This is my tenth DEMO event (do I win a pony?) — nine of them in a row. (UPDATE: I recounted, and it's actually my eleventh DEMO, ten in a row.) I started live-tweeting from the event about five or six DEMOs back, then realized it would be better to cover this great conference using a live-blogging tool — i.e., more flexibility, longer posts, and I could integrate my Twitter feed (or anyone else's) right in the live-blog. I used ScribbleLive to do that two or three times. This time, I'm trying a different tool, CoverItLive, which seems to be a little better, more features, etc. I started this live event while I was still enroute from Minneapolis (while on a layover in the Phoenix airport), and I set the event to include all tweets using the hashtage #democon (the main one) or #demofall, since I couldn't post anything while on the plane. Now that I'm here at the Hyatt Santa Clara, I'm going to change the settings back to just my own Twitter feed, along with my CoverItLive posts. It's Monday about 2:30 pm Pacific time, and I'm in my room about to go register. The hotel lobby is pretty full with attendees ghathering already. DEMOfall kicks off at 5:30 with an opening reception, and I plan to post from my CoverItLive iPhone app, shoot some pix to attach to them, and do some audio interviews. I'll upload the latter to my blog as regular posts, some hopefully later on this evening, as well as through the next two days of DEMOfall 2010.
Category: Startups (Page 29 of 30)
Clustrix is all about clustered database systems for Internet-scale applications. It claims the first solution to "combine the high scalability of NoSQL key-value stores with robust relational database functionality, immediate transactional consistency, and seamless deployment of SQL." Lest you think it's blowing smoke, the company was funded last month to the tune of $18 million by Sequoia Capital, U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), and ATA Ventures. 
CEO and cofounder Paul Mikesell (who also participated in a great panel at the Structure conference) was previously cofounder of Isilon, which went IPO a few years ago and recently has had a valuation of around $1 billion. Now he's back to build another company from scratch.
Paul talked to me about what his new firm is doing, and why. Here's the news announcement Clustrix made at Structure.
On the afternoon of the second day at Structure, I had set up an appointment to interview the founder and CEO of a growing cloud enabler, Zuora. I'd met Tien a couple of times before — last saw him at another cloud conference, back in May, the AlwaysOn "OnDemand100" event. Tien founded Zuora after nine years at Salesforce.com — he was one of the “original forces” there, joining in 1999 as the 11th employee. 
(More about Tien here at the Zuora management page. He even served as CMO of Salesforce at one time!)
I wanted to have Tien tell me about an announcement they made at Structure, concerning what they call "the first on-demand commerce solution for cloud businesses": Z-Commerce for the Cloud.
OxygenCloud wants to solve corporate end-users' file management problems with cloud storage. To date, the latter has been used mostly by developers creating applications, not by corporate IT to address end-user file management. Thus, the company says cloud storage lacks easy end-user access, security, and the IT admin tools needed for corporate deployment.
But OxygenCloud is out to change that, by way of a company file network that brings all storage clouds the company uses — public and private — to the desktop of the corporate end-user.
From an intuitive desktop interface, users can access any file, in any cloud, as if it were in local storage. These files can be shared with anyone, including external users, within an encrypted and secure environment.
A spinout of LeapFile, OxygenCloud describes itself as a "cloud storage broker." Its customers can store and secure their files using any cloud provider. Its service combines these multiple public and private
clouds into a single synthetic cloud, allowing users to balance their cost and performance requirements. Here's my interview with Peter Chang, CEO, shown at left in the photo, with Alex Teu, director of business development.
• Download or listen to Graeme's interview with OxygenCloud (MP3)"
Today, I had an opportunity to meet with a couple of the good folks
from Gist, a startup based in Seattle that helps you "Know More about
Who You Know." It's a neat app that I've been using for some time, and
that includes their native iPhone app — which is a great way
to stay in touch when I'm on the go with what my network is up to. I
also love the daily email updates I get from Gist that give me all the
latest content from my most important contacts.
I sat down for breakfast with Robert Pease, VP of Marketing, and Jenn Pitts, Marketing Operations Manager, who were in town for a conference. My friend Buzz Bruggeman in Seattle was nice enough to give me a heads-up that Robert and Jenn were coming to Minneapolis, and I thought it would be a great
opportunity to get an update on the company. I had previously met the CEO, T.A. McCann, last year at a couple of conferences I attend in Denver, Defrag and Glue, where I had first learned about the company's app.
Here's the audio interview I recorded of our conversation, which is about 22 minutes long. Excuse the sound quality, because we were in the very large lobby restaurant in the Hyatt downtown, and there was a fair amount of background noise. At one point, there was even a loud clap of thunder outside that interrupted our chat! But it was good to hear about how this startup is doing in advancing its mission of helping people improve their relationships with the people and companies that matter most to them.
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