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To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/7/2010 9:26:58 AM
From: stockman_scott  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1685
 
Panzura Inks $12 Million Round Led by Khosla Ventures /

Cloud computing start-up Panzura has added $12 million in venture capital with a Series B round led by Menlo Park, Calif.-based Khosla Ventures. Series A investors Matrix Partners and CTTV Investments, the venture capital arm of Chevron Technology Ventures, also participated in the latest round. San Jose, Calif.-based Panzura develops converged cloud storage and application optimization products, and will use the funding to continue development as well as bolster sales and marketing.

PRESS RELEASE
December 7th, 2010 -- Panzura, the emerging leader in converged cloud storage and application optimization products, today announced that it has raised $12 million in a Series B funding round led by Khosla Ventures of Menlo Park, California. Existing Series A investor Matrix Partners also participated in the round. CTTV Investments LLC, the venture capital arm of Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, joined the existing investors in this round.

The funding will be used to expand Sales, Marketing and Support operations at Panzura, as well as continuing R&D investment in Panzura’s market-leading product line. These application-aware products are deployed today in Fortune 500 IT organizations across North America, enabling an unprecedented opportunity for cost savings and performance improvements for such mission-critical applications as cloud storage, data backup and disaster recovery, global file sharing and deduplication, and significantly improving the performance of applications such as Microsoft SharePoint.

“No company in the nascent cloud storage space has shown the level of product innovation, sales traction, and customer satisfaction as Panzura,” noted Shirish Sathaye, General Partner of Khosla Ventures. “I look forward to working with the company to extend its already impressive lead in this exciting market.”

“Since its inception in 2008, Panzura has shown a remarkable level of innovation and execution,” said Andrew Verhalen, General Partner of Matrix Partners. “Their focus on customer needs has put Panzura head-and-shoulders above the competition in the cloud storage market. Continuing leadership in R&D will enable them to provide solutions that are more secure and cost effective than existing Tier 1 storage options.”

“We are very excited to have the backing of these top-tier investors,” states Randy Chou, Co-Founder and CEO of Panzura. “Our application-aware approach to enterprise storage and application acceleration has created a great deal of customer demand. This investment, along with the expertise of Khosla, Matrix and Chevron Technology Ventures, will allow us to continue to lead the evolution of this exciting market.”

John Hanten, Venture Executive for Chevron Technology Ventures, has joined Panzura’s Customer Advisory Board.

Panzura delivers innovative products that take a unique approach to traditional storage, termed Application Network Storage (ANS). By combining application logic with storage technology, Panzura is able to provide solutions that are faster, cheaper and more secure than traditional approaches to Tier 1 Storage.

Email info@panzura.com or visit panzura.com for more information.

About Panzura

Panzura is the emerging leader in converged cloud storage and application optimization products. Founded in 2008 and backed by leading venture firms, Panzura delivers innovative products that take an application-centric rather than network-centric approach to storage, termed Application Network Storage (ANS). By combining application logic with storage technology, Panzura is able to provide solutions that are faster, cheaper and more secure than traditional approaches to Tier 1 Storage. This revolutionary architecture allows enterprises to save costs, significantly increase performance and secure mission-critical data via public or private cloud environments.

About Khosla Ventures

Khosla Ventures helps entrepreneurs deliver lasting change through technological innovation. The firm, founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, offers venture assistance, strategic advice and capital to entrepreneurs with the audacity to take on what others may call insoluble dilemmas. Khosla Ventures’ team members have known the stress of working through a crisis and the thrill of growing an idea into a multi-billion dollar company. The firm leverages that experience to help entrepreneurs turn technological risk into new opportunities. Today Khosla Ventures has one of the largest and broadest clean technology portfolios (including solar, energy storage, nuclear power, wind and high-efficiency engines), as well as holdings in traditional technology sectors such as mobility, Internet and silicon.

About Matrix Partners

Matrix Partners is a premier venture capital firm that has generated outstanding returns for over three decades. The firm has delivered several of the industry’s top performing funds of all time. Matrix Partners has offices in Waltham, MA; New York, NY; Palo Alto, CA; Mumbai, India; and Beijing and Shanghai, China. The firm has been fortunate to have invested in game-changing, industry-leading businesses such as Apple Computer, Sandisk, Veritas, Sycamore Networks, Phone.com, Starent Networks, JBoss and Gilt Groupe. Find out more at www.matrixpartners.com.

About CTTV Investments LLC

CTTV Investments LLC, the venture capital arm of Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, identifies and invests in new technologies and business opportunities that can create value, clear competitive advantage and superior financial returns for Chevron.




To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/7/2010 2:06:58 PM
From: Doren  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1685
 
> CRM challenges Oracle

We need to figure this out. Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff are good friends I think. Ellison helped him start Salesforce and I believe he's an investor.

What the heck does this database.com mean? It has to benefit both companies I think. They must have some kind of agreement to use Oracle and split the profits.



To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/8/2010 11:50:45 AM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 1685
 
Salesforce Buys VC-backed Heroku in $249 Million Deal
_______________________________________________________________

December 8th, 2010 -- Salesforce.com will pay as much as $249 million to buy venture-backed cloud computing start-up Heroku. Salesforce will pay $212 million in cash for the company. It also plans to issue $27 million in stock to Heroku employees, and an additional $10 million in cash for unvested Heroku shares, Reuters reported. San Francisco-based Heroku is a cloud-software company that charges developers to host applications written in the Ruby programming language, Reuters said. Formed in 2007, Heroku is backed by investors Redpoint Ventures, Ignition Partners, Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital and Y Combinator.

(Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) said it has agreed to buy privately held cloud-platform company Heroku for up to $249 million to expand its presence in cloud computing related to social and mobile applications.

Salesforce said it would pay $212 million net of cash. It also plans to issue $27 million in stock to Heroku employees and pay $10 million in cash for unvested Heroku shares as part of the deal.

Salesforce expects the deal to hurt fourth-quarter adjusted earnings by 2 cents a share and by 12-13 cents a share in fiscal 2012.

The company added it does not expect Heroku to contribute materially to revenue till fiscal 2012.

San Francisco-based Heroku is a cloud-software platform company which charges developers to host applications written in the Ruby programming language on its servers.

Ruby is a programming language used to write social and mobile applications for Internet firms like Groupon, Hulu and Twitter. More than 105,000 web apps run on Heroku’s application platform, according to the company.

Salesforce, which competes with SAP AG (SAPG.DE), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Oracle (ORCL.O) and NetSuite (N.N), specializes in cloud computing services which run software applications on its computer servers on behalf of clients.

The company’s shares, which have rise 26 percent since it posted strong quarterly results last month, closed at $145.24 on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. (Reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Eidting by Roshni Menon)




To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/15/2010 12:58:48 PM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 1685
 
VCs Have Gone to the Cloud in 2010
_______________________________________________________________

By Alastair Goldfisher

peHUB Wire--Wednesday, December 15

Forget social gaming and social media. You can even dismiss the iPad, mobile apps, Facebook and Apple altogether.

For my money, the story of 2010 was defined by the year of the cloud.

All you have to do is take a look at how the cloud has gone mainstream, with the Microsoft TV commercial that shows a couple in an airport trying to cure their layover boredom. They then cheer, “To the Cloud.”

To the cloud, investors and acquirers have gone. The cloud is more than just a silly pop-culture reference. It is a new acquisition target. Witness the recent acquisition of Isilon Systems (for $2.25 billion by EMC) or the bidding war that erupted over 3PAR (Hewlett-Packard bought it for $2.4 billion).

In addition, VMware and Citrix Systems have each bought cloud-related tech companies this year that were VC-backed. Meanwhile, CA and IBM are investing in the cloud. And Microsoft, with its TV campaign, is clearly interested in achieving some sort of cloud dominance.

Meanwhile, I wouldn’t say that the cloud dominated the funding landscape this year, but numerous cloud startups raked in significant funding rounds this year, including Aryaka Networks, Cirtas, Coraid, Gluster, rPath and Zetta, among others.

Just today, another cloud storage company announced a round. Clustrix, founded by Paul Mikesell—one of the co-founders of Isilon—raised $12 million in a Series B round from U.S. Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and ATA Ventures, bringing its total funding to $30 million.

The cloud is the most noteworthy technology of 2010 because it is the basis for why we’re seeing so many startups launch. Some startups that would have asked for, say, $5 million or more in early stage funding a few years ago, can get by with $1 million or less (thank you, angel investors) because the cloud services of Amazon and other vendors make it possible.

The question, then, is will enthusiasm remain upbeat in 2011 for all things cloud? Jake Sorofman, chief marketing officer, just yesterday, wrote to me that in 2011, “We’ll see cloud driving a transformation in the cost and responsiveness of IT service delivery.”

Peder Ulander, chief marketing officer at Cloud.com, a Cupertino, Calif.-based, VC-backed company, recently told me that a lot of things are happening in the cloud that are fueling interest from VCs and strategic acquirers.

As the woman in the Microsoft ad exclaims: “Yay, Cloud!”

*Alastair Goldfisher is acting Editor-in-Chief of Venture Capital Journal, a Thomson Reuters publication, and a contributor to peHUB.com. The opinions expressed here are his own. Reach him at alastair.goldfisher@thomsonreuters.com. Follow him on Twitter at @agoldfisher.



To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/16/2010 11:54:16 AM
From: stockman_scott1 Recommendation  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1685
 
16-Dec-10 09:49 ET In Play ISI Group ranks their cloud universe : ISI Group believes VMW and CRM are best positioned for the paradigm shift of cloud computing. MSFT they see as next, however, secular concerns about the co's competitive positioning in areas such as tablets and mobile are likely to continue to restrain the multiple until addressed. RHT they see in the fourth slot with ORCL fifth as it may not have all the pieces of the puzzle today, but its M&A strategy and internal R&D efforts give them confidence that this will change. CTXS they believe is in the sixth best position to benefit from cloud computing. In the hardware space, they believe HPQ will gain more than DELL primarily due to HP's broader product portfolio.



To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/20/2010 12:56:09 AM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 1685
 
Dreamforce Musings: Why the Real Cloud Has Gained Momentum

greylockvc.com



To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/20/2010 4:20:01 PM
From: stockman_scott  Respond to of 1685
 
Nasuni, a Natick, Mass.-based developer of a cloud gateway for the storage industry, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. Flybridge Capital Partners led the round, and was joined by return backers North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners. Nasuni previously raised $8 million. nasuni.com



To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (502)12/20/2010 4:28:41 PM
From: stockman_scott  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1685
 
Mass Relevance, developer of a cloud-based platform for managing and broadcasting content, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from Austin Ventures and Floodgate Fund, according to TechCrunch. masserelevance.com