ClearSky Data Lands $27 Million To Expand Hybrid Storage Solution

ClearSky Data has come up with an interesting approach to solve the data storage cost and speed problem. Today it was rewarded with a $27 million Series B round to continue the mission.

The company came out of stealth in August with a plan to offer customers a multi-tier, fully managed, hybrid data-management solution. In practice this involves an appliance that’s installed in your data center (or in AWS or Azure) and houses the company’s most important hot data, a second level of storage stored at a co-location facility within 120 miles of a customer deals with somewhat important or warm data and finally Amazon S3 storage for stuff you don’t need all that often or cold data.

The idea is that you can reduce cost by distributing the data across these tiers, with the data you need the most stored closest to you for the least latency. The secret sauce is the software and algorithms that manage all of it and moves the data between the various tiers automatically based on usage patterns, policy and customer requirements.

The company also handles other data management tasks including de-duplication, backup and disaster recovery.

The round was led by by Polaris Partners, with a strategic investment from Akamai Technologies. Previous investors General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners also participated. With today’s investment, the company has raised $39 million across two rounds.

There is a tremendous market opportunity in storage in general, but ClearSky’s founders have been able to build a sophisticated solution that solves a big problem, according to Dave Barrett from lead investor Polaris Ventures. He says, that’s what attracted him to the company.

“It’s not easy to do. There is a tremendous amount of storage chops and algorithmic magic that goes into what they’ve built,” he said.

ClearSky really had its coming out party this Fall at VMworld and Amazon re:invent, company CEO Ellen Rubin told. It’s not easy for a new player to get attention, but the fact that traditional storage market leaders like EMC are suddenly distracted didn’t escape her notice or visitors to the company booth.

She says ClearSky’s product is aiming for the more adventurous side of the market and companies that would be buying from more traditional storage vendors are not necessarily the target market here.

“The customers that will try ClearSky in the next couple of years will be on early adopter side of the spectrum,” she pointed out. These customers are trying to find new ways to solve their storage problem and get out of the data center management business while they’re at it.

She sees her company as different from even more modern storage players like Pure Storage (which recently went public). That’s because ClearSky’s solution takes customers out of the storage provisioning and management business and leaves all of the heavy lifting to her company, Rubin explained.

Rubin would not say how many customers her company has at this point, but she did say that some of its earliest Beta customers are in the process of becoming paid customers and she would be able to share specific numbers at a later date.

ClearSky is based in Boston and currently has co-location facilities running in Boston, Philadelphia and most recently Las Vegas.

The company has 40 employees and Rubin said that she is planning on using some of the new funding to add additional personnel and begin to expand the business to other locations around the country and the globe.

By: Unknown On 00:51

Continue Reading

Biddulph And Coates Launch Thington, A New Super-Angel-Backed IoT Startup

Smart Lock Pioneer UniKey Raises $10m And Looks Outside The Home For GrowthEvery day there are more appliances and devices coming out that have network components. For instance, by 2017, “all Samsung televisions will be IoT devices, and in five years, all Samsung hardware will be IoT devices”. That’s a quote from BJ Yoon at Samsung at CES this year. Samsung is betting on openness as a key to IoT. Why? Because almost every hardware manufacturer is looking for integrations because none of them create enough smart objects to ‘own’ the ecosystem, and much of the value from them comes from them working together.
Within five years most devices will have a networked component of some kind, and in ten years they probably all will. The components to embed in the devices are cheap and becoming established. The network connectivity is pervasive, and our phones now have good screens to interact with them.
The problem is that at the moment, although the hardware is really good, the software sucks – particularly the service layer stuff.
Now, a San Francisco-based company, founded by Dopplr founder Matt Biddulph and ex-Yahoo Brickhouse Head of Product Tom Coates is building out a new consumer-facing product that combines Smart Home technology with their expertise in location, social networks and the web of data.
They previously formed Product Club as a way to find a product to build, while doing some consulting along the way. Now they are launching their new startup: Thington.
To do it they have raised Angel funding from some pretty well known tech people and investors,  including Ray Ozzie, Stewart Butterfield, Eric Wahlforss, Joi Ito, Marko Ahtisaari, Saul Klein, Loic Le Meur, Matt Rolandson and Samantha Tripodi. Terms were undisclosed.
“We’re making a better user interface and service layer that is respectful to manufacturers and open and we’re trying to be a couple of generations beyond what other people are doing,” says Coates.
“Think of it this way: Zipcar at the hardware level is just the ability to lock and unlock cars. But Zipcar as a service is so much more than that because it’s about what you can do with that hardware, what service you can create around it. Our sense is that everyone’s been building remote controls, and we think we can go much much further in building that service layer around the connected objects in people’s lives.”
“We’re bringing together a lot of our interests here – connected devices, the web of data, location and more.”
Based on their previous history and ability to launch great products, this is going to be a team to watch.

By: Unknown On 07:13

Continue Reading

Dormi Turns Android Smartphones Or Tablets Into A Video Baby Monitor

Biddulph And Coates Launch Thington, A New Super-Angel-Backed IoT StartupA number of companies today leverage the ubiquity of smartphones in order to offer parents “connected” baby monitoring systems that can be accessed from anywhere. Often, as with devices like NapTime or Evoz, these include a monitor and camera of some sort and an accompanying mobile app. But a startup called Dormi has historically offered a different take – instead of selling new hardware, the company allows you to re-use old Android smartphones or tablets in order to remotely monitor your baby’s room.
Now its system has received a long-anticipated update, with the much-requested addition of video monitoring.
Previously, Dormi’s system was audio-only. Using an app that worked over Wi-Fi or cellular connections or even WiFi Direct/WiFi Hotspot, you could listen in on baby while out of the room, much like traditional baby monitoring systems allow for today. You could also press a button to speak into the app which would transmit the sound of your voice to the other device in the child’s room.
The devices you use with Dormi could be an extra Android phone or tablet you had lying around the house. Or you could use your current Android device as the primary one, if you chose.
In addition to the simplicity of the system, the app has been priced compellingly – perhaps even too cheaply considering its hardware-based competition sold through baby superstores and other retailers is often exorbitantly priced.
While technically a subscription-based app, Dormi offers lifetime usage for just $7.00. It’s sort of a no-brainer for those looking for simple and affordable alternative to traditional baby monitoring systems, or just wants a solution that’s easier to carry around when traveling, for example.
4YJmy4N EXGkn9Xs bEUn1Ags dbpa1KQs uy1TEGks nPGS7rAs eH05UTss  View Slideshow Previous Next Exit
That price point remains in effect today, despite the new feature set. You can also pay $1 per month for Dormi or $5 per year. The company is, however, considering the introduction of in-app purchases later on when it enables high-quality video – support for which is already built into the app but not yet available.
With the just released update, the app now supports real-time video streaming with hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding (even on old 2.3 Gingerbread devices). Explains co-founder Pavel Kryl of Sleekbit, the Czech Republic-based company that makes Dormi, extending support to older devices took a lot of work on their part, including reverse engineering low-level Android libraries in order to interface with them for hardware-accelerated video encoding. The implementation promises minimal CPU usage and battery usage.
Dormi’s app has also been visually updated to match up with Android’s new “material design” philosophy, the company says, which includes animated transitions to and from full-screen video, for example. There have also been improvement’s to Dormi’s intelligent noise level monitoring, including a new manual sensitivity control, which should address some users’ earlier complaints about the app’s sensitivity, which increased on hard, flat surfaces.
Another more major addition is support for Chrome OS, which means Dormi’s system can now be accessed from a Chromebook computer. It will also soon become available by way of the Chrome browser on all platforms, too, the company says.
And there have been a number of other ‘under the hood’ updates that improve battery usage, reliability and reduce latency.
As an Android-only application, Dormi is doing well enough with around 120,000 active users following 250,000 downloads, and steadily rising sales. However, because of its rather low pricing, the company is only generating $6,000 per month we’re told. That’s concerning because for Dormi to stick around, it will need to figure out how to scale that revenue. (Though Sleekbit does have a number of other apps on the market, which does help.)
One thing that may help increase Dormi’s sales is that the app just a few weeks ago has managed to score the second position in Google Play when users search for “baby monitor.” That could give Dormi increased visibility, and ultimately more downloads and paying customers.
Dormi is a free download on Google Play.

By: Unknown On 06:58

Continue Reading

Home Automation System Seed Labs Launches Silvair Control To Make Your Lightbulbs Smart

Dormi Turns Android Smartphones Or Tablets Into A Video Baby MonitorAs our homes becoming increasingly wired (or unwired) it’s important for our teakettles to talk to our fridges and, potentially, for both to gang up on our vacuums. But how? They can now use something called the Silvair Control from Seed Labs.
We last met up with Seed Labs last November when they showed me a working system to control electronics in the home using an open and very usable chip interface. That interface is now commercially ready and we can expect to see the product inside of appliances before too long. The Control, however, is something else entirely. Shaped like the Nest thermostat, the Control is actually a removable button/dial that you can carry from room to room to control lighting and appliances.
“Silvair Control is the world’s first fully configurable, gesture­-driven, wireless controller that lets customers manage their everyday appliances whether that be lamps, shades, and garage doors or other household and commercial products,” said co-founder Rafal Han. His cofounder, Szymon Slupik, is an expert in “connected technology.”
The Bluetooth-powered device can stick to your wall or you can put it on any surface. You can tap it, slide it, and spin it to activate various parts of your home automation system and you can dock it when not in use. They’ve raised $3.3 million to build out the product and they are already placing their specialized chips in OEM products around the world including Freemont, CA-based Soraa who is using the technology in their connected LED lamps.
scaled.Silvair_Kvis_2 scaled.Silvair_Kvis_1 scaled.Silvair_smart sensor cmf 222 scaled.Silvair_Kvis_3 scaled.Silvair_Front_page_1DSC01904_edit  View Slideshow Previous Next Exit
“We’ve built the unique architecture where devices form a native, flexible system and are capable of talking directly to each other,” said Han. “The devices can be easily configured with just a smartphone app. The separation of the control plane from the power plane makes a foundation for fully configurable ecosystem.”
When I saw the product a few months ago I was impressed by the fire-and-forget nature of the connection software. Each object connects to the controller app automatically with no pairing, a feature that will impress folks who have tried to connect to Bluetooth light bulbs in the past

By: Unknown On 06:43

Continue Reading

Wikipedia’s New iOS App Sees An Improved Design, Adds Social Features With Shareable “Fact Cards”

Home Automation System Seed Labs Launches Silvair Control To Make Your Lightbulbs SmartThe Wikimedia Foundation has been steadily rolling out updates to the Wikipedia mobile experience in recent months, and today that trend continues as the organization rolls out a brand-new iOS app. This release is focused on improvements to the visual design of Wikipedia’s app, better search, and includes the addition of social features that allow you to share facts and images with friends on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and elsewhere.
While Wikipedia today sees nearly half a billion monthly visitors accessing its online encyclopedia’s over 34 million articles that span 288 languages, its deep integration into the iOS operating system is both a blessing and a curse. While it’s great to be able to quickly access Wikipedia content by way of Spotlight search and Siri, that also means that users have less reason to visit the native app directly when there’s something they need to research. And with an ever-growing number of mobile applications available for download from the App Store, it can be difficult to make the case for something as utilitarian as Wikipedia to remain on your phone’s homescreen…or second screen…or third.
To some extent, that’s why the Wikimedia Foundation has been rolling out these updates to its mobile application, with the goal of making its native version more attractive, easier to use, and generally more engaging. The idea is to make the app something that’s compelling enough to pop into from time to time, even if you’re not actively searching for a topic.
Things like the app’s “Random” feature, which suggests an interesting article for reading, and the app’s “Nearby” option, which includes articles that suggest content related to your current location, have for some time offered different ways to interact with Wikipedia, for example.
With today’s update, the app has been improved to make accessing its content easier and quicker than before, with consideration to mobile users’ limited time and smaller screens. The app now sports a cleaner design with a short descriptor of the topic right at the top of the screen that makes it possible to get a simple answer within seconds. Many articles are now also preceded by a large image, giving the app more visual interest.
Meanwhile, the app’s search functionality has been improved with a higher contrast search bar and support for showing your recent searches.
Once immersed in the app, Wikipedia has made changes subtly designed to keep you there – specifically, to keep you exploring topics and reading more. To that end, each article will now have a section at the bottom that encourages this behavior, connecting you to other information on the topic at hand. And an enhanced image viewer helps visual learners swipe through all the article’s images more easily.


The app is also now going social with a feature that lets you create images overlaid with text from an article that can be shared with anyone via social media like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, email or text, and more. Previously released on Android, this clever addition lets you share a fact with your friends. It’s an attempt at making Wikipedia something that’s more fun and social – a toy of sorts, not just a tool.

It’s actually a handy tool to use when having those sorts of arguments that can be won by way of Wikipedia searches. Instead of just texting or posting a link to the article and citing the factoid that proves your point, you can build these “fact cards” using the main image from the article and your highlighted text. Now, not only have you won the point, you’ve won with style, it seems.
The updated app is rolling out now on iTunes.

By: Unknown On 06:28

Continue Reading