Sencha is a web application development platform that has long been used by customers to build modern web and mobile applications. It has a strong existing business with a claimed 60 percent of the Fortune 100 using its services.Notwithstanding an existing customer base, Sencha has always had a bit of a glaring omission—it didn't really move the needle for all of those organizations whose core workflows sit on software from legacy vendors such as SAP and Oracle. It's all very well having some cool lightweight point applications, but if those have no real context within a broader legacy application paradigm, it's kind of academic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Big news today from storage vendor Rubrik—both on a product front and a business one.First to the dollars: Rubrik is announcing a $61 million Series C investment led by Khosla Ventures with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greylock Partners and angel investors. This is a huge round, especially given the current state of the venture capital space, and it is a testimony to Rubrik's execution to date.The investment takes Rubrik's total funding to date to $112 million and will give the company the confidence to ramp up its sales, marketing and operations spend to take advantage of the opportunity it has. And if you needed an indication of just how big that opportunity is, that $112 million has poured in over a short period of only 30 months precisely because the market opportunity is huge. The legacy data management market is estimated to be $48 billion in value, and it is undergoing seismic changes right now.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I love the idea of big data. Being able to derive insights from the ever-increasing stream of information out there is an awesome promise. But alas, a good proportion of the case studies we hear about big data end up being about how big data is used to tailor sales and marketing messages and eke out a few cents extra on every transaction. It may be the reality of our commercial world, but it's sad to see a promising technology applied this way.So, it was nice to receive a pitch from IBM's cloud computing division about how it is partnering with Guiding Eyes for the Blind to bring dogs and data together. While it may sound like an April Fool's joke, IBM is taking structured and unstructured canine data and putting it on the IBM cloud to crunch numbers and generate insights.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I'm a big fan of so-called serverless architectures. The idea of these products is that developers don't have to think about spinning up servers to do some processing—rather a construct that goes something along the lines of "when trigger A happens, set off process B, and when process B is complete, your job is done" can be enabled.Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the first of the public cloud vendors to launch a serverless offering, AWS Lambda. Since then, it is an approach other players have followed.But while serverless offerings add massive value in terms of simplicity and economics, they provide challenges. The servers that run the actual code to process these events are not exposed to developers. As such, developers have zero visibility into how those servers are working and what they're up to.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A year or two ago, the storm in a teacup of the day was news that Red Hat, one of the largest technology vendors built off the back of open-source technologies, was turning against its one-time BFF Mirantis.
For those unaware of the situation, Mirantis is a vendor that focuses entirely on the OpenStack cloud computing operating system. Wishing to ensure that it had a part to play in emergent open-source initiatives, a few years ago Red Hat made a strategic investment into Mirantis, and at the time indications were that Red Hat might be sizing up the fast-growing company for a future acquisition.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A common remark from me is frustration about the huge number of companies competing in the enterprise file sharing and synchronization (EFSS) space. Honestly, the number of companies that send pitches to me on a weekly basis claiming to be highly differentiated from all the others is frustrating.It must be all the more frustrating for enterprise organizations that need to chose an EFSS vendor. With so many in the market, it is a confusing and bewildering decision to make, which is, after all, why analyst firms exist. While Gartner, Forrester, IDC and their ilk receive much criticism around suggestions that they are both behind the times and commercially conflicted, the fact is they bring a degree of robustness to technology assessments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News this morning from cybersecurity company Red Canary, which has just raised $6.1 million by way of a Series A funding round.Red Canary is part of a growing trend in the security world: that of adding real live humans into a security product. The particular space that Red Canary is involved in—managed detection and response—has a few players (SecureWorks and eSentire, to name a couple), all of whom try to subvert the orthodox thinking around cybersecurity with the addition of a human touch.+ Also on Network World: Black Hat: 9 free security tools for defense & attacking +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News this morning from cybersecurity company Red Canary, which has just raised $6.1 million by way of a Series A funding round.Red Canary is part of a growing trend in the security world: that of adding real live humans into a security product. The particular space that Red Canary is involved in—managed detection and response—has a few players (SecureWorks and eSentire, to name a couple), all of whom try to subvert the orthodox thinking around cybersecurity with the addition of a human touch.+ Also on Network World: Black Hat: 9 free security tools for defense & attacking +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We've been hearing all year about the calamitous state of venture funding. The decline in technology stocks, the revaluation of the "unicorns" and the general sense of unease about the economy (Trump, anyone?) has led to a tightening of the pure strings in venture capital land.But while the purse-strings have certainly tightened, the fact remains that venture capital companies still have cash they need to invest. The funds who give money to the VCs to invest for them certainly don't want to hear that those funds are simply sitting in a bank account awaiting deployment.And so deals are still happening—arguably a little more modestly, but happening nonetheless. A case in point is Distil Networks, which today is announcing Series C funding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We've been hearing all year about the calamitous state of venture funding. The decline in technology stocks, the revaluation of the "unicorns" and the general sense of unease about the economy (Trump, anyone?) has led to a tightening of the pure strings in venture capital land.But while the purse-strings have certainly tightened, the fact remains that venture capital companies still have cash they need to invest. The funds who give money to the VCs to invest for them certainly don't want to hear that those funds are simply sitting in a bank account awaiting deployment.And so deals are still happening—arguably a little more modestly, but happening nonetheless. A case in point is Distil Networks, which today is announcing Series C funding.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
First, the easy part:Identity Finder, a company focused on helping organizations reduce the risks they face when it comes to the leakage of sensitive data, is rebranding as Spirion. At the same time, it has named Dr. Jo Webber as its new CEO. Webber, who previously headed up Energy Solutions International among, comes on board at a good time for the company. It has seen 250 percent growth in customer adoption across many different verticals. That customer growth is fueled in part by concerns around recent high-profile cases of data leakage from retail, health, insurance and other sources. These leaks have meant that both boards and CEOs are increasingly putting huge pressure on CIOs to ensure data is safe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
First, the easy part:Identity Finder, a company focused on helping organizations reduce the risks they face when it comes to the leakage of sensitive data, is rebranding as Spirion. At the same time, it has named Dr. Jo Webber as its new CEO. Webber, who previously headed up Energy Solutions International among, comes on board at a good time for the company. It has seen 250 percent growth in customer adoption across many different verticals. That customer growth is fueled in part by concerns around recent high-profile cases of data leakage from retail, health, insurance and other sources. These leaks have meant that both boards and CEOs are increasingly putting huge pressure on CIOs to ensure data is safe.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It is only a few short weeks since Twilio, the communications platform developer, had its stock market debut. It's also a safe bet that in these turbulent times for tech stocks, Twilio spent much time thinking about product and other announcements it could make post-listing to keep the markets positive about its performance.And so it is doing so today with a seemingly small, but actually pretty cool piece of news for the company. Twilio is rolling out Sync, a tool designed to help keep applications in sync across different devices and sessions. The idea being that developers can build experiences that are consistent across the different devices they wish to support. It also means they can add multi-user collaboration capabilities into their applications without having to think about the pesky details of state.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's one thing to have security vendors email me suggesting that cyber attacks are getting worse. It's another thing altogether when a vendor comes to me with hard metrics. Such is the case with Arbor Networks, the security division of NETSCOUT.Given Arbor is all about helping to protect enterprise and service provider networks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, it is fair to suggest that any mention of increasing attack numbers is a little self-serving. But ulterior motives notwithstanding, it's worth hearing what they found.+ Also on Network World: DDoS attacks are more than disruptions to service +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's one thing to have security vendors email me suggesting that cyber attacks are getting worse. It's another thing altogether when a vendor comes to me with hard metrics. Such is the case with Arbor Networks, the security division of NETSCOUT.Given Arbor is all about helping to protect enterprise and service provider networks from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, it is fair to suggest that any mention of increasing attack numbers is a little self-serving. But ulterior motives notwithstanding, it's worth hearing what they found.+ Also on Network World: DDoS attacks are more than disruptions to service +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud computing delivers many benefits for end user organizations, but for consulting firms, whose bread and butter is long (some would say torturous) technology implementation projects, the cloud tends to be somewhat toxic to traditional revenue streams.Seeing this impending hole, the big consulting firms have to find new ways to replace existing revenue streams. As a result, we've seen the formation of digital transformation units within the large consulting firms.Another trend is to jump into emergent technologies. We have a good example of this today from Deloitte, which is announcing a partnership with IPSoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Cloud computing delivers many benefits for end user organizations, but for consulting firms, whose bread and butter is long (some would say torturous) technology implementation projects, the cloud tends to be somewhat toxic to traditional revenue streams.Seeing this impending hole, the big consulting firms have to find new ways to replace existing revenue streams. As a result, we've seen the formation of digital transformation units within the large consulting firms.Another trend is to jump into emergent technologies. We have a good example of this today from Deloitte, which is announcing a partnership with IPSoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
News today from Indegy that it has closed a $12 million Series A funding round led by Vertex Ventures Israel with participation from Silicon Valley-based Aspect Ventures, SBI Holdings of Japan, as well as previous investors Shlomo Kramer and Magma Venture Partners. This round takes total funding for this little-known company to some $18 million.Indegy is in the business of protecting industrial control systems (ICS). ICS may not sound sexy, but before the Internet of Things (IoT), huge industrial processes and infrastructures were controlled, monitored and maintained by large ICS networks. Unlike IoT, which tends to work on the public internet, ICS generally runs on private networks and is hence less visible to the general public. And while everyone fixates on the latest iPhone or hot dating app, they remain blissfully aware of what controls their power systems, water and sewerage systems, and large HVAC installs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chef and Puppet are often held up as the two big names in the first generation of IT automation. About the same time that virtualization was growing to dominance, these two companies, and the open source initiatives they're involved with, sprung up to allow IT operators to automate their server setup and deployment.The rationale for these players was obvious: Since servers were no longer physical items that needed to be set up in person every time, it made sense that organizations could develop "recipes" for their servers, thus eliminating repetitive setup tasks and speeding up the deployment of servers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It has been interesting watching the conversation around the rise of Docker and the general attention that containers have received in the past few years. Most fascinating has been the reaction of vendors who make their revenue primarily through virtualization technologies. These vendors have been quick to assert that containers are not secure and that in order to assure certainty for an organization, either containers shouldn't be used at all (their preference, obviously) or they should be used within the ongoing context of virtualized servers.Against this narrative runs two forces. First, the container companies (notably, Docker), while being careful to not alienate their virtualization vendor partners, try to assure customers that containers are actually inherently safe. The second narrative comes from third-party vendors that offer security solutions for containers. These players agree that containers have some fundamental flaws, but their solution resolves these issues.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ben Kepes