Cloud Productivity Platform Wars

"A service called CloudReady gives old computers new life with Google's Chrome operating system -- but there are a few things you should know before taking the plunge."

"Pilarinos is one of dozens of startup founders who have graduated from a two-year-old boot camp run by First Round, a venture-capital firm that focuses on early-stage tech startups. The two- to six-week program drills its cadets in important lessons that are part Sales 101, part human psychology seminar, and part tutorials on practical tasks like creating slide decks. The goal is to help startup founders, who may have spent months or years engrossed in arcane product details, sell their vision to the people with the money. And in a funding environment in which the easy money has dried up, the CEO boot camp, known as Pitch Assist, could become increasingly critical as startups fight to secure more financing. Going straight for the jugular The coaches at the boot camp, who are basically First Round partners, don't pull any punches. On the first day, CEOs are put on the spot and made to answer the burning questions investors will have - especially the tough questions for which the CEOs might not yet have answers. "Some of the questions are the sort of holes in the business," First Round partner Bill Trenchard said. "No company is perfect. There's always a weak point in the architecture." First Round First Round normally does only seed rounds of fund-raising. Pitch Assist helps those companies go on to raise their next round. Young CEOs aren't used to talking about those holes. No one starts a sales call by going over their weaknesses. When pitching investors, however, those weak points have to be addressed head-on in the presentation. "If you try to play games or try to hide things, any reasonable investor will notice," Brett Berson, First Round's vice president of platform, said. "And once you've lost that credibility, there's no coming back from that." Berson estimates that it takes about two hours of work to go through each question, but after that startup founders can step back and see the overall picture. The questions become the plot points - the m

"When Google scored a $400 million to $600 million deal to supply cloud services to Apple Inc. last week, according to multiple reports, it was widely viewed as a coup for the search giant's cloud business. And why not? Apple, which has been relying mainly on Amazon Web Services as well as Microsoft Corp.'s Azure to run part of its iCloud and other services, is a marquee reference customer. It will get Google in the door of just about every big company-and, not incidentally, throw a little shade on its rivals. But the big win obscures a stark reality for Google's Cloud Platform: At just $500 million in revenues according to Morgan Stanley estimates, it trails far behind AWS's $7.9 billion reported revenues in 2015, and it's even a distant third behind Azure's $1.1 billion in estimated sales. This week, Google will attempt to show how it aims to scramble into cloud contention at its first global cloud users conference, NEXT, starting Wednesday in San Francisco. At the show, Google will trot out Diane Greene, the onetime co-founder and CEO of cloud pioneer VMware who now heads all of Google's cloud and enterprise applications businesses. This will be Greene's first significant public appearance since Google bought her company, Bebop, for $380 million last November. Customers and investors alike will be watching closely to see what strategy she lays out for the coming year and beyond. Searching for a cloud coup Google plans to introduce both a raft of new cloud features and updates as well as some significant new customers, according to various sources in the company. On the product front, there will be news about Google's container technologies, which allow applications to run more efficiently across cloud servers using the same operating system without interfering with each other, David Aronchick, senior product manager for Google's Container Engine, said Tuesday at a press briefing. "NEXT will be an opportunity to highlight all the traction

"When Google scored a $400 million to $600 million deal to supply cloud services to Apple last week, according to multiple reports, it was widely viewed as a coup for the search giant's cloud business. And why not? Apple, which has been relying mainly on Amazon Web Services as well as Microsoft's Azure to run part of its iCloud and other services, is a marquee reference customer. It will get Google in the door of just about every big company-and, not incidentally, throw a little shade on its rivals. But the big win obscures a stark reality for Google's Cloud Platform: At just $500 million in revenues according to Morgan Stanley estimates, it trails far behind AWS's $7.9 billion reported revenues in 2015, and it's even a distant third behind Azure's $1.1 billion in estimated sales. Starting today, Mar. 23, Google will attempt to show how it aims to scramble into cloud contention at its first global cloud users conference, NEXT, in San Francisco. At the show, Google will trot out Diane Greene, the onetime co-founder and CEO of cloud pioneer VMware who now heads all of Google's cloud and enterprise applications businesses. This will be Greene's first significant public appearance since Google bought her company, Bebop, for $380 million last November. Customers and investors alike will be watching closely to see what strategy she lays out for the coming year and beyond. Google plans to introduce both a raft of new cloud features and updates as well as some significant new customers, according to various sources in the company. On the product front, there will be news about Google's container technologies, which allow applications to run more efficiently across cloud servers using the same operating system without interfering with each other, David Aronchick, senior product manager for Google's Container Engine, said Tuesday at a press briefing. "NEXT will be an opportunity to highlight all the traction we've gotten," he said."

"SAN FRANCISCO - The number of worldwide email users will reach 2.9 billion by the end of 2019, according to predictions from The Radicati Group. But has anyone really learned to use it effectively and efficiently in the workplace? Two-year-old San Francisco startup Emmerge claims it has: It's marketing an inbox with collaboration features, which is designed to streamline team projects. Project Management and Collaboration The project management and collaboration platform in one allows users to assign action items in the body of emails and build on ongoing tasks and projects. Emmerge organizes information by hashtags and also offers a way for employees to track billable hours if they need to do that, too. Emmerge CEO and founder Marc Blinder said his company isn't trying to replace email. Rather, it is trying to enhance it with a little "social DNA" and other features. "We know everyone in the business world is going check emails," he said. Emmerge offers a new way to look at it, he continued. Blinder said the Emmerge solution is more collaborative than the way Google looks at email, with a "consumer-first lens … We do it on a team basis. The fundamental philosophical difference is that team aspect that gets better and better as more people use it.""

But nobody is saying that the output of this technology can't be combined with the output of facial recognition technology to let them monitor you individually AND track your emotions. Fortunately, others are fighting back with knowledge and tech to block facial recognition. http://goo.gl/JMQM2W

"Six years ago, we surveyed our employees with the goal of determining the optimal place for each of them to work in terms of maximum efficiency and productivity. What we quickly determined was that no one wanted to work in the office. Workers Can't Concentrate in the Office When asked to identify the best place to get work done - specifically work that requires maximum concentration and creativity, such as designing a web page, programming new functionality for software, developing a financial report or writing a sales proposal - not a single member of our 34-member team chose the office. Rather, they selected: An extra room at their home Their favorite coffee shop A train or airplane Our finding wasn't an anomaly. In a much larger study based on 2,600 interviews, FlexJobs concluded that 76 percent of workers prefer to avoid the office when they have important work to do."

"A new player has entered the enterprise productivity race. For decades, Microsoft reigned as the market leader in enterprise productivity - until Google pushed into the space with Google Apps. Now, with the acquisition of Quip, Salesforce is joining Microsoft and Google in the race. The implications, however, extend far beyond productivity and CRM. Recent developments in enterprise software - including Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite, Microsoft's purchase of LinkedIn and Salesforce's acquisition of Demandware and Quip - point to a shift in the market. Enterprise software (not just productivity apps) can no longer be siloed applications bolted together with varying degrees of integration. Today's tools are expected to be cross-functional, with native integration, real-time collaboration and smart communication at their very core. Enterprise software giants across different verticals are moving in the direction of end-to-end solutions in an attempt to own more of the workflow - Salesforce's acquisition of Quip will only intensify the competition. For enterprise software startups, it's indicative of more mergers and acquisitions to come."

"Want to learn how to plan, publish, and promote viral infographics? You're in the right place. But let's start by making something clear: If you're thinking, "I'm not a natural designer" or "I've never made an infographic before," you're not alone. However, instead of making excuses, answer this: Have you ever made a presentation in PowerPoint or Keynote? Great. Believe it or not, you've got the skills to make an infographic. And now that I know you can do this, I'm here to walk you through the seven steps that I take when creating infographics. The plan is to cover each of those steps in detail so you know exactly how to create and launch infographics for your business as well. Let's dive in. How to Create Shareable Infographics Using PowerPoint or Keynote"

"The missing piece of your content marketing stack. For the jargon lovers: welcome to collaborative cloud-based content creation. For the rest of us: now you can plan, write, edit and ideate on ebooks, blog posts and long content with your team from anywhere, on any device. RESEARCH AND WRITE AS A TEAM. Some of the best data points, images, graphs, anecdotes and testimonials are sitting on your coworker's desktop. But they belong in your team's documents. So invite your team to Airstory, and not only share your research but also invite your team to collaborate on your drafts."

"Shortly after the start of the millennium, Microsoft stated a goal to be the go-to enterprise platform for the data center. Many in the industry scoffed at the idea that Microsoft could dominate in a market traditionally led by Unix. Today, there are few enterprises that don't have a significant investment in Microsoft servers and infrastructure. Five years ago Microsoft launched Office 365 and, right now, we're seeing a parallel in their move to lead the cloud office application sector. Office and the enterprise applications that support Office 365-Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business - have become ubiquitous in the market. In July this year, it was reported that Office 365 is used daily by over 70 million enterprise users. However, Microsoft hasn't achieved this success without challenges. In 2013, many industry pundits saw Google Apps for Enterprise as the heir apparent for cloud and productivity, but things have changed significantly in the last three years. Under Satya Nadella's leadership, Microsoft has rebranded to support its 'mobile-first, cloud- first' go-to-market. The move to support Office on the Apple and Google platforms has strengthened its position in the market. Following this success, their next ambition is to enable customers and partners to move to Office 365. Earlier this year, Microsoft launched a number of initiatives to help clients consume Office 365 licenses more effectively. One such program is geared towards securing the license base by motivating renewals and preventing-churn versus a completely new sale. Once a client activates and consumes the licenses on Office 365, they receive ongoing upgrades, renewals, and new features as part of an evergreen service. Employees experience the latest across all their devices. This compares favorably to the historical process of waiting every three to four years for the on-premises Enterprise Agreement to be signed and subsequent refresh of a laptop with a new office applica

"In the engineer-glorifying culture of Silicon Valley, salespeople are often an overlooked breed. But there's a man who's quietly built his legacy by mastering the art of selling business software. Meet Dave Rudnitsky, senior VP of enterprise sales at Insidesales.com, a software startup that was last valued at roughly $1.5 billion. Although he started in finance, Rudnitsky soon made the jump to sales and carved out an incredible 30-year career, helping grow some of the most groundbreaking tech companies, including Oracle, Netscape, and Salesforce early on - even earning a separate chapter about his prolific sales skills in Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's 2009 book, "Behind the Cloud." "If you're going to build the greatest product in the world, you're going to need the greatest engineers in the world. But if you can't execute on it, you're going to fail," Rudnitsky tells Business Insider. "And executing means selling." Finance to sales Rudnitsky first got into sales for a simple reason: money. In his first job out of college, with payroll software company ADP's finance team, Rudnitsky realized his peers in sales were getting paid a lot more than he was.  "At a minimum 3 times more," he recalls."

"SAFE FINANCING DOCUMENTS The safe (simple agreement for future equity) is intended to replace convertible notes in most cases, and we think it addresses many of the problems with convertible notes while preserving their flexibility. In addition to being simpler and clearer, we intend the safe to remain fair to both investors and founders.During its development the safe was positively reviewed by many of the top startup investors. We believe it's a positive evolution of the convertible note and hope the startup community finds it an easier way to accomplish the same goals. Features of a safe: Unlike a convertible note, a safe is not a debt instrument. Debt instruments have maturity dates, are typically subject to certain regulations, create the threat of insolvency, and can include security interests and sometimes subordination agreements, all of which can have unintended negative consequences for startups. Because the money invested in a startup via a safe is not a loan, it will not accrue interest. This is particularly beneficial for startups, but also better embodies the intention of investors, who never meant to be lenders in the first place. As a flexible, one-document security without numerous terms to negotiate, a safe should save startups and investors money in legal fees and reduce the time spent negotiating the terms of the investment. Startups and investors will usually only have to negotiate one item: the valuation cap. Because a safe has no expiration or maturity date, there should be no time or money spent dealing with extending maturity dates, revising interest rates or the like. A safe still allows for high resolution fundraising. Startups can close with investors as soon as both parties are ready, instead of trying to coordinate a single close with all investors simultaneously. There are four versions of safe, corresponding to the four types of convertible note: Safe Primer Safe: Cap, no Discount Safe: Discount, no Cap Safe: Cap

"A startup that needs a small amont of cash (usually under $1.5-$2m or so) will find two typical structures to consider: a "priced round", where the investor and the company agree on the purchase of a certain amount of equity in the company for a given amount of cash.  The investor has a known fixed percentage of the company they own when the financing has closed. a convertible note, in which the investor gives cash in exchange for a discount on the next round of funding (which will typically be a priced round).  In this case, the investor does not know what % of the company their cash will eventually have bought and, consequently, the entrepreneur doesn't know how much dilution has occurred. There are advantages to each, but to start with, it's worth pointing out that you will rarely see convertibles used in seed financing for amounts greater than $1m or $1.5m.  (exceptions do exist).  Above that range, the investor typically wants to know what percent he or she owns of the company, so a priced round is far more common. Here's an attempt at a simple explanation of a convertible-note financing and why it is used:  If the concept is new and it proves challenging to agree on what the value of this company could be, a convertible is sometimes an easy way of the two parties saying "we're just not sure how to value the company yet until we see some traction or release the product, so let's set aside valuation until we get further down the road."  The investor gives cash, and in exchange gets a note (debt) from the company to pay back the amount (plus interest) or convert it to stock in a later round (usually the next financing).  Of course the seed investor is betting early and is therefore putting their money in with greater risk, so to offset that risk, they negotiate a discount rate on what their money will ultimately buy at the next round.  If the convertible note holder invested $500k in a convertible note, assuming the company wasn't able to pay off the n

"Today's Windows Mobile is Microsoft second try at an OS with that name. Despite having an early first mover advantage with Windows Mobile in the early 2000's Microsoft's lead folded like a bad hand of cards when the iPhone and Android arrived on the scene in the second half of the decade. We have not heard much about the reasons for this failure from inside the company, until a few weeks ago, when Christian Hernandez, who worked as a developer in the division, spoke out about his experience of this period in a Medium post. He revealed that Microsoft did anticipate the upcoming evolution of mobile phones into internet-connected computing devices and that initially things were looking good, due to Microsoft having the following advantages: A solid and stable embedded OS code base with WinCE and a growing PDA platform in PocketPC which integrated familiar apps and user experience to the desktop A relationship with chip manufacturers and OEMs which should allow it to copy the model of the Wintel era onto smartphones where Microsoft provided the OS, reference designs and marketing dollars and OEMs built the hardware and took it to market A well managed and broad set of application developers who lived and died by Microsoft and would surely support its new shift towards a mobile platform. This also included Microsoft's own apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer and XBox assets. A lot of money in the bank to buy customers and market share"

"Dropbox Paper, which was announced last October, is now in open beta. Given that the collaborative writing tool is going head-to-head with well-loved apps like Google Docs and Evernote, I couldn't wait to get an early look. Though Paper is clearly still a work in progress, I'm impressed with its simple design, thoughtful features, and especially its ease-of-use. Here are five features that are especially promising."

"Venture capital (VC) firms will go to great lengths to convince the most promising tech founders to accept their deals so they can get their hands on that all-important slice of equity. Some of them will offer introductions to important people in their network, while others will offer hardcore engineering support and a cool place to work. The very best advice, swanky dinners, and even the odd CEO retreat are also up for grabs if you sign a term sheet with us, they might say. But Vineet Jain, CEO and cofounder of cloud storage firm Egnyte, which has raised $62 million (£43 million), believes many VCs overpromise. Speaking to Business Insider by phone on Tuesday, Jain said: "Most VC firms say we give you more than money. That's complete hogwash." Egnyte, which competes with Box and Dropbox, has been backed by Google Ventures, the venture capital arm of Google, and Kleiner Perkins, a well-known Silicon Valley investor with billions at its disposal. Jain, whose company is based over the road from Google in Mountain View, was quick to say that Google Ventures is unlike many other venture capital companies. "They were instrumental to us," he said, adding that the firm helped Egnyte to improve its web user interface and assisted with the company's marketing efforts. Egnyte has also integrated its cloud storage platform - used by 15,000 companies - with Google's own cloud platform, Google Drive. Unlike Box and Dropbox, who have raised $558 million (£385 million) and $1.1 billion (£760 million) respectively, Egnyte is on target to be cash flow positive by the third quarter of this year. "I refused to have a free version of Egnyte," said Jain. "Look at where I am today.""

"Microsoft today launched Office 2016 for Windows, and simultaneously raised prices of the stand-alone licenses for both it and the Mac edition between 5% and 7%. Office 365 subscription prices -- the "rent-not-own" model that Microsoft's been aggressively pushing since early 2013 -- did not change. resume makeover executive IT Resume Makeover: How to add flavor to a bland resume Don't count on your 'plain vanilla' resume to get you noticed - your resume needs a personal flavor to Read Now The cost of a single-license Office Home & Student 2016 edition climbed $10, from $140 to $150, a 7.1% increase. Meanwhile, Office Home & Business 2016 -- which adds Microsoft's Outlook email client to the suite -- also rose $10, from $220 to $230, or 4.5%. Office Professional 2016, available only for Windows, retained its $400 price tag. The single-license, stand-alone editions are sold primarily at retail, and are dubbed "perpetual" licenses because they require a one-time payment, but can then be used as long as the user wants. That's in contrast to Office 365, which requires a monthly or annual fee to continue using the software. On the consumer side, customers can choose between Office 365 Personal ($70 annually, $7 monthly) and Office 365 Home ($100 per year, $10 each month), while businesses have options that range from $99 to $240 per user per year. Office 365 Home is notable because it allows up to five installations of Office 2016 on PCs or Macs in the same household. All Office 365 plans, both consumer- and business-grade, also include rights to run the Office apps designed for Android, iOS and Windows 10 touch-centric mobile devices, including Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones and iPads, and Windows 10 touch-enabled tablets and notebooks. Microsoft's price increase for Office 2016 perpetual licenses was the second since January 2013, when the company revamped its retail line-up and boosted prices by as much as 17%. Microsoft duplicated those price increa

"TECH More: Twitter Nuzzel We talked to the CEO who some people think owns the one thing Twitter needs most JIM EDWARDS JUN. 18, 2015, 12:11 PM 973 1 FACEBOOK LINKEDIN TWITTER EMAIL PRINT Nuzzel / Jonathan Abrams Jonathan Abrams, founder and CEO of Nuzzel. A few days ago, the Silicon Valley investor Chris Sacca was talking on Periscope about Nuzzel, the newsgathering app. He said Twitter should just go ahead and buy Nuzzel outright. It would fix a lot of problems for Twitter. That's because Nuzzel does the one thing that Twitter doesn't do: organise content in tweets based on their importance. Looking at your Twitter account is often a random experience, a stream of consciousness of what your friends have on their minds right now, interesting or not. "Random" is not the same as "useful."  So Nuzzel takes that feed (and feeds from Facebook and other social media) and only shows you the news stories your friends are sharing. The result is amazingly interesting, and requires zero effort: You get a feed of headlines that feel much closer and more relevant to what you're interested in, because they're being tweeted or shared by friends, family, and coworkers. Nuzzel's friends-of-friends feed is often even more interesting because it surfaces stuff from further afield, stuff you didn't even know was news but is buzzing on the outer edge of your social sphere Sacca - who is one of Twitter's largest investors, and who recently wrote a manifesto about how to fix Twitter - sees it this way: "Nuzzel makes Twitter better." He is not alone in that opinion. Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal recently wrote, "Before I ever open Twitter, I open Nuzzel, a Twitter client app that digests my Twitter feed for me, showing me the most popular links in my network in the past 24 hours. Nuzzel can be tuned in a number of ways, but this default behaviour more than suffices. By putting an algorithm between me and the firehose of Twitter, Nuzzel makes Twitter usable