use SharePoint for content management and workflow capabilities. We believe having the mail drive directly into workflow at the enterprise level is huge. People have had visions of paperless offices since I was a programmer back in the—well, let's just say way back. But the timing now is so right. I mean, the sheer amount of paper being delivered into enterprises and moving around government organizations is staggering. Changing to digital delivery is resonating so loudly in many of the companies we're working with. Outlook integration is also key to our future, too, but I can't divulge too many details of that strategy at the moment. MSUZ: If you had to do it all over again, would you still select the Microsoft platform? Irvine: Absolutely. We embarked on a Microsoft strategy as a chosen path at the end of 2006. About six months after that we had started down our migration planning, and the engineering team building, and just by chance we met with Microsoft's Executive Director for Worldwide Postal Solutions. It was like two halves coming together; it was unbelievable. We had no idea when we made our platform decision that Microsoft was already very committed to the postal arena as a strategic market. This just strengthened our commitment to working with Microsoft at all levels. I want to add, we couldn't ask for a better partner in the technology space who could share a big enough vision to make this happen. It's this combination of Microsoft platform technology, scalability, reliability, and high performance—this is what will enable us to bring our vision and implementation to the national post-office level and globally around the world. And most importantly, it gives us the confidence that it will simply work when we're scaling to process millions and millions of letters a day. Paul Irvine’s Background
Paul Irvine brings 28 years software product development, consulting services, and management experience to Earth Class Mail. He began his career as a software programmer in mainframe technology in 1979. After gaining experience in data architecture, business rules analysis, and document imaging technologies in the early ’80s, Paul formed his first consulting and software development company. Key clients in London, UK, were British Airways, Marsh McLennan, and British Nuclear Corporation, among others. After the demise of the mini-computer marketplace in 1993, Paul moved to the U.S. and joined forces with Voyager Systems, a leader in imaging systems and database solutions. As Director of Consulting, Paul led development and sales of automated migration services, serving key clients as diverse as Deutsche Bank, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and several large Justice agencies. In 1999, Paul joined Emerald Solutions as a senior manager, leading teams on Internet-based consulting, strategy, and software development engagements focused on IBM and enterprise document management solutions. In 2002, Paul signed on as VP Engineering at Via Training, a high-growth startup in the field of online Internet Sales Training, with major clients such as HP, Microsoft, and Intel. Postscript
 Rajeev Dujari, Senior VP of Products at Earth Class Mail, is now further building on the .NET foundation laid down by Paul Irvine. Rajeev previously had a 15-year career at Microsoft, culminating in a Product Unit Manager role on Visual 2008. As Paul has recently transitioned to another company, inquiries about Earth Class Mail’s product roadmap and technology strategy may be addressed to Rajeev.
 For more information, visit Earth Class Mail online.
Company Pilots Interactive Live TV on Your PC, Enterprise Product Used on World’s Leading Brands, and Wins UK Technology Innovation and Growth 2008 Awards
 For communication you can’t miss, Skinkers is it. Founded in 2001, the London-based firm is a leader in information broadcast technology. Already, many of the world’s leading brands use Skinkers technology. It claims to be the world’s first enterprise class, multi-channel message and content delivery technology. Through its Live Notification Platform, it delivers ShouldKnow information (breaking news, corporate communications, service outages, share prices, etc.) directly to the most appropriate device (computer, handheld, mobile phone) via the most appropriate channel. The Microsoft Connection? Back in 2005, CEO David Long says Skinkers was handling desktop notifications for a number of leading brands including the BBC and had several million people using its information broadcast technology and needed to make the delivery of news updates more cost effective. The company started looking at peer-to-peer technologies as a way to reduce scalability costs, and through a venture capitalist met with the Microsoft division of IP Ventures. Interestingly enough, IP Ventures was looking to marry technologies that were coming out of Microsoft Research Labs to potential businesses. Recalls Long, “We identified this Microsoft technology called ‘Pastry’ — we saw it as the best peer-to-peer technology on the market for our purposes. Says Long, “When we mentioned this to IP Ventures, they said it was something they were looking to bring out of the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge to have developed by a third-party. So a marriage was made in heaven for us there — we stated our interest, finished our funding run, and then didn’t hear anything for a while. Then in June 2006, the deal came through where we acquired the intellectual property rights to three core applications that leverage the Pastry foundation.” Skinkers agreed to an ‘equity for technology’ deal with Microsoft. As part of the agreement, Microsoft took a minority stake in Skinkers – the first time the company had done this with a European business — with a view to co-develop software with Microsoft that will benefit both companies and result in products that Skinkers could take to market. In addition Andrew Herbert, Managing Director of Microsoft Research, Cambridge, became an observer on Skinkers’ board. The technology Skinkers has acquired has allowed Skinkers to develop its current offerings and create new solutions for real-time event notification and more importantly, the delivery of live TV to broadband connected computers. According to Jean-Philippe Courtois, President, Microsoft International, at the time of the technology transfer in June 2006, “This agreement is more than a transfer of technology, it is the beginning of new business relationship with Skinkers that will yield new innovations for the European and global market.” Explained David Long, CEO of Skinkers, “Since that investment was made in Skinkers, a business within Skinkers has emerged called Livestation. Skinkers main business is the provision of an enterprise software solution for large-scale communications applications within the enterprise. The nascent Livestation business, based on the first implementation of the original Microsoft Research work, is what we’re focusing on for live television on the PC. And our relationship with Microsoft spans both businesses, because one was spawned from the other.” Explains Long, “The relationship with Microsoft, and obviously IP Ventures, has been critical. We have huge support from both IP Ventures and from the Cambridge Lab, particularly in the form of introductions.” In addition, Skinkers was a Vista launch and Silverlight partner, and says it is working with Microsoft product and sales teams on joint bids in various accounts within the financial sector in Europe. For its new Livestation business, Long says the Emerging Business Team has made introductions to the Microsoft Media division. “We’ve managed to get into a number of the product groups and really get to meet the right people.” Where are they now? At the Microsoft EU Innovation Day in Brussels in December 2007, Skinkers showcased its Livestation, the first broadcast platform to exploit the Internet for the delivery of live interactive TV to computers. Built on peer-to-peer technology, Livestation allows broadcasters to distribute live audio and video to a potential audience of hundreds of millions of broadband-connected people at a dramatically reduced cost. It is currently in technical trials with leading international broadcasters (including the BBC and France 24). According to Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of Livestation, “This ground breaking technology will allow broadcasters to reach a virtually unlimited number of people while at their computers. Livestation is going to change the way people access linear television thanks to its ease of use and quality of the experience.” For the Skinkers enterprise business, Long says they are working in conjunction with Microsoft to pitch to some big-name banks in the UK. And already, its technology is used with Virgin Atlantic, London Stock Exchange, American Airlines, JC Penney, and many more.  Explains Long, “With Livestation, we’re trying to create a compelling offering for the global news citizen, with a world-beating technology that is hard to replicate. On the Skinkers side of the business, we’re innovating within the communications marketplace. I don’t think anyone has come up with a solution on how an enterprise connects people with information in a multi-channel world. With email overload now being a huge problem, how do you connect people and systems with what we call ShouldKnow information. How do you ensure that no matter what device you are on, or where you are, you will receive important information with acknowledgement for audit trails, compliance, corporate governance, etc.”
In March 2008, Livestation won the MediaGuardian Innovation Award for Media Technology, and Skinkers and Microsoft were awarded the prestigious Partnering for Innovation Award at the UK Technology Innovation and Growth 2008 Awards. For more information, visit Skinkers online.
 Founded in 2005, DiVitas Networks has rapidly become a leader in Mobile Unified Communications. DiVitas offers the first solution to mobilize corporate voice and messaging (desk phone, contacts, IM, presence and push-to-talk) applications for business by unifying them onto a smartphone. DiVitas “seamless roaming’” enables its solution to operate transparently over any mobile network—WiFi, cellular, or both. DiVitas does all of this while allowing company IT to retain complete control over its mobile solution. DiVitas provides IT the ability to customize features and implement policies while selecting the PBX, network, handsets and service plans that best meet their needs.
Here is our conversation with ATG Srinivas, Vice President of Engineering.
Microsoft Startup Zone: Why and when did you first choose the Microsoft platform? ATG Srinivas: We were founded in 2005. Right from the start, we realized that dual-mode phones are key to the success of our solution. Microsoft was the first platform to come out with dual-mode phone support, and the penetration that Microsoft now has in North America and in Asia-Pacific is significant. As a pioneer in the converged mobile market, we chose to support Microsoft technologies because of the ubiquity of the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform for dual-mode pocket PCs. In addition, solutions from Microsoft offer key development tools and are supported by the leading handset manufacturers around the world. MSUZ: We understand that you were using a number of key Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Visual Studio, Live Communications Server 2005, and providing support for Microsoft XP Professional and Windows Mobile, can you elaborate on this? Srinivas: When we start development on a mobile platform, the most critical things to consider are the underlying platform development tools and the platform itself. It is a little different from development projects where people are much more focused on a particular technology like .NET or Windows Media or Silverlight. For us, what Microsoft brings to the table is an extremely well documented platform layer, which supports telephony, socket layer, and connection manager. The speed of the development is a key aspect of this platform for us. Tools such as Visual Studio are extremely important. We are trying to mobilize enterprise applications (deskphone, IM, Contacts and presence) on smartphones. For that to happen, there are two things that are important. First, the penetration of the platform into business accounts; and second, how well does the platform integrate with the rest of the business applications. The beauty of Microsoft is that a lot of people are already familiar with Calendar, Outlook, and all that comes integrated into the platform itself. For us, having access to things like contacts, calendars and email is extremely important. So to summarize, the key advantages of using Microsoft technologies are speed to market and the wealth of information that is available for development. MSUZ: What other Microsoft technologies have you looked at? Srinivas: One of the latest things that we plan to use is the Mobile Device Manager. This gives us the capability of remote management of devices. For a mobile platform, which is business controlled, this is a key aspect. In the future, we are also looking at .NET and we have something in the plan for Office Communications Server. MSUZ: Anything that Microsoft could do to help you more with technology solution? Srinivas: Yes, definitely. Since we are a phone application on top of a mobile device, we would like much closer integration with the lower layers, as well as the telephony stack and WiFi stack. It would be extremely useful for us to get access into those layers from the API perspective, and also technical support in terms of issues that we face. We are a mobile application and because of that there is a lot of emotion attached to it by the end user, and the closer and more seamlessly that we work with the native platform, the better the user experience is. ATG Srinivas' Background
Prior to DiVitas, Srinivas spent 12 years working for startups in networking and telecommunications including Sycamore Networks and Cascade Communications. At Sycamore, he was part of the core team that developed Sycamore’s first optical switch. Srinivas also led Sycamore’s Network Management Systems group. Previously, he was a consultant with Infosys where he led several projects for Cascade Communications. He graduated from IIT Kanpur, India with a Bachelors of Technology.
 For more information, visit Divitas online, or read the success story "DiVitas ‘Unwires’ the Enterprise."
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Featured Startup
The BizSpark startup of the day is Frotcom International, based in Portugal. You will find below an interview with Valério Manuel Machado Marques, Co-founder and CEO of Frotcom International. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!
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