Boulder-based Symplified, which sells cloud security tools, is welcoming former Netscape executives Taher Elgamal and Todd Rulon-Miller to its advisory board. Five-year-old Symplified is venture backed by Granite Ventures, Allegis Capital, and Quest Software and closed its newest, $9 million, round of funding last week. The company has raised $18.8 million so far.
PRESS RELEASE:
January 19th, 2011 -- Symplified, the Cloud Security Company, today announced that Internet technology luminaries and former Netscape executives Taher Elgamal and Todd Rulon-Miller have joined its advisory board. Mr. Rulon-Miller during his tenure as senior vice president of worldwide sales and services at Netscape scaled revenues from startup to more than $600 million. Meanwhile, Mr. Elgamal served as chief scientist for Netscape from 1995-98 where he invented SSL encryption. Both Elgamal and Rulon-Miller will provide Symplified’s management team with counsel on technology and growth strategy for its cloud identity and access management service.
“Symplified had the vision several years ago to create the first next generation platform for single sign-on, access control and user management for public and private clouds”
“The Cloud is fundamentally changing the way the world approaches IT in much the same way that the Web did before it, and Symplified is changing the way the world manages identity in this new era. The addition of Taher Elgamal and Todd Rulon-Miller, two of the most influential technology executives of the Web era, to Symplified’s advisory board is a major coup,” said Eric Olden, CEO of Symplified. “Their experience scaling Netscape into the first dominant infrastructure provider for the Web will be invaluable in helping Symplified extend its lead as the number one provider of cloud identity management services critical to enable secure adoption of the Cloud.”
Todd Rulon-Miller
Todd Rulon-Miller is the former senior vice president of worldwide sales and services at Netscape Communications. During his time at Netscape, Mr. Rulon-Miller built the company’s sales team to 800 employees operating in more than 30 countries and drove revenues from startup to more than $600 million. During his tenure, in August, 1995, Netscape completed the then-most-successful initial public offering on the NASDAQ. Prior to his role at Netscape, Mr. Rulon-Miller served in executive roles at First Data Resources, IBM (NYSE: IBM), NeXT, Inc., Software Alliance, and Tandem Computers. Additionally he has served on the Board of Directors of Active Software (IPO: ASWX); Epiphany (IPO: EPNY); and early identity software provider Oblix Software (Purchased by Oracle Corporation), and currently serves on the Board of Crowd Science, Aerohive, TouchCommerce and Zuora and is a founding partner of Apogee Venture Group, an early stage venture investment and consulting firm. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.
“With over one million licensed users, Symplified has quickly taken the pole position to become the dominant player in what is fast becoming an enormous market for cloud identity and access management solutions,” said Todd Rulon-Miller. “I’m excited to be part of this experienced, dynamic team that is defining the next generation of identity for the cloud. The Symplified team has done this once already with great success in the Web era at Securant, and is well on its way with the cloud.”
Taher Elgamal
Mr. Elgamal is currently founder of IdentityMind, a provider of new security services for online payments and financial services, and CISO of Axway, a global provider of collaborative business solutions. He started his career at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in 1984, and served as chief scientist at Netscape Communications from 1995 to 1998 where he was a driving force behind SSL. He also was the director of engineering at RSA Security Inc. before founding Securify in 1998 and becoming their CEO. Securify was acquired by Secure Computing and is now part of McAfee. In 2006, Mr. Elgamal joined Tumbleweed Communications as Chief Technology Officer. Tumbleweed was acquired in 2008 by Axway Inc. He is an advisor to Onset Ventures, Glenbrook Partners, PGP Corporation (acquired by Symantec), Arcot Systems (acquired by Computer Associates), Finjan (acquired by M86 Security), Facetime, and Zetta. Mr. Elgamal holds a BS from Cairo University, and Masters and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University.
“Symplified had the vision several years ago to create the first next generation platform for single sign-on, access control and user management for public and private clouds,” said Taher Elgamal. “This fully integrated platform has a substantial lead over other solutions that are on the market or in development. I look forward to working with them as a strategic advisor to extend their technology lead and help usher in the next wave of computing in the cloud.”
About Symplified | The Cloud Security Company
Symplified provides the Trust Fabric of the Cloud by enabling companies to extend and enforce identity and access management policies on cloud applications. Symplified offers the only complete identity management suite for the cloud – addressing Single Sign-On, Access Control and Identity Management for public and private cloud applications. Symplified is available as an on-premises or completely hosted solution, and uses a proven proxy architecture that works without agents or custom code to speed deployment and cut management costs by as much as 80 percent. Symplified Trust Cloud is the only identity and access management solution woven into the fabric of the Amazon EC2 platform and capable of delivering cloud security services on a massively scalable and global basis. Symplified’s management team created Web access management, provisioning, and federation pioneer Securant and the ClearTrust product, which was acquired by RSA Security for $140 million. The company is backed by leading venture capital firms Granite Ventures and Allegis Capital. Symplified is headquartered in Boulder, Colo., with offices in Palo Alto, Calif. Visit us on the Web at symplified.com
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