Top 25 Companies Beyond Disruptive Innovation by beyond!

TOP 25 COMPANIES BEYOND DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION

BUSINESS

Issue 11 Winter 2018

Kelly Simpson-Angelini Founder & CEO Simpson Healthcare

CHANGING LIVES FOR THE BETTER Bridging the Gap Between Technology, Systems, People and Silos P.32

Intercep ng Technology and Support

Bringing Interac on and Engagement Closer Togethe P.112

P.46

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EDITOR’S CORNER

he term, disruptive innovation, coined in the 1990s by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School Professor, has turned into a ubiquitous phenomenon; whether it be from the heart of Silicon Valley to the core of Wall Street.

Disruptive innovation resonates with the innovations that make products and services more accessible and aﬀordable, thereby making them available to a larger population. The publication particularly features companies that are bringing-forward disruptive innovation at rocket speed through their ventures. Here at Beyond Exclamation, we aim to showcase the inspiring journey of such companies that have earned the rightful title of being synonymous of the term “Disruptive Innovators.” We have come up with this special issue titled “Top 25 Companies Beyond Disruptive Innovation,” featuring 25 leading companies that have paved the pathway towards disruption in their respective industries.

Editor in Chief CHRISTINE [editor@beyondexclamation.com]

Managing Editor SOURAV [sourav@beyondexclamation.com]

Featuring as the Cover Story of this issue, we have an inspiring company named Simpson Healthcare which has changed the face of the healthcare industry over the last two decades of its operation.

Art Director VIJAYKUMAR [design@beyondexclamation.com]

Graphic Artist NICK In our list of 25 shortlisted disruptive innovators, we have featured pioneering companies like Shutterstock, Safello, ApplyBoard, AppFusions, TrustaBit, QNOLA, Governance, Red Cartel, ComplianceQuest, Evo Hemp, eTherapyDocs, Choice Energy Services, Kaaspro, Allen Interaction, Stowga, MHG Systems, Aspiricx, InterWeave, Compass Datacenters, what3words, Virtual Heroes, Tinfoil Security, AsiaPay and Avatier.

[nick@beyondexclamation.com]

Project Manager JENNIFER [jennifer@beyondexclamation.com]

Development Manager JUSTIN [info@beyondexclamation.com]

Dive into the magazine and start scrolling through the journeys of these inspiring disruptive companies.

CONNECT!

Sourav Mukherjee

www.beyondexclamation.com BeyondExclamation @BeyondEx Beyond Exclamation beyondexclamation

In addition to our print magazine, we also provide relevant industry news and updates, as well as some thoughtprovoking articles and blogs on our website. Make sure to follow the same as we at Beyond Exclamation are looking forward to interact with our readers. Let’s connect on the web!

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Inside... Business Boulevard Shutterstock: A Thought that Built an Industry

Safello: The Fastest Way to Bitcoin

ApplyBoard: Revolutionizing Education

AppFusions: Bridging the Gap Between Technology, Systems, People and Silos

Excellence Causeway TrustaBit: Mobilizing the Traveling Consumer

QNOLA: Beautifully Healthy

Governance: Intercepting Technology and Support

Red Cartel: Invoking Emotions

Younick Corner ComplianceQuest: Digitally Transforming

Evo Hemp: Find Your Fire

eTherapyDocs: Making Practices Thrive

Choice Energy Services: The Choice of Business Success

Cover Story Simpson Healthcare: Changing Lives for the Better

Omniscient Voyage Kaaspro: Bringing Doctors & Patients Together

Allen Interaction: 25 Years of Learning Innovation

Stowga: Search, Compare, & Book

MHG Systems: A Pioneer in Forestry Management

Newsmakers Locale Aspiricx: Pushing the Boundaries of AI

InterWeave: Smart Solutions for Everyone

Compass Datacenters: Delivering Solutions & Not Just Data Centers

102

what3words: Addressing became Simple

106

Definitive Destination Virtual Heroes: Bringing Interaction and Engagement Closer Together

112

Tinfoil Security: Delivering more than Security

116

AsiaPay: Unleashing the Potential of Digital Payment

120

Avatier: Leading Identity Management in the Digital Transformation World

124

Kelly Simpson-Angelini Founder & CEO Simpson Healthcare

t is no secret how new technologies and innovations have been leaving their footprints on every field, however, no sector has evolved or been affected more than the healthcare industry. Technological developments have paved the way for striking changes in the healthcare sector. Amidst all these factors, another key driver behind the changing face of the healthcare industry over the last two decades can be attributed to a company named Simpson Healthcare. Owned and operated by Kelly Simpson-Angelini, Simpson Healthcare is a diverse, disruptive scientific agency that is currently th celebrating its 20 year of business. Driven by a common belief In this ever-evolving healthcare landscape, Kelly believed that providing a great branded and disease education to physicians is essential to advancing the story of science that the clients need to tell. The company understands that brands of the future must be more personalized and precise, as Simpson Healthcare prioritizes the overarching goal of healthcare – helping people live better. Simpson Healthcare educates and empowers physicians, as it aims to improve the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. The company taps into the deeply held

beliefs of healthcare stakeholders, as it unlocks the client’s full potential to discover what healthcare consumers really want and delivers just that. Speaking about the team at Simpson Healthcare, Kelly was quick to position them as the central players behind the organization’s success. “We have the right people and we value the experiences that we share with each other and with our clients, as we build strong and lasting relationships. One thing that everyone in our agency has in common is that each member believes in their purpose and then works every day with each other to discover how we can be even more impactful in what we do. When people with the same core beliefs work together, we have found that our decisions catalyze changes that improve the way diseases are managed. We strive to foster strong connections among our clients and our team members as we learn with and from each other.” Ensuring eﬃciency by working together Simpson Healthcare challenges its clients to think diﬀerently about why their brand matters for patients, and how it can bring the story of science to life for both physician and patient communities. “At the start of a new project, our internal team will align with our

client on strategic vision, project management details, and how longterm value will be added to our client’s business and the healthcare industry throughout the entire therapeutic brand lifecycle. After working with our client to define the problem or opportunity, we will then outline our objectives and timelines and move forward on a collaborative path.” The company ensures to have the right members on its team and thinks disruptively about the delivery of its story to the audience. It also draws inspiration from the experiences of the company with previous similar challenges. Simpson ensures that everyone on its team knows the goal of the client and how the scientific story can support them, by using diverse lenses and perspectives across a broad array of marketing and communications platform. Simpson works together to connect key healthcare providers and stakeholders to the therapies they need to treat their patients and help them to improve their lives. Simpson Healthcare offers a traditional branded and disease state medical education services to its clients. Additionally, the depth of experience of the company has led it to develop and customize innovative solutions that drive the clients’ work into the future. The breadth of knowledge and experience from the medical and

strategy teams allows the organization to bring to bear the greater impact of their brands to the therapeutic landscape for its clients. “We work with our clients to manage their therapies in development and current therapies across their whole brand lifecycle; including the management of brands in preparation for and during their launch years across a broad array of therapeutic areas,” mentions Kelly. A look into the journey For the past 20 years, Simpson Healthcare has had the opportunity to work with various heritage biopharmaceutical clients, including Pﬁzer, Shire, AstraZeneca, Genzyme, Merck. The scientiﬁc expertise coupled with the disruptive thinking methods amongst the members of the organization spans across a broad array of major disease categories, like respiratory, oncology, cardiovascular, immunology, rare diseases, gastrointestinal, adult vaccines, and severe asthma. In this year itself, Simpson Healthcare has and continues to work to impact the lives of roughly one-third of the global population. “Our medical and strategy teams are catalysts of industry innovation as we bring to bear the larger context of healthcare for our clients, aligned in our purpose and

always keeping the patient at the center of our focus,” mentions Kelly. There have been various scientiﬁc, diagnostic, and therapeutic innovations over the past 20 years that have led healthcare teams to achieve great health outcomes for their patients, and the therapeutic advancements in development will continue to improve how diseases are managed into the future at a rapid pace. The company anticipates that it will have a better and earlier diagnosis of disease in many therapeutic areas and better management of disease due to better physician education and its increasing level of connectivity. Kelly understands that there will be great opportunities in the near future to work on novel therapies, such as once-in-a-lifetime gene therapies that could improve the quality of life for patients in a signiﬁcant way. She looks forward into the future and aims to best support the brands of tomorrow and prepare the clients to have the greatest and most positive impact for patients. A leader with the penchant to make the world better Kelly Simpson, the CEO, CSO and the Founder of Simpson Healthcare, is an agency leader with an inherent drive at making the world a better place to live in,

by catalyzing impactful triumphs on a day-to-day basis for patients who now have access to new and better treatment options. Over the years, her scientiﬁc agency has had the privilege of working on gamechanging therapeutic brands for clients that can signiﬁcantly improve the quality of life for patients. Needless to mention, with her determined and driven attitude, Kelly has shouldered the responsibilities of the company and spearheaded it towards success. Kelly was recently named as the Women of Innovation Honoree by the Connecticut Technology Council for her entrepreneurial vision and leadership. She was also honored in New York City by Medical Marketing and Media (MM&M) as a Healthcare Transformers - Top 10 Innovation Catalyst; and by Business Worldwide Magazine as the Healthcare Industry CEO of the Year - USA and Most Innovative CEO of the Year - USA at the Business Worldwide CEO Awards. Most recently, Kelly SimpsonAngelini won several awards at the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, where she won Female Entrepreneur of the Year-Business Services: 11-2,500 Employees, Company of the Year: More than 10 Employees, and Most Innovative Company of the Year: More than 10 Employees. In addition to all these, Kelly Simpson-Angelini Angelini

currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Can Do Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a nonproﬁt organization that was founded by an Olympic skier, Jimmie Huega in 1984, with a purpose of helping people with multiple sclerosis live better. This role was expanded from her previous leadership role as the board member, as she has been heavily involved with the management of Can Do MS for quite some time. She now actively manages both the board of directors and the executive leadership teams of Can Do MS and is passionate about coaching executives at all levels to grow within their leadership roles and reach their full potential to activate their teams and, most positively, impact and empower patients with multiple sclerosis. A look into the future Speaking about the future of Simpson Healthcare, Kelly claims “The core stories of disease, diagnosis, and new therapies will continue to be new and abundant. We see a huge opportunity to continue to build knowledge and skills in organizing and showcasing scientiﬁc content. We will have more brands to build, more ways to build and explain them. A personalized and individualized approach to disease education and “my brand” will be something to simplify and focus on in the

marketing material. We are proud to unite and support our clients, to shape the future of healthcare so that the best therapeutic treatments may be available to provide a brighter health outlook for those in need.” Many organizations across the healthcare domain are now looking to better understand how they can harness disruptive innovation to develop their brands, strengthen their pipelines, and provide better brands in their respective therapeutic markets. Simpson Healthcare is looking forward to the success of the agency, but also the bright future of scientiﬁc communications. The key strength of the company is its ability to tell the right story, always keeping the patient and what they may be experiencing at the center of its focus. Along with the clients, Simpson Healthcare prioritizes patient-centered, scientiﬁc discovery, and development. According to the company, “Kelly Simpson-Angelini emphasizes that we live in a time where we must encourage our clients and our fellow healthcare community to look beyond next year and into the next decade as we work to best support the brands of tomorrow.”

A Thought that Built an Industry

mages and other media files like videos, music, or GIFs are increasingly being used across blogs, social media channels, and ebooks. Over the years, with the booming popularity of visual-based contents, the need and demand for media files have strikingly increased. This has caused individuals and businesses to turn towards stock media agencies to buy images and other media files, which are free from any copyright issues. When talking about stock media agencies, Shutterstock’s name is probably the first that comes to our minds, and for all the right reasons. Shutterstock is a leading global technology company, offering high-quality assets, tools and services through its creative platform. Together with its growing community of over 400,000 contributors, Shutterstock adds over 1 million images each week, and currently has more than 200 million images and more than 10 million video clips available on the platform. However, before the surging popularity of Shutterstock, the company was shouldered by one man, Jon Oringer, amidst all the challenges that he had to face. The beginning Back in 2003, Jon discovered a business need for affordable images, while building a website for an online pop-up

Jon Oringer Founder & CEO Shutterstock

blocker company which he had started. His options were limited. He could either go through a long, complex and expensive licensing process or produce his own shoot with a professional photographer, which was quite expensive at the time. Jon knew that if he, as an entrepreneur, was facing this problem then there would be thousands or millions of people like him around the world in a similar situation. Over a one-year period, Jon shot over 100,000 pictures and put 30,000 of them on a website which he coded himself and was later on called Shutterstock. With $10,000 of his own money, he carefully spent each dollar and worked to get a return from the start. Over time, Shutterstock revolutionized the stock image industry with a simple subscription model, royalty-free images and a user-friendly interface. It was pretty much proﬁtable right away as people were buying his images, it was an exciting phase as he knew he had really hit on a global need. Once he saw that, Jon opened it up to other contributors so they could sell their work through the site. Current market standing Today, in addition to the creative assets sold by Shutterstock, the company also oﬀers free editing tools to its creative customers, allowing them to create something

unique and personalized for their company or brand. From the Shutterstock Editor, you can also post directly to social media channels, thereby speeding up the whole process for its customers. Shutterstock has also seen a rise in the need for authentic branded imagery that reﬂects everyday life today on a hyperlocal level. As a result, Shutterstock Custom, which enables businesses to scale the creation of custom branded visual content, is amongst its fastestgrowing products. As methods of marketing and advertising keeps on evolving, Shutterstock anticipates the demand for more diverse and personalized visual content to continue rising. In addition to all these, Shutterstock owns companies like Bigstock, a value-oriented stock media agency; Oﬀset, a high-end image collection platform; PremiumBeat a curated royalty-free music library; and Rex Features, a premier source of editorial images for the world’s media.

a complex lifetime-value calculation which drives Shutterstock’s acquisition model to this day. Jon also set out to introduce the subscription model to the stock photography industry. At the time, the only option to purchase stock images was to pay per image and you had to know where you wanted to use the image, for how long, in what countries, what formats, etc. It was complex and expensive, but Jon knew he could change that to be better suited to the digital age. He understood that Shutterstock could only be successful if the marketplace had the network eﬀect of both the buyers and the sellers. To kick-start the marketplace, Jon licensed 30,000 of his own images on the platform to attract the ﬁrst customers. From there, he opened the marketplace up to other photographers, designers and illustrators and now the community has grown to more than 400,000 artists, videographers and musicians from all around the world.

The initial hurdle The changing landscape As mentioned beforehand, Jon started Shutterstock with 30,000 of his own images and $10,000, which he carefully spent and worked upon to get a return from the start. “Getting started was the most challenging part,” recalls Jon. Self-funding motivated Jon to focus on the essentials needed to move to the next phase. This translated into

Digital transformation and the evolution of technology has left Shutterstock’s customers, including those in the advertising, ﬁlm and media industries with an everincreasing need for more visual content.

Speaking about the changing landscape of the industry, Jon mentions “The world around us is becoming increasingly visual as businesses compete for their customers’ attention and try to stand out as their audiences scroll through the noisy web. The competition for attention has led the market to grow beyond images to include video and music as well as innovative tools to improve the customer workflow in the creative process. As Shutterstock expands into workflow and tools, the market gets much larger.” With its vast pool of collection, the importance of being able to surface exactly what a customer needs with advanced search and discovery tools is essential to the continued success of Shutterstock. The company’s 15 years of experience have provided it with more than general knowledge and know-how. “Shutterstock has collected data on search and download patterns, and we’ve also grown better at identifying where the company should be dedicating resources to the next big thing, whether machinelearning technology or new content offerings. All of this is shared with Shutterstock’s customers and contributors in a variety of ways to further inspire them as they work on projects,” Jon asserts. The vision ahead Shutterstock is focused on further developing its existing business, particularly within the fast-growing areas like its enterprise offerings, as well as more editorial contents. Shutterstock has also always distinguished itself by providing the highest quality of customer service, fresh contents and the best search experience, adding up to the superior value for the customer. The company is continuing to build industry-leading technology to improve its offering by leveraging computer vision and AI technology that will enhance the customer experience and ultimately improve the creative workflow process.

content and tools they need to bring their ideas to life. Jon is constantly assessing technological advancements and industry changes to determine the best step forward for its business and to ensure there is plenty of room for growth.

Jon’s vision for the future of Shutterstock is bright. As the Founder and CEO, he directs the company’s focus which remains on providing customers with all of the

The Fastest Way to Bitcoin

he idea of cryptocurrencies (cryptographically encrypted digital currencies) has been moving around in the academic circles since the 1970s. However, the idea took on form and shape with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. Over the last nine years, Bitcoin has grown on to be disruptive in the ﬁelds of monetary policy, ﬁnance, economics, and e-commerce – and it has spawned an industry of more than 2,000 coins, tokens, and altcoins in what is being commonly referred to as the cryptocurrency market. Meet Safello that enables the users to buy and sell Bitcoins through an online marketplace, powered by blockchain technology. Once users have signed onto Safello platform, they are able to access all the related Bitcoin services they need.

There are quite a few services to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Typically they require you to go through lengthy onboarding processes to create accounts before placing an order. But Safello’s widget and API integration takes away this burden to the user experience while actually holding AML requirements to the highest standard. With other services, it is either convenience without compliance or compliance without convenience. With Safello it’s both and that is where the company is breaking new ground. The foundation of something big Safello was founded in 2013, a time when hacks and scams were prevalent in what was at the time, a budding industry. This was before MT Gox that held ~80% of the total trading volume, which ultimately went bust in spectacular fashion. There was a need for a secure and compliant entry point into the cryptocurrency economy. With its name originating from your safe fellow, Safello was created. The company registered with the Swedish FSA and landed a banking relationship with a top 4 Swedish bank. Its non-custodial approach to cryptocurrency delivery and the proactive compliance with European AML regulation cemented this standing. Over time, Safello has solidiﬁed its position by being the consistent and reliable partner which has now helped tens of thousands across Europe, engage with this now booming economy.

Frank Schuil Co-founder & CEO Safello

The journey that made all of it worthwhile In the past five years, Safello has hit some major milestones. Safello was the first business ever to close a deal with a tier I bank (Barclays) around Bitcoin. Safello co-financed the prominent VAT case which went to the European Court of Justice, to rule that cryptocurrency businesses should be exempt from VAT. Its product meanwhile has evolved from not only being a B2C brokerage, but also into a B2B one. And this year, Safello launched our Brokerage-as-a-Service model to help anyone monetize their cryptocurrency audience. The product Safello Business is a widget and/or API where app and website owners, with only a couple of lines of code, can become a brokerage themselves. In a Stripelike dashboard, partners can keep track of how much revenue they are generating. “The underlying breakthrough in the product is that we have reduced the onboarding experience which in many cases can take hours to even days with other platforms, to less than a minute with ours. It’s been very well received by the industry and within a short period of time we have quickly seen it become a major part of our business,” said Frank Schuil, Co-founder and CEO of Safello. Team that stands resiliently behind the company

some highly technical individuals, most of which have worked in the cryptocurrency space for years. Safello has the operational foundation of the company that deals with compliance, support and the commercial aspects of the organization. Around the team are the amazing stakeholders which includes the Digital Currency Group, White Star Capital and Northzone and of course Safello’s users and partners. “Instead of simply being a cryptocurrency business we strive to be a modern fintech company, we recently rebranded Safello to underline that cryptocurrency businesses no longer have to be boring bank blue,” Frank added. A visionary leader The past decade, Frank has dedicated himself to building companies in different industries. It has helped him to recognize some of the more uniform truths about what is needed to make any company work. With each company, there were always new challenges, and with Safello these challenges also saw new dimensions in the form of regulatory complexity and dependency on incumbent’s infrastructure to achieve his goals. Having encountered many of the regular problems that are traditionally associated with running a startup, Frank feels he has the ability to differentiate between those that are common

Safello’s core team consists of

problems and those that are specific to this industry. In doing so, he believes the Safello team have been able to focus their attention on those issues that matter the most to increase the chances of success. Now that the ICO market has cooled down and with that volatility reaching more reasonable levels, everyone has gone back to focusing on evolving their products and rolling out new ones in preparation for the next wave of adoption. Frank believes we have seen this pattern before and with each wave we reach ever increasing levels of maturity, this will set the stage for the next phase of adoption. “There is so much innovation going on that it’s hard to cherry pick any one project from the hundreds if not thousands that are out there. However, we are seeing great use cases emerge for non-fungible tokens, security token offerings, stablecoins and new scalability solutions that could be the precursor for what’s next to come,” he said on where industry is headed. Dreaming big Safello is offering a brokerage-as-aservice model to anyone who has a cryptocurrency audience to monetize. Safello is doing this with an innovative onboarding model that is faster and more convenient than anything in the market today. Safello believes it has created a

strong benchmark for other relatable solutions to measure themselves against. “Last year we had a watershed moment for any of us who have been following the market since the last “bubble” of 2013. The sheer amount of household name companies getting involved and exciting projects being launched as well as the trading volume that we saw was amazing. For us as a company this meant that we had our most successful year ever and that doors really have started to open that were previously shut,” Frank asserted.

Sweden has also been very successful. The company is now preparing for the expansion of this model to other countries, starting with the Nordics and then the wider Europe. Safello’s ambition is to be the most frictionless entry and exit point for the cryptocurrency economy, which through its API and widget is widely distributed geographically and to diﬀerent kinds of apps and websites.

Safello’s test market launch for Safello Business in

Revolutionizing Education

nternet has turned our lives upside down with everyone and everything connected to each other. But the most it has helped in terms of convenience are students. From online courses being available from anywhere in the world to infinite data accessible at fingertips, Internet has certainly come a long way along with the students. On the other hand, online application systems throughout the universities have certainly eased burden from students mind. One of the greatest advantages of the online application systems is that students can submit their applications at their comfort. All that is required is access to a PC and web connectivity. Messy handwriting, absence of postal connectivity, delay in courier conveyance are unlikely to disturb the application process. This is an extraordinary advantage to applicants in rural regions applying for international universities. However, when Martin Basiri wanted to apply for a university in Canada back in 2010, he was faced with difficulties and dilemma to do so. The reason being Internet’s advantages were still unfolding. Having travelled from Iran to Canada to explore higher education, Martin had completed his engineering degree at Shiraz University when he decided to complete his Masters at University of Waterloo in Canada. Despite receiving a scholarship offer, Martin faced many challenges including paperwork and academic grade conversion, securing admission and attaining a student visa. It took roughly one year before Martin was approved and enrolled into courses. By the time, his twin brothers, Meti and Massi chose to pursue their international education, Martin was well-versed in the process, offering his guidance and expertise to make their application less challenging and more efficient. Through their personal experiences, they learned the various difficulties that come with international students wanting to pursue studying abroad, igniting their business in 2015. Knowing that education is a right and not a privilege, Basiri brothers set out to make the best possible education accessible to students worldwide, regardless of their nationality or location and ApplyBoard was started. Since 2015, the company has grown remarkably, and is thrilled to announce its partnership with hundreds of top North American colleges, universities and high schools, and assistance of thousands of students. Accessible by anyone, from anywhere, at any time! ApplyBoard chooses to work through an online platform because it is easily accessible by anyone, anywhere around the world, any time of the day. It is the ideal tool to help them work towards their mission, to make education available to all students in the world. With an online platform, ApplyBoard has the ability to provide top customer support and has a consistent online presence.

Martin Basiri Co-founder & CEO ApplyBoard

When asked what made them take entrepreneurial plunge, they proudly says they took the initiative to start this business because of their passion to help others. Martin’s background in engineering and large interest in building things also encouraged the start of ApplyBoard. Before the company took off, they spent their time assisting other international students with their applications. The more students they helped, the more they realized just how many students there are who are looking to further their education in North America, but suffer from the obstacles, get defeated and don’t achieve their dreams. The Basiri brothers’ own experiences allowed them to take the entrepreneurial plunge and make a business out of their passion and daily activities. They wanted to find a solution to a problem that will make a difference in the world. They had hopes and dreams of making a positive impact, and continue to have these hopes and dreams. Since the foundation, Martin has connected with many other professionals who have the same passion and who strive to make a difference in the world, building their strong, diverse team. ApplyBoard has helped thousands of students, making a direct impact on their lives, which encourages them to push for more. They have also learned a lot more about the process, and what many North American schools requires in order to accept international students.

Seamless and efficient as possible! When applying with ApplyBoard, students first begin by answering a set of questions based on a number of factors including academic background, desired course of study and financial situation. ApplyBoard’s online platform, lined with a unique algorithm, gathers this information and 1) Matches the student with a list of schools and programs with a 95% acceptance rate, 2) Provides the student with all document requirements, 3) Generates a universal application the student can use to apply to multiple desired schools, and 4) Provides the necessary information needed to successfully attain a student visa. The platform also acts as a secure space for students to keep their gathered information and makes the application process as seamless and efficient as possible. With a unique AI software to streamline the application process for international students, ApplyBoard offers an A to Z solution for what students need to study abroad. It can take months for students to search through all the universities, colleges and high schools in North America and discover what program works best for you and what’s necessary to get there. Especially when students are reading in a language that is not their native tongue. ApplyBoard condenses this process to ridiculously 15 minutes and does the work for the students, allowing

them to select what top institution is best for them. There’s always a way to go beyond – do it! ApplyBoard is a team with a passion for innovation, culture and teamwork, and strive for positive impact. ApplyBoard not only cares about students, but also cares about the well-being of their employees. The company ensures the employees have access to all the best resources and are enjoying what they do. ApplyBoard also maintains an open workspace, and welcomes all ideas. The founders believe every single student has a right to a good education and should not limit themselves from pursuing their goal of studying abroad. At ApplyBoard, they want to make every student’s dream a reality by oﬀering their expertise gained through personal experiences. To have the opportunity to study abroad and be immersed in a country’s unique culture, is one of the most enriching, exciting and interesting experiences, and should be available to any student who wants to take part in it. Interacting with students from all over the world and assisting them in their process, communicating with them during their international experience and seeing them happy is what drives founders and employees of ApplyBoard every single day and encourages them to reach more students.

building a relationship with international students. With ApplyBoard, students gets the conﬁdence they need to pursue their experience abroad, and gets to know about every single detail, including expenses, with the goal of reducing stress. The challenges students face in the process of studying abroad is truly a concern to the ApplyBoard team, and its help is readily available. To students using its platform, ApplyBoard is number one and second to none. ApplyBoard makes dreams come true.

Accuracy is not celebrated. It’s expected. ApplyBoard oﬀers a 95% acceptance rate to students applying to schools through the platform. Students who choose to apply for international education through ApplyBoard have very positive experiences and quick feedback. The company is recognized for having fast and reliable service, providing students with guidance every step of the way. ApplyBoard has hit over 115 employees and are continuing on its growth and has partnered with 1000+ universities, colleges and high schools across Canada and the US. In addition to this, the company has assisted 20,000 international students via its platform. Martin mentions, “We have recently launched a partnership with WE Charity to continue our mission towards making education accessible to all. For every international student who applies to study abroad using ApplyBoard’s platform, the company will donate to WE Charity.”

Going further, ApplyBoard aims to expand into more countries, primarily Southeast Asia. The company plans to continue its growth, connect with more schools and help as many students as possible in the next 5 years. The founders wants to make a drastic diﬀerence in the lives of students.

ApplyBoard’s staﬀ is deemed as friendly and approachable individuals who truly care about

Bridging the Gap Between Technology, Systems, People and Silos

t is widely known and believed in the business world that customers are the king. That said, the pathway from aiming for customer centricity to actually attaining customer centricity is a long and tiresome process.

AppFusions, however, stands out as a pioneering example with its designs, technologies, and solutions that puts the end-customer and their valuable time ﬁrst. It does this by tackling one of the most harrowing and frustrating platform issues in the industry; that of seamlessly, harmoniously, and deeply integrating apps and integrated digital experiences. The company started out back in 2010 with a mission to build and mainstream common app integration patterns across the industry and since then it hasn’t looked back. The Inspiration Behind the Journey Ellen Feaheny, the CEO of AppFusions, had worked across dozens of corporations for 20 years, witnessing ﬁrst-hand the commonality of systems and processes within them, but more notably, the commonality of disconnected silo’d systems, data and processes at these companies. She viewed the problem as simply illogical, more than technical; she thought it was ludicrous that platform/system vendors did not see the opportunity of being more connected with other vendors’ products. They did not seem to understand that the value to such interconnectivity far out-weighed the complexity. She saw this as a product management “miss” across the industry. She’d worked with dozens of products, platforms, and SDKs over those years, but so many were missing it on depth of their API development or SDK programs, where customers could really extend and integrate the platforms. The platforms lacked depth in integration points, APIs, or authentication supports – or worse, if they had these things, they were half-baked because even internally, the vendor did not “dog food” the usability of such things. The overall problem seemed to be a matter of short-sightedness and lack of product management focus.

Ellen Feaheny CEO AppFusions

Despite relentless extensibility requests from customers, there was a complete lack of ownership from vendors to properly implement holistic extensibility plays, strategies, and implementations for the customers. More likely, priorities were elsewhere, despite the obvious need, which would soon become an even bigger problem with the entrance of SaaS/cloud products. As it pertains to integrations, the need and demand for integrated systems has only increased. “In the early days of AppFusions, my ﬁeld experiences from working in dozens of Silicon Valley startups and large corps alike over years brought energy to the initial challenges on hand. Simply, I’d been around and seen a lot. This, and fortunately, a great engineering team, got us oﬀ the ground,” Ellen recalls. Over time, Ellen’s role has evolved to being one of an overseer of the ship, the oars, the people oaring the oars, and most importantly, the vision place for where the“ship”is rowing to. Ellen is highly passionate and full of energy in sales and product management, and at the same time she is endlessly and consciously trying to evolve the team, grow their skills, grow leaders across the organization. Ellen adds “This is by pulling back more than pushing in – which is hard for me. But I do realize, always, that I am nothing without my team – they are AppFusions’ brawn and backbone. And we only got to where we are via the collective determination and spirit across the

board. It’s the combo that matters, always.” Customer-focused Solutions At present, AppFusions has three main product-lines, including sustained services to support all areas: Ÿ AppSpokes integration app services, an iPaaS architecture and family of “just works” endto-end packaged integrated app “spokes” that can be securely made available in any web-app platform. The spokes include ready integrated experiences for platforms to connect with IBM, Microsoft, Box, Dropbox, Google, Salesforce, Zendesk, Atlassian, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and more. Ÿ AlohaDXP, a no-code/low-code micro-services-based integrated digital experiences and workplace platform that brings together all of the AppSpokes integrations, and other key collaboration and digital experience capabilities, like content curation, business intelligence, personalization, machine learning, messaging, mobile supports, hybrid deployments, and more for unlimited integrated and contextual experiences, spaces, sites, portals, etc. (based on usecases and audiences). Ÿ Atlassian-server-based integration apps, AppFusions’ original sustained solution apps that have withstood the test of time (since 2010, ongoing). In fact, these initial products served as key PM experience and design inputs to the later AppSpokes and AlohaDXP micro-services solutions.

“When going through hell, keep going” While enabling platforms to integrate deeply, easily, and sustainably with web-app platforms is a tricky technical challenge, through its journey, Appfusions learned that it was the non-technical aspects that proved to be a lot bigger hurdles, and not always logical. More concerning was that the compounded challenge was even harder for customers Understanding and navigating invisible but present politics or false strategic timing has been the company’s biggest challenge in their journey. The market currents seemed slow to pressure the larger vendors who controlled locked vs. extensible platforms, and it took the proliferation of SaaS solutions to gain a fever pitch and foothold in the industry before the problem started to be more seriously listened to by the larger vendors. But even at that point, not until 2017/2018, the underestimation or lack of understanding on how to create a holistic integration strategy ran rife. To this day, most Web-app platforms still do not address this issue, a problem that in Ellen’s opinion has been critical to business optimizations for over a decade already. That said, AppFusions’ persistence, perseverance, and “staying in the game” focus on its core mission has played in its favor. Winston Churchill had said it right: “When going through hell, keep going!” “We learned that hurdles and challenges overcome compound and

become strengths, and the valued progressions over time is what got us the necessary experience we now have. We are glad we never gave up.” Change is Inevitable According to Ellen, on one hand, the industry has changed a ton. On the other, the industry has not changed at all. When AppFusions started in 2010, cloud technologies, models, approaches were more in their infancy than they are now. Now, they are the way of the future, even if it is a painful reality for some to evolve in their digital transformation strategies (as a customer or vendor). At a technology level, yes, indeed the industry has changed, and AppFusions beneﬁts from these changes, with newer modern microservices design, development, architecture, and deployment models (i.e., public cloud, dedicated private clouds, or containerized Kubernetes deployments for on premise private data centers). On the other hand, change is hard – and many companies ﬁght the change, or don’t know how to change. AppFusions technologies are built on modern models, but as solutions, the company bridges the gaps between older techs and newer ones, agnostically and pragmatically. “Our solutions are comprehensive, thorough, patterned, and deep. In almost 9 years now, we have yet to be asked for our integrated experiences to be less functional or useful by being less deep by customers,” Ellen exclaims.

Mobilizing the Traveling Consumer

urrently, when a passengers’ flight is canceled or delayed, there is no consistent route for them to get a voucher. The passenger needs to contact the airline call center or fill out a form giving an intensive clarification of what occurred. Now, in many cases the passenger is disappointed sitting tight for a customer service representative to decide if there is a feasible reason to dispense a voucher and at what sum. Moreover, the voucher must be mailed or emailed to the displeased client. When the voucher achieves its goal, the passengers’ loyalty has officially diminished and they have made a post about their experience via social media and are planning their next business trip with another organization. Enters TrustaBit with its software that is designed to restore the traveler’s emotional connection to your airline. When clients implement TrustaBit into their environment, users can be compensated immediately based on set business criteria. The voucher will be sent to the customers email address when flights are delayed or canceled; eliminating the requirement to contact the airline call centers or completing a claim form. This gives clients the opportunity to make things right with their customers, increase brand loyalty and secure future trips. The summer that paved foundation It was a summer when Saritta Hines, company’s Founder and CEO built an Ethereum mining rig with her daughter, who was 7- years old at the time. That project piqued Saritta’s interest in the underlying technology of Ethereum, which is blockchain and smart contracts. Therefore, Saritta began looking for an industry that needed an upgrade and the airline industry came to mind. “Travel is a trillion $ industry, yet it is also one of the most antiquated and archaic, so when the idea of using blockchain and smart contracts to automate the flight delay compensation process came about – I knew I was on to something!” Saritta shares. The journey of dreaming big The foundation of the company was laid, but the task was far from done. Saritta faced obstacles in securing VC funding.

Saritta Hines Founder & CEO TrustaBit

“The feedback has constantly been that we are “too early” for funding as we have not yet signed a pilot client. As a company that is currently bootstrapped, we are not afraid to roll up our sleeves and get dirty,” Saritta remarks. “We dusted ourselves off and shifted our focus to finding strong partnerships that will help propel the company forward. As a result, we are happy to say that we’ve recently secured a co-development partnership with software giant, TIBCO. This deal will enable us to leverage TIBCO’s already established list of airline partners as we build out our solution. We are in talks with a few other major brands and are excited for what lies ahead!” Saritta further adds. Utilizing automation at its fullest potential Using Smart Contracts, TrustaBit helps airlines to Automate compensation and notification to passengers when flight disruptions occur; Notify passengers of disruptions via SMS and email prior to arriving to the airport; Provide options for how passengers wish to receive compensation; Keep travelers moving in a costeffective manner; and Improve the traveler experience and customer service. The one thing that makes TrustaBit stand out from the competition is Automation! TrustaBit’s competing solutions facilitate a back and forth conversation with the airline and contact is initiated by the traveler.

TrustaBit is different, because its customer is the airline, not the traveler. TrustaBit’s solution is white-labeled and integrated within the airline’s systems to automate and streamline their processes. The passenger does not need to initiate contact or download a new mobile app to receive compensation. Another benefit is that TrustaBit provides options as passengers can elect to receive compensation in the form of a voucher, frequent flyer miles, or fiat (ex: USD). A seasoned technologist leading the way Saritta is a seasoned technologist with more than 13 years of experience in data analytics and business intelligence environment implementation for fortune 500 companies. She is adept at pulling together teams of committed people who have the expertise, willingness and aptitude required to support a growing startup. With a keen eye toward innovation, Saritta is committed to improving operational efficiency and testing new use cases for blockchain technology. As the head of TrustaBit, Saritta has established a key utility for airline companies to streamline the delivery of products and services to customers through smart contracts. Blockchain is here to stay Talking about the rise of blockchain industry, Saritta says “I have seen the perception of blockchain grow tremendously. A

few years ago, most people only associated blockchain with the “dark web” and criminal activity. Now, enterprises are curious about blockchain use cases and are looking for ways to incorporate the technology into their systems. I have even seen companies implement low code methods to develop smart contracts that can be used on multiple blockchain

Saritta’s note

platforms. I believe the future of blockchain will bring some of the more antiquated industries into the digital age. The technology will lead wealth distribution amongst those traditional left behind.”

“We are looking to secure ﬁnding from an Angel or VC that supports untapped founders. We need is $500k to assist with customer acquisition eﬀorts, marketing and development. We are also speaking with airline decision makers and thought leaders to source a select group of pilot airlines for beta testing.”

Going further, one can expect to see TrustaBit expanding beyond airline industry. “We have plans to use our solution to beneﬁt the insurance industry as well and have identiﬁed viable blockchain use cases for parametric insurance and crop insurance for farmers in developing countries,” concludes Saritta.

Beautifully Healthy

here’s an illusionary myth owing to the cereals and granolas being a healthy breakfast substitute for ﬁtness enthusiasts. Breakfast is often described as the most important meal of the day, providing as it does sustenance and energy for whatever activities lay ahead. The ﬁrst thing to consider is how the failure to eat something at the start of the day can have surprisingly serious health consequences for those concerned.

Danielle Copperman, the founder of Qnola, took the dive to break the myth. A pioneer in the F&B industry, Qnola, provides a range of quinoa-based breakfast granolas free from gluten, dairy and refined sugars and made from only 100% natural ingredients. Passion is the reason we journey, perseverance lights our way! Before launching Qnola, Danielle had no previous background or experience in business or food development. Having left school at the age of 18, Danielle moved to London to pursue modelling full time, which is when she drastically changed her diet and started making Qnola for herself at home. Before Qnola, Danielle (like many of us) was addicted to sugary, shop bought cereals; when she cut out gluten and sugar from her diet, she was inspired to make something just as delicious and just as simple and quick to prepare, using whole and functional ingredients. There is a fine line between healthy and unhealthy, and we often overlook the amount of sugar or the different types of sugars in food products. Many people check labels for fat and calorie figures, but don’t check sugar content, types of sugars used or other sweeteners, flavourings, additives and preservatives. You can be buying products that are advertised as healthy and that seem healthy but that are still not 100% healthy if you look closely. Cutting down sugar is really important to reduce blood sugar imbalances and hormone imbalances, reduce the risk of weight gain and to reduce fatigue in order to have more energy. Sugar is also closely linked to main illnesses, both physically and mentally, and so cutting down on it could help considerably reduce certain health issues too. A journey of thousand miles begins with a single post on Instagram. According to insights by researchers and scientists, we should all be aiming to consume around 15–25% of our daily energy intake

Danielle Copperman Founder Qnola

at breakfast. It is a proven fact that eating a nutritious breakfast sets the tone for the day and promotes weight maintenance by maintaining blood glucose levels and your metabolism. For Danielle, being a multitasker with a busy schedule, giving up sugar and grains meant giving up energy-rich sources, including traditional granolas. This left her feeling lost in the mornings, and in search of a healthy alternative – something which, at that point, didn’t exist in the market. Danielle started making Qnola for herself as a healthier alternative to sugary shop-bought granolas and as a model, something quick and easy to take to photo-shoots. After posting an image of Qnola on Instagram in the very early stages, Danielle started receiving personal orders from healthconscious followers. The demanddriven product then developed into a worldwide brand, one department store and health food shop at a time. Danielle noticed there was a high demand for the product in the UK and wanted to create a more honest and reliable breakfast option that was ready-to-eat to give people a more functional start to the day, and to provide more sustainable energy and set the tone for the rest of the day. Qnola only uses ingredients that are close to their natural form i.e.; not heavily processed, heated or refined, and as fresh and functional as possible. The company sources the ingredients from vendors as locally as possible and is proud to be using quinoa grown right in their parent country, Britain. Wake up well and seize the day! Qnola is a range of quinoa-based breakfast granolas free from gluten, dairy and refined sugars and made from only 100% natural ingredients. Qnola products have an extremely original USP as they include quinoa in all of their products. None of Qnola’s competitors use quinoa in their recipes, and an inclusion of this high fibre, high

protein seed / grain is what sets the Qnola products apart from the rest. The company claims that they have the lowest amount in sugar in their products. The only sugar used in making of Qnola is entirely natural and minimally refined coconut palm sugar. The healthy, tasty, gluten free and vegan breakfast-substitutes from Qnola differentiates them from most of their competitors with cereals on the market. Qnola’s original products are paleo and vegan, which are super high in fibre, protein and antioxidants. Earlier this year, the company launched a new range with grains (which aren’t paleo), to keep up with demand and customer desires as they plan to expand into new markets. Along with the exponential growth of her company, Danielle taught herself all aspects of running a business and continues to grow and develop as the industry adapts and consumers needs evolve. Knowing your market is the beginning of all wisdom. Over the last few years, there’s been a tremendous demand for plant-based protein, and calls to reduce the use of plastic in food and drinks industry. Consumers are more educated than ever before and are conscious that the food they are buying is both good for them and isn’t harmful on the environment at the same time. Qnola is quite perceptive about the fact. The company is proud about using a base of organic British quinoa combined with nuts and seeds, which are naturally high in protein and fibre. Consumers are increasingly seeking products that will help sustain them throughout the day and leave them fuller for longer. Qnola is a nourishing morning meal that provides many of the essential vitamins and minerals your body needs to thrive. As a small business, the company does its best to keep their carbon footprint

as low as possible and is always looking into ways which can reduce the amount of plastic use in packaging. Their manufacturer has recently installed solar panels, meaning their energy consumption and production will soon be self-suﬃcient. It’s the small victories that help win the big battles!

Qnola has planned a lot of strategic outcomes for future. There are a lot of things in the pipeline. Some of them aren’t officially signed off but the company vaguely reveals that they plan to launch some exciting new products to their breakfast range, including snacks and clusters – all free from gluten, grains, dairy and refined sugar.

The victory moment and the journey ahead. Qnola celebrating its largest order from Selfridge’s food hall was a major moment for the team. Their journey from selling directly to customers and in small deli’s to this globally acclaimed department store has been truly remarkable. Danielle adores all of the amazing press the product has received. All the instagram tags and posts from people enjoying her creation have made it all very worthwhile for the founder!

Intercepting Technology & Support

ause for a moment. Furthermore, pose some basic questions you probably don’t consider every day. Why do we innovate? Why do we build companies? Why do we think about making new inventions, products, and solutions, when we could essentially leave things as they are? At first glance, the appropriate responses may appear to be misleadingly simple. For example, a few people want to make money. Others like the thrill of the chase, similar to a type of legalized betting. What’s more, others like the independence, the freedom. Be that as it may, those answers appear to be deficient. In case you’re an entrepreneur, you definitely know there’s more to it. There are significantly simpler approaches to make money. There are significantly less demanding approaches to get a thrill. And, there are considerably easier approaches to feel independent. Thus, we innovate and build organizations for reasons that are more profound. To contribute our share in making the world a better place.

One such company that is contributing its share to the market is Governance.com, which originated from a personal frustration. As a former banker in charge of Alternative funds oversight, Bert Boerman needed an efficient system to connect data and control workflows. A fitting solution did not exist on the market, so he decided to build it along with his twin brother Rob. Bert’s first aim was to provide a solution for fund governance, but today, Governance.com has moved well beyond that. Bert proudly says that he has seen the natural evolution of Governance.com into a solution for regulated clients from multiple industries. What Governance.com does for financial institutions applies equally to corporations, ONGs,

Bert Boerman Co-founder & CEO Governance.com

healthcare, pharmaceuticals, oil companies and other companies dealing with regulatory control. Connecting data and documentation in a simple and smart way. Governance.com is an instantly deployable platform with the expertise and technology needed to organize and structure any data, documents and controls. At the core of the platform sits a technology solution that connects data and documentation from across the organization in a simple and smart way, and that can be deployed onpremise or in any cloud solution. As a result, Governance.com’s clients have instant access to all information and processes instantly. The team at Governance believes it is very important to generate a return of investment of 300 to 600% for their clients. The company was founded in 2011 by the twin brothers, initially as a custom software development business. In 2014 the bothers decided change the direction of the company and start building Governance.com. Bert quit his job as a banker and joined the company full time. Today, the team of Governance.com consists of 22 talented people and is constantly growing. The company’s culture is based on excellence, dedication and passion. And Bert doesn’t hesitate to attribute company’s current success to perfect complementarity of the founders and the superb alchemy within the company’s teams.

Solid motivation and dedication to your idea is vital! Bert says launching a company from scratch is much harder than what you might think, so you must have a solid motivation and dedication to your project. His motivation was to create a sustainable, flexible, highperforming and user-friendly system to simplify the regulatory burden and costs for his clients. The hard things was that when Governance.com launched in 2014, nobody was looking at this yet, and RegTech wasn’t even a thing yet. But the regulatory burden already existed. As a reader, you’ll be surprised to know that Regulation and Compliance yearly spending exceeds 220 BN USD worldwide? Thus, bringing a quick to implement and cost-effective solution to this issue was a key aim for Governance.com! Governance.com was started with investment funds because that’s where the brothers saw the biggest need for innovation. It’s all spreadsheets. They typically have little technology in place even though there’s an enormous amount of regulation pushing on them. “What we’ve found is that if you want to take people from the Stone Age to something organized, just offering technology is not enough. You also need to provide the regulatory expertise, which is what we have built with our partner network. You can throw technology at a complex problem, but if you don’t have the right processes in

place then it’s not going to work. The same is true in reverse,” Bert aﬃrms. A fully customizable and ﬂexible architecture “We believe each company has a unique way to manage its business. This is why, Governance.com adapts to our clients’ structure and processes thanks to a fully

customizable and ﬂexible architecture. Instead of imposing a rigid structure and way of working, we adapt the system to each our clients’ speciﬁc needs,” he further adds.

why we focus on showing the concrete utility and added-value of our platform quickly,” Bert shares. As a technology company, Governance.com strives to continuously enhance its platform with additional features. Some of their latest developments are Visual workﬂows & process management and an interactive Meeting management module.

Bert also believes the main challenges in the industry are the heavy procurement and lengthy adoption process of ﬁnancial institutions for Regtech solutions. “We understand however that this is part of their risk management culture as they need to select superior and secure solutions for their organisation. This is

Governance.com’s Roadmap is full of exciting new solutions, based on the evolving needs of its clients and the industry. Stay tuned!

Invoking Emotions

dmit it. You have whittled away minutes, if not hours, playing Farmville, Words with Friends or Candy Crush on your phone or tablet. If this guilty joy sounds common, you are not the only one. Today, more consumers are playing games and, subsequently, creating a new market opportunities for advertisers. Not surprising, the greatest opportunities are on mobile phones as this market fragment is by a wide margin the biggest and fastest developing with regards to gamers. The total value of global animation industry was whopping USD 254 bn in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 270 bn by 2020. Most of the segments in the animation industry are growing at the rate of 2% YoY.

The need for animation, VFX and gaming has expanded with the upsurge in targeted broadcasting hours by cable and satellite TV, penetration of mobile devices, availability of low cost internet access along with the growing popularity of streaming video. What’s more, the demand for Animation and VFX content to power immersive experiences such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality is growing exponentially. One of Australia’s leading 3D Animation and game development studios with over 16 years of experience servicing the Gaming and Advertising industries, specializing in creating dynamic visual content for Gaming, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality is Red Cartel. The company delivers cost eﬀective graphics and application solutions including Virtual Reality development, Cinematic Sequences, Mobile applications, Augmented Reality and Casino/Club animated graphics. The journey that spans almost two decades Like every other renowned company, Red Cartel was also founded in a garage by Landon Curry. In 2001, Landon and his two work-mates started a 3D animation studio called Twitch Studios which re-branded in 2008 and became Red Cartel. Initially, Landon and the team created content for console games, TVC’s and property visualization. During downtime, they were always looking for new technologies which led them to their ﬁrst international VR for Red Bull Brazil in 2014. Red Cartel has utilized many new technologies as they have evolved including Hololense, Meta, ARkit/ARcore and a wide variety of VR headsets including its

Landon Curry Partner & MD

Red Cartel

recently opened large scale - free roaming VR arcade called Simosity. Prior to Red Cartel Landon worked in the 3D industry as a freelancer, which is still very common in this industry. Working as a freelancer, the work was somewhat unpredictable for Landon, which made it difficult to plan too far ahead financially. The upside is there are freedoms with freelancing that you don’t get as a full time employee and often you get paid a slightly higher rate. However, Landon always had a bit of entrepreneur in him, which was partly inspired his parents having their own businesses. He has also been inclined to think outside the box and take risks in situations where others would take the safer path. And this was the stepping stone for Landon to start Red Cartel. Achieving triumph over struggles while staying honest with the goals The triad that founded Red Cartel has specific skills; one person specialized in animation, other in compositing and the third in technical animation (Particles/VFX). However, over the years, these roles have grown and evolved to the point where Red Cartel has teams that specialize in these tasks as well as a large team of programmers.

Landon says there are many risks with starting new businesses. The foremost is that you need initial funding to purchase equipment. You also need to gain credibility and promote your services which can be very difficult if you have no content to show. The team solved this by creating a series of short clips (a demo reel) that showcased the various skills they had. However, the biggest risk Landon faced was cash-flow, waiting for payments whilst paying freelancers and getting new projects in was particularly challenging in the first few years.

Apart from these, the ﬁnancial strain was very high when they started Red Cartel, which eased oﬀ over time, but it took years before there was some solid stability. “Owning a business is very challenging and takes a lot of hard work but it is also very rewarding when it is running well,” Landon says. Leading from the front with new technologies In the mobile technology bracket, Red Cartel does a lot of work for Mobile Virtual Reality (Gear VR, Google Cardboard etc) as well as

Augmented Reality projects, particularly in the ﬁeld of ARkit and ARcore. These mobile VR and AR technologies are constantly improving which allows the company to push the limits of the devices and what is possible with these technologies.

at opening an oﬃce in Macau in the coming years. They will also be developing many more large scale Virtual Reality games as well as AR applications both for consumers and B2B. Nonetheless, they always aim to be at the forefront of new technologies and are looking forward to future challenges and new ventures.

There has been numerous moments since the inception of the company, when the team felt their work has finally paid off. Some of these moments stand out that include landing high profile projects like Red Bull VR and eBay VR, and being asked to demonstrate VR on live television was a notable moment too. The team always look forward to receive such awards for their work, because seeing your work on television and on the big screen is quite an achievement, isn’t it?

Fun fact: The nomenclature of the company was conceived by one of Landon’s business partners at the time. The Cartel part of the name signifies a group of people working together and Red seemed to work best out of the colors they tried. Moreover, it’s also difficult to find an appropriate name for a new creative business that still has a free domain available.

Going beyond, Red Cartel expects lots of growth. They are opening an oﬃce in Brisbane and will be looking

Digitally Transforming

he recent years have seen rapid advancement in connectivity, mobility, analytics, scalability and big data – what we call the fourth Industrial revolution or Industry 4.0. This digital transformation in manufacturing has put increased focus for manufacturing and quality leaders for solutions like quality management at an enterprise-level to improve time to market and bottom line efficiency. To take advantage of the latest and future technology advancement such as Artificial Intelligence, Smart Connectivity, Social Media and Collaboration throughout the entire product value chain ComplianceQuest was formed with a goal to adopt modern cloud architecture platform such as Salesforce. Building ComplianceQuest solutions on a modern cloud platform like Salesforce has distinct benefits. The Salesforce platform architecture supports simplicity in implementation, scalability and reliability in management, and rapidity in developing and integrating enterprise-scale applications. Leveraging the Salesforce platform makes the ComplianceQuest solution secure, as it is compliant with ISO 27001, SOC 1-3, HIPAA, HITRUST, and GDPR and other common data security protection laws.* Delivering best-in-class out-of-the-box solutions Today, ComplianceQuest provides a unified suite of applications in a single platform addressing quality management, manufacturing quality, supplier management, customer/field service quality and health & safety. Delivering best-in-class out-of-the-box solutions, ComplianceQuest fast-tracks an organization’s efficiency, safety and overall performance by combining enterprise quality and compliance with modern collaboration, communication and social media across the product value chain. Suitable for emerging growth companies and scalable and flexible to meet the needs of medium and global enterprises, ComplianceQuest is easy to implement, validate and use. Comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated solutions ComplianceQuest supports 12 core best practices driven solutions/processes out-of-the-box, integrated and ready to go. Unlike recently introduced cloud solutions, ComplianceQuest not

Prashanth Rajendran CEO ComplianceQuest

only has a comprehensive breadth and depth of integrated solutions today but it’s also designed to scale to support the needs of small to global enterprises alike by redefining what a next generate EQMS platform and solution should be. Because ComplianceQuest is natively built on Salesforce, it leverages all the 100% modern cloud infrastructure and all the platform benefits including security, availability, reliability, and performance at scale. Keeping a pulse-point on the market ComplianceQuest’s innovation starts with the needs of customers that the company identifies during each of its implementations. This provides the primary priority and input to the company’s product roadmap planning beyond the goals and strategies from its corporate vision and partner relationships. ComplianceQuest also keeps a pulse-point on the market, industry specific requirements and regulations along with the Salesforce ecosystem. With this unique approach, companies are able to adopt a highly scalable ComplianceQuest platform to accommodate their immediate needs and as the requirements grow, provide companies the ability to grow with the application suite and the platform. ComplianceQuest can also integrate its solution suite with

traditional enterprise software solutions including ERP, MES, CRM and HR systems expanding its performance strength of quality and compliance aspects across the entire supply chain. In addition, ComplianceQuest has abilities through Salesforce for communication and collaboration through Chatter, social media like and follow, Community Cloud to include exchange of data/documents from a company’s external partners, support for mobility, artiﬁcial intelligence through Einstein Analytics and already comes with pre-validated solutions for Life Sciences customers. The rich experience of leadership team is always an advantage The ComplianceQuest leadership team is rooted in the Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) market with over 25 years’ experience in quality, compliance, document management, issue tracking, eLearning and more. Having built quality and compliance solutions before, ComplianceQuest hit the ground running as it began marketing and selling its solution into the manufacturing and life sciences industry. ComplianceQuest was able to develop the fastest growing, 100% modern cloud-based Enterprise Quality Management System (EQMS) on the Salesforce® platform. Since its inception, ComplianceQuest has

already quadrupled in size (as of 2018) with clients from all over the world. ComplianceQuest’s impressive list of customers includes small, medium to large life sciences as well as a diversified list of manufacturing clients from aerospace & defense, automotive, consumer goods, and hi-tech companies. The frontrunner building relationship and delivering on commitments Prashanth Rajendran is the CEO of ComplianceQuest. Clients appreciate his flair for knowing and understanding customers’ pain, his knack to communicate a solution, and the depth of his “real world” executive and industry experience. As CEO, Prashanth directly oversees ComplianceQuest’s sales, marketing, partnerships, finance, IT, legal and overall company strategy and direction. He comes to the company with more than twenty-five years’ experience in manufacturing, engineering and quality. Prashanth has repeatedly produced sustained revenue and EBITDA growth in dynamic and changing markets. He has extensive experience with process automation, which requires a deep understanding of critical business drivers in multiple industries. He’s highly successful in building relationships, seizing control of critical problem areas, and delivering on customer commitments.

His background includes being President and CEO of Lattice Social, a cutting-edge software company for incorporating social media into business-to-business collaboration, more than twenty years as cofounder and COO of Pilgrim Software, a Quality Management System software company. He grew the organization from inception to goal of successfully selling the company. Prior to this, he held a variety of positions in Manufacturing Engineering. Prashanth currently serves on several Boards fostering entrepreneurship in the Tampa Bay area.

Why ComplianceQuest? Ÿ Fastest growing native

Salesforce based EQMS solution Ÿ Worry-free infrastructure

platform - available anywhere, anytime

Vision that makes keep going

Ÿ Reliable, versatile and scalable ComplianceQuest’s journey is steadfast in its belief of Salesforce platform and ecosystem as a strong foundation for continuing to develop and deliver future innovative solutions and seeing rapid growth globally. Salesforce itself is also becoming a more standard platform within many companies and hence IT is looking at other Salesforce apps available to extend the value of their investment and reduce overall IT footprint. This modern cloud experience means a reduction in management of modular licenses and versions and simplifies IT issues surrounding software management. Using the cloud, customers will always have the most updated version of the software platform. In addition, since the business application platform is continuously innovated and managed by Salesforce, it allows ComplianceQuest to drive more innovation into its own solutions. Because of the ease of development, ComplianceQuest can quickly create fully working prototypes, new features or customer specific capabilities to address new market or customer requirements and turn them into final production solutions. ComplianceQuest will continue its approach to develop solutions, incorporate the best practices from various industries, support ever changing customer business needs, enable visibility of key business indicators, and highly intuitive to enable easy adoption by various levels of customer stakeholders. With continued passion and dedication on this journey, ComplianceQuest will become a market and competitive disruption. * See Salesforce Compliance at https://trust.salesforce.em/compliance

for all size companies Ÿ Single platform built by quality

and compliance experts Ÿ Flexible and tailorable to meet

customer and industry requirements Ÿ Built-in best practices and

seamless processes with Salesforce and AppExchange solutions Ÿ Rapid time to value by quickly

getting up and running in weeks Ÿ Priced reasonably and

delivering incredible value for money!

Find Your Fire T

here will never arrive that perfect time for you to perform an action. There isn’t a perfect time to release a product, write a book, change your habits or embrace a new one. Start where you stand and work hard to ascend up the ladder of success. The above statement might seem to be a bit far-fetched to execute in our practical life, but, surprisingly, it holds a massive weight of truth. For Jourdan Samel and Ari Sherman it was never about the right time, rather it was always about executing their ideas and belief into reality. They chose Hemp as their primal product offering, a plant species shadowed under the obscure corner of prohibition. Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is one of the oldest and versatile plants in the world. It boasts the potential to create over 50,000 different products and has numerous health benefits. Yet, owing to its close-quartered relationship with marijuana, another form of cannabis, hemp had gone down to be deemed as illegal. Over the years, accessibility to information and booming rate of awareness has propelled the Hemp market into a billion dollar industry. Much of this shifting trend or rather demand can be owed to Jourdan and Ari, who co-founded Evo Hemp. Evo Hemp was one of the first companies to sell US grown hemp products on a national scale. Today, the company holds over 3,000 retail stores nationwide including Kroger, Whole Foods Market and Costco. Great Things never came from Comfort Zone Both Jourdan and Ari always had that entrepreneurial spirit. Ari was only 7, when he began his first venture. He had opened a concession stand outside his neighborhood pool and sold snacks. Experiences like this has helped both

Ari Sherman Co-founder & President Evo Hemp

Jourdan Samel CEO & Co-founder Evo Hemp

Jourdan and Ari to build something from the bottom and cultivating success therein. Right out of college, Jourdan and Ari decided to learn about the economic and environmental benefits of industrial hemp farming. “My mother is a nurse and she suggested we look into hemp foods,” recalls Ari. It was only after conducting a thorough research that they found out about the umpteen number of nutritional benefits of hemp foods. They realized that hemp foods are the most nutritionally complete food source in the world. This was that pivotal moment when they decided to step out of their comfort zone and formed Evo Hemp in 2012, spreading awareness about hemp products in the process. The Changing face of the Industry The history of hemp goes centuries back. It was almost 10,000 years ago when the first hemp fibre weaving had begun. In America, Hemp had a long-standing popularity amongst farmers, until a smear campaign associating it with Marijuana assured its demise. Movies like Reefer Madness and the World War II propaganda all but cemented the fall of hemp. Years overshadowed by its sexier cousin, marijuana, the hemp industry now, because of companies like Evo Hemp, is

starting to make a name for itself for all the right reason. Over the years there has been a changing scenario in the Food and Beverages industry. This is due to disruptive companies like Amazon, which are transforming the brick and mortar retail experience with their acquisition of the Whole Foods Market. People are making purchasing decisions online owing to this shift. The hemp derived CBD market is slowly but steadily penetrating the F&B industry and we can expect to see many new and established brands stepping into the market to launch CBD products in the next few years. As one of the flag bearers in the industry, Evo Hemp strives to maintain a standard of quality that echoes efficiency. The products of Evo Hemp are organically grown and the extracts are created using an organic certified subcritical CO2 system. The company supports poor rural communities, like its partnership with Alex White Plume and the Lakota Tribe. A Look at the Journey – Past and Future “The journey has been exciting and exhausting at the same time,” rightly mentions Ari. Both Ari and Jourdan build and expanded its business from the grassroots with limited financial resources behind their back. It was at one of their friends catering kitchen where the two co-founders handmade the first lot of 75.000 hemp bards. At present, Evo Hemp has 4 different

co-manufacturing facilities, two sales teams and two marketing teams to its name. Even after the rising popularity of Hemp products, there still exists a false perception regarding the plant. For Evo Hemp, there biggest challenge has been related to

marketing hemp products. Speaking about the challenge, Ari claims “Web serviced such as Facebook, Google, Bing and Yahoo restrict how hemp companies can advertise with most banning them all together.”

company hopes to expand its reach of services to customers beyond US. “We still have a long way to go but seeing celebrities randomly tag photos of our products on their social media channels is pretty rewarding,” concludes an optimistic and excited Ari.

In the near future, Evo Hemp will be seen bringing CBD supplements into the national big box retailers such as Costco, Kroger, Target and more. The

Making Practices Thrive

he EMR-EHR industry’s focus is quickly moving toward the ability to interconnect diﬀerent systems together in order to share data. With new meaningful use requirements, healthcare practices will be forced to participate in the health information exchange in order to receive payment for services. Today, there is very little sharing of data among hospitals, clinicians, and other healthcare providers. The HITECH act begun to change that in 2009 and many hospital systems adopted basic EHR systems, but true data sharing is still limited. Two years before the HITECH act began to change, Dr. Denise Hoell DPT expressed her frustration with practice management systems in the market to her husband, Eric Hoell. Denise found the existing systems to be extremely complicated, not pediatric focused, and didn’t allow for the full narrative documentation that she and many other members of the NDT community commonly utilize. Together, they brainstormed combining Denise’s years of pediatric experience, with Eric’s background of software development and regulatory/HIPAA experience. And the cornerstone of eTherapyDocs was laid as they worked closely with many small to medium sized practices, speaking with physical, occupational, and speech language pathology therapists to ensure their product met the needs of pediatric practices. Today physical, occupational, music, mental health, and speech language pathology practices across the country use eTherapyDocs. A simple to use pediatric focused system Focused on adding features and functionality to resolve real problems that small to medium sized pediatric therapy practices experience, eTherapyDocs has continued to create ‘a simple to use’ pediatric focused system since its foundation. Treatments are easily and eﬃciently documented

Eric Hoell Founder & CEO eTherapyDocs

within the system using any internet enabled device, pulling information from discipline specific patient goals. Complete treatment notes, plan of care, progress notes, and other uploaded patient documentation can be exchanged in a secure HIPAA compliant way via integrated messaging and secure faxing. eTherapyDocs’ integrated calendar provides visual feedback to help remind therapists of appointments that still require treatment notes, and provides appointment reminders to patients via both email and text messaging. The company combines its functionality with outstanding client services, to ensure the best service possible. Committed to remain focused on pediatric practices The biggest challenge in the market according to eTherapyDocs is to remain pediatric focused. The large practice management systems disregard the fact that the goals and approaches to therapy are different for pediatric clients; the tools the therapists need must match their treatment approach and documentation preferences. The majority of adult orthopedic & rehabilitation practices are much larger than independent pediatric practices, therefore big practice management systems focus their efforts of their product development on the larger, and often more profitable, market of adult rehabilitation.

Be that as it may, eTherapyDocs’ commitment to remain focused on pediatric practices combined with its constant involvement in the pediatric and NDT community allow the company to remain connected to its practices. eTherapyDocs continues to work closely with its practices in developing new features, and focuses on providing excellent customer service. It receives feedback from its practices regarding how easy eTherapyDocs is to use; Therapists want to focus their time and effort on treating patients, not trying to figure out technology. Making passion, a profession What makes Eric, founder and CEO of eTherapyDocs, different from other CEO in the industry, is that Eric personally has over 30 years of experience in software development, focused on user experience, customer service, and the regulatory aspects of healthcare. His technical and customer skills, combined with his passion for his wife’s pediatric therapy field of practice, makes Eric passionate about eTherapyDocs every day. Eric started his career in customer service and software development in the 80’s with a large Fortune 500 company, where he learned the customer and process skills he leverages today. He has helped to lead a number of healthcare startup and holds several hardware and

software patents. Eric was invited and participated in a healthcare roundtable at the White House, and has worked closely with the FDA to deploy thousands of healthcare kiosk across the nation. Today Eric is focused on his true passion, eTherapyDocs. Continuing to improve the product ease of use Going ahead, eTherapyDocs is committed to invest and provide enhancements to the eTherapyDocs product. Annually, they conduct a survey to all of their practices presenting new ideas for product improvements, and working together with the practices they, prioritize new functionality. eTherapyDocs will be also continue to improve product ease of use by leveraging the latest technologies and enhancing data integration with other products. For more information, visit https://etherapydocs.com/

Cherry on cake eTherapyDocs has, over the years, worked with numerous clients and has provided them with the best practices in the industry. Let’s take a look at what the clients have to say about eTherapyDocs’s service. “eTherapyDocs is so easy to use. I am the biller and have to pull charges every week to enter into Medisoft. This is the easiest program I have ever seen. It takes me about 60 seconds to pull the charges and print them out. How much easier can you get?” “User friendly program, the calendar with patient text reminders have significantly cut down our number of “noshows.” The view today’s schedule gives a quick easy to see overview of the day’s schedule. The ability to upload scanned documents and to print notes to a PDF file simplifies the prior authorization process for insurance companies.” “e-Docs has provided a system for scheduling and documentation that facilitates treatment planning for individual sessions as well as across time. The staff has been extremely supportive and assisted us to transition us from individual documentation to more electronically documented and tracked notes. There are many aspects of the notes that are completed automatically that allow the therapist to focus on the critical aspects of treatment planning and noting changes across time. We have clearly saved time and money by using this system. I would highly recommend e Therapy Docs.” “We have been using E-therapy docs in our practice for several years now, and it has been fabulous! The therapists love the flexibility of accessing their patient notes and contact information on the web. Our billing manager is off-site, and can retrieve notes and evaluations for insurance companies in an electronic format which saves time and money. Our in-house costs for printing have also significantly decreased since we transitioned to electronic data.” “Using e-Therapy Docs has made my job as an assistant billing specialist simple and efficient. When filing for Medicaid PA’s, I can quickly and easily select the patient, all of their clinicals and most recent notes, and have the PA filed in mere minutes.” “eTherapyDocs allows me to focus on what is really important, the rehabilitation of these children. It’s easy to learn, allows me to expand on my note documentation, keep up with quarterly reports and improves communication between therapists. I really appreciate the text reminders to help remind patients of their appointments.”

The Choice of Business Success

ith an aim to better businesses through technology-enabled energy management solutions, Choice! Energy Services came into inception. The full-service energy procurement and utility management company with nationwide presence and a complete suite of energy management services, not only focuses on procurement; rather, it lays focus on optimum savings and value to its clients.

Choice boasts an a la carte program, which gives clients the opportunity to determine which services best fit their individualistic needs. The company continues to spread its tentacles by offering the following services: Strategic Power and Gas Procurement, Risk Management, Tariff Analysis, Budgeting, Utility Sales Tax Recovery, Utility Data Management, Engineering Consulting, Sustainability and Bill Pay. Additionally, Choice offers supporting services which include Demand Response, EnergyStar Certification, Arc Flash Study, LED Lighting, Regulatory Support and more. The company is transparent and unbiased in its consultations and recommendations, thereby allowing clients to make smarter, data-driven decisions about their energy consumption and spending. Delivering better results Since its very inception, Choice has been striving to deliver better business results through incorporating technology as part of its solutions. Their journey has been a continuous learning experience as the needs of its vast customer base continue to change with time and market trends. The company has established a name in the procurement industry under the leadership of Kiki Dikmen, who became the Managing Partner at Choice! Energy Services back in 2007. Under his management, Choice has grown from a local broker shop in Texas to a national consulting firm with two additional offices in New York and Kentucky. His 12+ years of industry experience in energy services has helped Choice achieve aggressive growth and maturity. He has created new roles and responsibilities and has redefined the organization’s mission, vision and target audience. Currently, Choice is experiencing a classic industry maturity transformation. Back when deregulation was introduced as a new concept, customers were unaware they could “shop for energy.” This created a new layer of sometimes non-discerning intermediaries who created value simply by finding better prices than what the incumbent suppliers offered. As the market slightly matured, customers became aware of their choices in “shopping” for energy, which also included shopping for their brokers and consultants thereby sharpening the initial role and relatively low value of the intermediary space. Fast-forward a few years, and the growing market and the ameliorating customer maturity is

Kiki Dikmen Managing Partner Choice! Energy Services

forcing all existing and aspiring players in the energy space to figure out where they can add lasting or unique value if they indeed want to stay in the business. Choice has always been on the forefront of the changes in retail consulting, and today the company delivers a consultative business model underpinned by proprietary technology and centered on creating long-term, ongoing and sustainable value. An unmatched industry position Choice leverages its access to wholesale markets through OTC Global Holdings, which is one of the largest liquidity providers to the NYMEX. OTCGH has one of the largest market shares of any firm. Through the common ownership, Choice offers valuable market knowledge about future prices for natural gas and wholesale power. Additionally, Choice leverages EOXLive, a leading voice and electronic trading platform for OTC commodity markets. The system records all real-time trade data passing through OTC Global Holdings, which gives Choice the knowledge to be strategic in procurement decisions, as well as to be transparent across the retail energy spectrum. Choice has also positioned itself to offer a comprehensive service through an award-winning active and intuitive proprietary online platform, CESConnect. The platform is offered in-house and allows large, multi-site organizations to find, track, manage and analyze utility data across regulated and deregulated regions nationwide, while assisting clients with sustainability and cost reduction initiatives. Choice recognizes that innovation and enhancements around

CESConnect is the key for its organization’s growth. On a continuous surge to improve Speaking about the procurement industry, Kiki mentions “The retail commodity industry is no longer just about procurement but rather a comprehensive approach. Companies are on a continuous lookout for solution providers and partners that can come in and address all clients’ needs. This includes strategic procurement in deregulated areas, meter installs, forecasting, rate analysis, expansion projects, sustainability applications, utility data management solutions and much more.” Choice has positioned itself to oﬀer a comprehensive service through its utility data management platform, CESConnect. Choice recognizes that innovation and enhancements around CESConnect is the key for its organization’s growth. With this in mind, Choice is on a continuous surge to improve its user experience by strengthening its mobile presence. The company has also witnessed a tremendous value in consolidating utility-level, meterlevel and submeter-level data to create a single-access platform across currently fragmented, piece-meal solutions. Choice is active and licensed in all of North America’s deregulated natural gas and power markets. It aligns each client’s speciﬁc risk management objectives with strategically focused fundamental and technical market analytics. This provides clients with the requisite information and tools needed to make the most informed decisions about their future energy requirements.

In addition to these, Choice leverages the common ownership of OTC Global Holdings to empower clients to be price setters by ensuring price transparency into each market. This unique advantage ensures that clients are aligned with the best retail supplier. A future ﬁlled with promises In order to drive customer satisfaction and the continuous adaptation to digital age, Choice is dedicated to continuously building its

strategic energy team that supports the rapid national growth by investing in employee talent and technology.

the energy management industry. Choice will remain at the forefront of new and advanced technologies and projects commercial energy management software to achieve vital prominence in the industry.

At a higher level, Choice is keeping a close eye on Mexicoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy markets not only because they are the indirect drivers for energy markets in the U.S., but also for potential business opportunities and expansion. Additionally, Choice aspires to continue to work with multi-site organizations with international presence to expand its global footprint.

Choice continues to implement new strategies, products and services and corporate identity to better serve its clients. Choice is not only experiencing considerable growth and technological advances, but also a change to its competitive position. Rebranding makes this change visible for all employees, clients and stakeholders to keep us as leaders in the energy landscape.

Also, digitalization of energy infrastructure supported by national government initiatives and swelling concern to reduce carbon footprint could also turn the spotlight on

Bringing Doctors & Patients Together

MR/EHR adoption has been growing in a big way during the recent times, thanks to various factors such as easy and timely access to patient medical data, more efficient data capture, and improved interoperability. With advancement in technology becoming more wide-spread, healthcare industry has been embracing software solutions such as EMR and EHR on a large scale, as these solutions have the potential to make the lives of patients and providers better. Driven by potent forces such as Meaningful Use and incentive programs, there’s no doubt about the increased adoption of health information technology solutions in the future. Recognizing what would future hold for the healthcare landscape, one firm started building the most reliable and affordable services and solutions to clinicians and healthcare facilities – Kaaspro, the exclusive health information technology services provider. Assisting and empowering the medical professionals To assist and empower the medical professionals to achieve providing the most optimal healthcare to their patients through varied health information technology products has been motto of Kaaspro since the foundation. The firm has developed, in partnership with clinicians and IT professionals, innovative products such as 75Helath EMRs, 75Health EHRs, 75Health Personal Health Records, and 75Health Practice Management System. Moreover, the team at Kaaspro has ensured that by adopting cloud technology, its clients-clinicians and hospitals, are enabled to provide improved levels of services and care than what would have been possible by using their internal IT efforts. Kaaspro is able to facilitate clients to accomplish flexibility and scalability, bring down operational costs, and achieve reliability and security, thanks to our exclusive cloud-based solutions.

Kumar Subramaniam Founder & CEO Kaaspro

Similar to other industries, the global healthcare industry is also experiencing a period of innovation and growth that is based on information technology. One of the options in the modern era is leveraging the capabilities of cloud systems to develop and accomplish eHealth goals. “At Kaaspro, we help medical practices and providers to reap the exclusive economic benefits and information management advantages offered by the cloud,” Kumar Subramaniam, company’s founder and CEO. Dedicatedly striving to satisfy the varied requirements of the clients Storing, sharing, and processing critical patient health information has been one area of concern for medical professionals since long. Thanks to the modern Cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), clinicians are now able to manage patient records in a convenient and secure manner. The once paper-based medical records have been rendered robust and accurate with the entry of cloudbased systems in the health information technology front. As cloud-based EMRs and EHRs were found to be the most optimal solutions for taking medical data management to the next level, Kaaspro has devoted time and efforts to come up with the best and most reliable cloud-based systems. Kaaspro has germinated the idea of

developing cloud-based health information technology to assist hospitals and doctors considering the various advantages such as efficient and integrated patient care, better patient data management, secure and accurate information, and increased care quality and productivity. With several vendors and service providers pitching for market share and the medical industry constantly evolving, it has not been a smooth sailing for Kaaspro. “We have been dedicatedly striving to satisfy the varied requirements of our clients in the ever-changing medical ecosystem. Huge changes such as the value-based reimbursement model and governmental policies and standards have proven to be particularly difficult to adapt with,” Kumar adds. Fulfilling unique client needs while adhering to all statutory and individual compliance needs has been one of the biggest challenges that Kaaspro faced. But Kaaspro has surmounted these issues by fine-tuning the company’s products according to the specific client needs and making the essential changes to meet all compliance needs. Also, the company has always included its clients, employees, and all stakeholders involved in its projects. By ensuring that they are all actively taking part in the various stages of creating products, Kaaspro

accomplishes the capability to face any challenge that comes up. An industry veteran striving for better future Kumar is an electronics engineering graduate from the prestigious PSG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore. Motivating leadership and technological foresight that helps the healthcare fraternity with solving their unique needs are his strongholds. Having an industry experience of over 20 years, he has gained the expertise and capability to drive the company ahead. Kumar encourages innovative ideas and assists developers in coming up with their dream projects in a manner that not only brings out the best in them but also satiates the client needs effectively. Having identified and understood the immediate needs of the medical professionals with their hectic activities, and the demand of patients and individuals with regard to the most optimal healthcare and safety, he has conceptualized the most reliable and efficient health information systems and worked along with the team for successfully building the same. Unmatched and reliable services Kaaspro’s flagship software, 75Health EHRs and EMRs are the modern real-time electronic version

of patient medical data that describe all necessary information in minute detail. By making its products patient-centric and doctor-friendly, Kaaspro has ensured that users ﬁnd them unmatched and reliable. Enabling managing and exchanging critical patient data in the most reliable and fast manner, the company’s EMRs and EHRs convey accurate information to the intended destination.

motto of any medical practice, namely, providing the most optimal care to patients under the most economical manner, products such as 75health EMR/EHR lend reliable assistance. Kumar believes in customizing his products according to the specific needs of each of the client. Medical practices of all sizes and different specialties will be able to get their needs fulfilled with Kaaspro’s products.

“We have ensured that our health information technology products unfold case-specific solutions, thus increasing patient safety and patient outcomes. Our products help healthcare facilities and clinicians in bringing down redundancy and improving efficiency, while ensuring that patients are empowered to cut medical expenses and encouraged to take active part in their care. We have taken care that all stakeholders are involved in the crucial development stage of our health information technology products, ensuring that all possible requirements of clients are met with effectively,” Kumar asserts.

Kaaspro envisions cloud technology and mobile integration to be the factors that are going to impact the healthcare industry in a positive way in the coming years. The company has a few innovative and sophisticated medical information technology products in the developing stage. “We aim at providing software solutions to the medical professionals and healthcare facilities that enable them to oﬀer the most reliable and safe care to their patients. Our vision is to help the medical fraternity with the most reliable and eﬃcient systems that facilitate improving the health of the entire society,” Kumar concludes.

Any technology solution, to be able to satiate the client needs on a long-term basis, must be updated on a regular basis. “We are particular about providing follow-up on implementation, continuous customer support, and long-term updates. This way, we make our clients feel at home with our products regardless of time period. This also ensures the busy medical professionals are never stuck with any hindrance at any stage after having adopted our products. We take responsibility of tweaking the product according to their requirements at any point of time,” he further adds. Enabling clients to achieve the best care quality possible Kaaspro has been striving to oﬀer the clients the most economical and eﬃcient solutions that make running their practices smooth and achieving the best care quality possible. To be able to accomplish the primary

Learning Became Easy

he most expensive training is the one that doesn’t work. As a learner, no one wants to sit through hours of slides or discussion without context and relevance to their role. Dr. Michael Allen, Scott Colehour and Steve Lee realized the same and founded Allen Interactions in October of 1993 to define unique methods of instructional design and development to provide Meaningful and Memorable learning experiences through “true” cognitive interactivity. They believed that creating training that was developed using advanced design and development approaches for iterative, collaborative development. 25 years later, the vision of Allen Interactions is still the same: to build great learning that helps to affect performance change through challenging activity that allows learners to internalize the topics of study in order to effect the needed change through visceral learning. A pioneer in the learning games space Allen Interactions has been a pioneer in the serious learning games space for many years. The company’s gamified learning solutions combine instructional design with gamified sequencing to captivate learners and encourage a stimulating learning experience. The company’s client list includes some of the most exciting fortune 100 companies in the country and continues to grow. “We have been given top honors in the form of Brandon Hall, Communication, Summit, Davey, Omni, and Stevie awards year after year. And Training Industry has included us in the Top 20 Gamification list for the past six years. Our hard work pays off four our clients every year in the form of increased revenue, better employee retention and stronger safety results,” Dr. Allen asserts. Driven by the best instructional design and latest technologies Allen Interactions provides a wide range of learning services driven by the best instructional design and latest technologies to meet clients’ training and business goals. Some of them are as follows:

Dr. Michael Allen Chairman & CEO Allen Interactions

Custom ELearning: Allen Interactions’s award-winning custom elearning solutions are all about the learner and driven by the absolute best instructional design. Clients’ final instructional products will be Meaningful, Memorable, and Motivational experiences that solve their specific business challenges and result in seriously elevated performance! Blended Learning: Depending on clients’ organization’s needs, sometimes elearning alone won’t cut it. Therefore, Allen Interactions creates comprehensive blended learning curriculums that combine the best of both online learning and in-person learning, enabling them to get the performance results and behavior changes they need. ELearning Games & Simulations: Allen Interactions marries game mechanics and elearning instructional design elements to improve employee engagement, motivation and, ultimately, performance. Because at Allen Interactions, the team believes that learning should be fun, engaging, and contagious—just like games! Micro-learning: Modern technology is changing the way many organizations offer learning content. Instead of long courses delivered in one extended sitting, micro-learning delivers learning activities in “bitesized” portions. Allen Interactions helps clients design their microlearning strategy so they can meet modern learners where they are.

Allen Interactions brings 25 years of experience to its clients. Not only is Dr. Allen a pioneer of the elearning industry, he continues to innovate and drive the company to new heights of learning. The industry in evolving as new technologies are developed and Allen Interactions meets that challenge head on with solutions developed using Artiﬁcial Intelligence, Virtual reality and real time analytics. The Allen Interactions team is comprised of highly skilled and experienced media artists, instructional designers, developers, project managers, strategists all of whom share a passion for creating contextual learning and creative training solutions that eﬀect performance change to help organizations achieve their objectives. “We build our solutions using the CCAF design methodology that Dr. Allen developed. With Context, Challenge, Activity, Feedback based solutions, learners are able to internalize learning directly by interacting within scenarios that replicate their everyday experiences. The learning is self-paced and challenging to encourage learners to make mistakes in a safe space and the lessons can be as individualized as the learners themselves,” Dr. Allen adds. Continues to create new learning platforms and go beyond industry Recently, Allen Interactions has

Together Everyone Achieves More

partnered with The Game Agency to collaboratively build out some exciting new gamified learning offerings with even more new to come in the next few months. Allen Interactions has also launched The Game Lab an innovation division of Allen Interactions. “In the coming years, we anticipates significant growth in both size and scope. We are creating new learning platforms and broadening our reach both within and beyond the industry,” Dr. Allen concludes. Meet the pioneer Dr. Allen is a prolific writer with nine published books on designing effective elearning solutions, including his latest second edition: Michael Allen’s Guide to ELearning. He is a sought-after conference speaker and recognized industry leader in the learning and training industry. In 2011, he received ATD’s Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award. Dr. Allen was selected by The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) Advisory Committee as a recipient of the 2012 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. The eLearning Guild presented Dr. Allen with its Guild Masters Award which recognizes an individual for consistently contributing to the elearning community in both quantity and quality of content. Dr. Allen holds M.A and Ph.D. degrees in educational psychology from The Ohio State University and is an adjunct associate professor at the

University of Minnesota Medical School in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health.

became a groundbreaking authoring tool combining power and ease of use, and ultimately the industry standard. Authorware, Inc. merged with Macromind/Paracomp to become Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe.

Michael Allen was also the director of advanced educational systems research and development of Control Data Corporationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous PLATO computerbased education system used around the world. He was the founder, and former chairman of Authorware, Inc. and also the primary architect of Authorware Professional, which was based on Allenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extensive research on creativity and creative problem-solving. It

Search, Compare, & Book

or years there has been a recurring question concerning how retailers can meet today’s demand for instant gratification and production innovation, without incurring the untenable business cost. From same day delivery to low-risk business expansion, every aspect of the retail model requires flexibility and agility. While every other aspect of the logistics model is agile and responsive, retailers are, in the main, still constrained by five, ten, even 15 year warehouse leases. The inflexibility of warehouse deals becomes ever starker given the incredible flexibility achieved through every other part of an intelligently optimised supply chain. Retailers are able to respond incredibly quickly to changes in exchange rates, demand and market opportunity by shifting suppliers and adapting logistics routes – yet the warehouse operations are still fixed. The result can be huge swathes of expensive, empty space; or business opportunities that cannot be grasped due to a limitation of available space. This inflexibility within warehousing is also in clear contrast to the flexible business models adopted across other areas of commercial and residential property. From short shop leases, including pop-ups, to ‘pay by the desk’ office space, or even Airbnb, the way organisations and individuals can utilise property has changed, radically. Surely it is time to apply similar thinking to the warehouse market.

Charlie Pool CEO Stowga

Stowga is the World’s Warehousing Marketplace, the most transparent platform to buy and sell warehouse space and services. Effectively, Stowga is a non-asset based ‘match-maker’, matching companies with available warehouse capacity with those that need additional capacity without committing to long-term fixed overheads. It’s sort of an extension of the 3PL storage model, but without being constrained to a 3PLs warehouse assets. In addition, it also provides a chance to embrace new market opportunities and trial new ideas with minimal investment and minimal risk. Making customers rethink how they build supply chains Charlie Pool, the CEO of the company, founded Stowga after a career at JPMorgan where he was the first hire for a new commodities business focused on project finance, derivatives, and principal investments. The business grew to a team of over 350 globally with offices all around the world in just three years. After working on several technology investments for JPMorgan, Charlie began investing in startups before leaving finance to work for a

startup, a P2P lending platform called Trillion Fund where he was the Chief Commercial Oﬃcer. It was whilst advising an asset management ﬁrm that had a panEuropean industrial real estate fund that the idea for Stowga came about. Charlie founded Stowga in 2016 with the goal of revolutionizing supply chains by focusing on the weakest link in the chain: warehouses. Stowga is now the leading on-demand warehouse marketplace. By creating a liquid warehouse marketplace, the speed and simplicity – with which Stowga allows customers to search, compare, and book warehouses – is allowing customers to completely rethink how they build supply chains. Helping companies make the most of their warehousing assets It’s been two years since Stowga’s foundation and it has already raised $2.5m in seed funding. The company has been publicly recognized several times, winning the WIRED Retail Startup showcase in 2017, as well as the DP World Supply Chain Disruptor award in 2018. But what makes Stowga a success is the connection that it

has enabled thus far or how it has helped KFC end the great chicken crisis in the UK. Stowga has helped Nichols, a drinks company, expand their distribution network from 3 large distribution centres to 14 smaller regional sites, that’s 100% ﬂexible. This got them closer to their customers, reduced delivery times, reduced driver and fuel costs, and reduced fuel emissions. This is important when companies are competing more and more on delivery times to meet customer expectations. Stowga has also been a huge cost and time saving option for both pi-top (Computer Science and STEAM learning tools using Raspberry Pi) and Diamond Logistics (a 3PL), taking the process of identifying, contacting, and signing new customers from 16 to 2 weeks and has enabled both parties to grow jointly through this perfect match. Disrupting the industry with an innovative platform The warehouse, the brick and mortar cornerstone of the supply chain is being disrupted. The ‘sharing economy’ is here, with the rise of ﬂexible warehousing

“We’re in a multi-billion market that is in need of a change. Every actor (retailers, real estate, and startups) recognizes this and the question really is who will set up as a market leader ﬁrst and lead in key territories. We’ve built a fantastic team of brilliant talents, all working closely together to build a fantastic product that answers the market need while being sustainable in the long term.” Charlie concludes.

with Stowga. Due to the growth of e-commerce, the need for warehouses is growing: every $1bn spent online requires an additional 750,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space – with an existing 500 million sqft of industrial space in the UK alone. “In the UK, the average length of an industrial warehouse lease is just under 7 years, representing a signiﬁcant commitment in a world of ﬂexible, agile supply chains. Everyone thinks the industrial market is supply constrained. It isn’t. There is hidden enormous spare capacity in the system, and it’s accessible through Stowga,” says Charlie. The average under-utilized space by a warehouse is ~25% across the year. And there are already over 4,000 warehouses available on the Stowga marketplace, from small family run businesses to industry giants including CBRE and Asda (a Walmart company) along with new ones that are being added every day. That equates to millions of free sqft that could be used.

A Pioneer in Forestry Management

lobally over 2 billion people rely on forests entirely or partially for their livelihood, creating a market of 246 billion USD from the global exports of forest-based products. Despite this huge number, there are very few digital solutions available for sustainable forest management. The reason lies in the usage of old-fashioned paper-based business practices for performing daily routines and conservative nature of the sector. However, Wuudis Solutions Oy, previously known as MHG Systems, is committed at overcoming this challenge by taking advantage of the forest digitalization boom and standardization in Finland. A revolutionary vision Mr. Seppo Huurinainen, a timberland investor in Finland, was suffering from a problem of managing his more than 1000 hectare of forest property in an easy and profitable way. Almost 13 years ago, a vision named Wuudis Solutions Oy started developing in Mikkeli, Finland to kill this aching problem and revolutionize the forest and wood supply chain business through digital services. According to Mr. Huurinainen, his forest property works as a ‘sandbox’ to test Wuudis ICT services. An amalgamation of innovation and experience Wuudis Solutions Oy is involved in offering next generation smart ICT solutions for Forest management. The company innovates by integrating open software technology with years of field experience in the forestry business behind its back. The combination of innovation and experience results in agile and user-friendly IT services, aimed at facilitating flexible and resilient business models in the rapidly changing business environment. Its portfolio of services includes, but not limited to, remote sensing services for forest asset management, mobile

Seppo Huurinainen Founder & CEO Wuudis Solutions Oy

solutions, and ﬁeld work management. It oﬀers the below-mentioned solutions: ·

Wuudis Pro: Digital Forest management tool for forest owners, co-operatives, and forest entrepreneurs. It knows the value of your forest and enables commercial exploitation in a sustainable way. Wuudis Business: Complete digital service for forest management, data sharing, ﬁeld work management, and forest inventory. Customers of Wuudis Business service include Forest management associations, Forest authority in Finland, several forest service companies, etc. Wuudis tree-wise monitoring: Satellite and drone based accurate tree-wise forest inventory monitoring for forest management associations, timberland owners, and large forest companies.

Wuudis Solutions vision is to become one of the world leaders in ICT solutions segment for forestry management, wood procurement, and to possess all the required data that boost any stakeholder business in the forestry industry. This can be enabled by digitalizing the global forest resource and all wood ﬂows through Wuudis service. A veteran in the forestry landscape Seppo Huurinainen, the Founder & CEO of Wuudis Solutions Oy, has a

cumulative experience of 35 years in forestry, entrepreneurship, and information technology. He holds a broad academic experience in GIS, IT, and silviculture with five university level degrees. He founded Wuudis Solutions Oy (previously MHG Systems) in 2005, which currently offers pioneering ICT solutions for forest management. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he held several development and research positions within the forest and agriculture industry and has worked for organizations such as the Finnish Forest and Park Service, Metla, Finnish Forest Centre, Metsäliitto, Stora Enso, and the National Board of Education. Unmatched benefits and achievements Wuudis has the capability to deliver several benefits to the whole forest ecosystem. It enables maximized revenues and profits for forest owners from improved forest management. Guidance for planning next forest activities that needs to be performed to exploit maximum economic benefit from timber harvest. Saved costs and increased margin for forest service companies via easy scouting and connection with forest owners and delivers superior customer service through the usage of easy apps and web-based tools. Societal and environmental value via promotion of sustainable forest management practices, forest threat detection, and increased mobilization of available wood resources for the needs of the forest industry. Speaking about the achievements of the company, Seppo asserts “Apart from our strong commercial operations

(i.e, the sales of Wuudis services) and stable cash ﬂow, one thing that is worth noting is our success rate in acquiring EU innovation projects. This proves our capability of developing the most cutting edge ICT solutions for forestry industry. In this direction, some achievements are; successful funding injections from multiple EU projects (LogistEC, CASTLE, SLOPE & DataBio projects) and EU H2020 SME phase I, in total an injection of roughly 1M€.” Development and commercialization of an innovative solution which is disruptive in nature is not easy and requires lot of personal motivation and patience. One of the most important things is to continuously motivate the team and keep product and business development rolling even in constrained circumstances. “At Wuudis Solutions Oy, we are developing visionary services, so sometimes we face problems with some prospective clients, who are little hesitant to implement our services as they have to adopt new operational practices by throwing conservative methods,” mentions Seppo. A competitive edge over existing solutions Global traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) service providers are targeting large players in the forest industry. They develop complex, ITfocused solutions without deep knowledge of the forest sector, mainly for downstream industrial players, such as biomass power plants or wood product manufacturing companies, which have integrated operations with timber processing activities. Smallerscale forestry business uses hard copy

documents or excel sheets, which is difficult to share and requires manual work or integration with other software. Wuudis offers an affordable solution to the entire forestry ecosystem, from private forest owners and small forest service companies to large corporations and forest authorities, connecting them via open data interfaces to provide a virtual marketplace and forest health monitoring. Compared to its competitors, Wuudis leverages its unique knowledge of forest management and wood processing industry to create value for all stakeholders in the forest industry. Wuudis is the only holistic solution in the market, increasing also the profitability of small and medium-sized players. Being a neutral and open ecosystem platform, Wuudis has a competitive edge over existing solutions, as it covers all forestry management activities in a one-click service.

that there are no easy-to-use digital solutions at present in the market.” Disrupting the global forest business In terms of technology, Wuudis is in the process of creating breakthrough innovation by offering tree wise forest inventory monitoring and other value added services utilizing processed satellite data and aerial images collected by drones. This solution will break the conservative approach of paper-based forest management plans and it offers digital and standardized forest management plans and necessary data to run daily operations on Wuudis. Based on this innovation, Wuudis Solutions’ mission is to disrupt global forest business by offering its solutions worldwide. “We have secured the necessary funding and investment to kick-off our international business activity and are committed to became the world leader in forestry digitalization business in a 3 years’ timespan from now,” concludes Seppo.

Seppo claims “Based on our market study, together with interviews and discussions with our clients, we have found

Pushing the Boundaries of AI

he past few years have been monumental owing to the advancements in artiﬁcial intelligence. Tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google are investing a lot of time and money in creating their own AI labs to produce robots capable of learning almost everything possible. Not only are the tech giants involved, but as early as 2012 the US military funded The DARPA bots Challenge aimed at designing humanoid bots capable of responding to highly dangerous disaster scenarios. These are clear indication on how AI is shaping the future of technology. No other point in history has seen such substantial engagement in the development of artiﬁcial intelligence, and the opportunities are limitless.

On a mission to push the boundaries of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision and develop a real-world scientific model called ‘Aspire Analyticx’, stands an Artificial Intelligence company named Aspiricx. Aspire Analyticx is a full dimensional scientific model developed with the concept of modeling human potential using AI. Providing Real-time Analytics for Athletes Sports analytics have always been about comparing one athlete’s performance against fellow competing athletes be it individual sport or team sport. Aspiricx realizes that an athlete needs to surpass his or her own true potential to make a significant difference. This originated the idea of Aspire Analytics, which enables athletes to achieve their true potential to make them aspire for more. Hence, Aspire Analytics was conceptualized to model 3D objects and analyze the athlete’s performance against their ideal self. Currently, Aspiricx aspires to provide real-time analytics for athletes by leveraging video and 3D imaging technologies without invasive sensors. Computer vision, AI and machine learning algorithms are used to process visual data in real-time and develop advanced scientific models that are compared against athlete’s actual performance and also solve statistical mysteries in sports analytics.

Kannan Dorairaj CEO Aspiricx

Aspiricx’s real-time deep learning AI engine called “Vision Bot” is at the core of the “Aspire Analytics” ecosystem. However, Vision Bot grew much bigger than what it was conceived to be and turned out to be a big project on its own. “Over a short span of time, it outgrew its purpose multifold finding application in our Automotive and Healthcare Bionics projects. Owing to its generic implementation as an AI deep-learning engine, we envisage great deal of use for “Vision Bot” in every field of science and technology and more. After the WWW and mobile revolution at the turn of the millennium, AI will be the next great technology revolution and we are sure “Vision Bot” will be one of the mainstream catalysts,” remarked Kannan. Enhancing the Sport of Swimming with Ground-Breaking Products A team of world class visionaries, technologists, swimmers, analysts and coaches have transformed Aspire Analyticx into two product lines, LaneVision and StokeVision to enhance the sport of swimming. LaneVision: LaneVision is conceptualized to solve the statistical mysteries of pool swimming laps, splits, stroke count, velocity and much more by using widely beneficial scientific advances ever made in Augmented Reality (AR) and Computer Vision to get data without any invasive sensors. LaneVision with non-invasive sensors lets the team achieve the never achieved objective of using it in a competitive race environment to get the results that really count. Strokevision: Strokevision is intellectualized to model swimmers and analyze their swim stroke techniques. AR and Projection of

Visual Data provides real-time comparison and feedback. The swimmer is 3D-scanned to get their exact body dimensions and the model is loaded and trained with swim engineering results to get the ‘ideali’. The swimmers’ stroke technique will be compared against their “ideali” scientific model. With science backed analytics, Aspiricx will achieve the never achieved feet of doing this in real-time to redefine the sport. Success without struggle is no success at all! They say, “If you can find a way with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” And it holds true for Aspiricx as well. There have been several obstacles over the course of setting up Aspiricx’s core aspire analytics concepts. Especially working with the latest advancements such as computer vision and machine learning that are tough to perfect and more timeconsuming. Adding on to these are laying out key performance metrics and collecting immense amount of dataset for continual training. The primary challenge is setting up the computer vision to work through the water. Kannan’s prior work in the solar industry helped him understand light rays, and his solution for the problem posed by water is now Aspiricx’s core Intellectual Property. The Driving Force Kannan Dorairaj, a visionary, thought leader and a serial entrepreneur drives the vision, strategy, & innovation at Aspiricx. He envisioned the whole business model, product visions and the technology forefront. Although an entrepreneur, Kannan has always been an engineer at heart. He makes sure he is at the heart of every single technology decision and details; be it setting up the core architecture or

reviewing that last line of code. He has truly driven the technology side of the company with great knowledge and enthusiasm. When his son, Amit began swimming, Kannan wanted to learn the sport, as well. He trained to become a stroke and turn judge, sitting for endless hours at the end of a pool lane in meets. Kannan found time for his interest in swimming & he wanted to undertake a project with his son. “After so many years of working, I had time,” he said. “I was thinking, “What can I teach my son?” As an entrepreneur, Kannan decided to show his son the basics of a business plan. For the purpose of the exercise, Amit decided to create a swim team. Around that time, Kannan and his son had an argument about swimming in which Amit asked him, “Don’t compare me to anybody.” This helped spark an idea.

Kannan came to understand the individuality of swimming strokes, pored through the documents of other swim-speciﬁc technologies and saw an opportunity for an external tracker. He applied his expertise to create “Aspiricx” and the concept of “ideali.me.”

“You want to aspire to be be er, and that’s the kind of whole vision of the company Aspiricx, is to help you aspire to be be er than you are today” Natalie Coughlin, Olympic Champion (Winner of 12 Olympic medals for USA, as many as an American woman has ever earned)

To compliment his vision and technology he put together a great team with Priya Rangaswamy, an expert in business process as co-founder and COO. A right set of world class team joined together to make the vision come true for Aspiricx including, “12 times Olympic Medal Winner, Natalie Coughlin”, “USA National Junior Team Coach, Ethan Hall” along with a set of analysts, skilled engineers and architects under the guidance of advisory board members including “USA National Team High Performance Manager, Russell Mark”.

Today’s Vision about Tomorrow Moving ahead, Aspiricx’s vision has the potential to introduce new sources of growth and will create significant business opportunities and societal value. “In building our swim analytics product, we realized how hard and time consuming it is to set up computer vision and machine learning infrastructure. That is why we are enroute to building a state-of-the-art integrated vision platform. A seamlessly integrated, flexible and managed full stack computer vision enabler platform for the world of vision driven applications. One integrated platform that offers ready-to-implement APIs that converge with latest advancements in computer vision and the expertise needed to train and build custom models that can be used to develop custom applications effectively,” Kannan concluded.

Today, Kannan envisions and strives to transform the cutting-edge and emerging technologies to provide business value for the customers. He has helped organizations to grow from few million to a multimillion-dollar enterprises with his expertise. He has also played a vital role in the strategic management of the enterprises transforming from a product speciﬁc to broader industrial solutions company and led the team for potential partnerships, M&A and Investments.

Smart Solutions for Everyone

echnology is rapidly changing the way things get done across industries – the information technology as a service is booming. Gartner has summed this up very nicely by stating, “At the root of what’s transforming today’s business designs, industries, markets and organization is the blurring of boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. As digital business integrates these worlds through emerging and strategic technologies, entirely new business models are created. Enter a future deﬁned by the “intelligent digital mesh” — interconnected people, devices, content and services essentially driven by smart devices delivering digital services everywhere and enabled by digital business platforms delivering a rich intelligent set of services to support digital business. Disruptive technology trends will propel this future. As an enterprise architecture or technology innovation leader, are you prepared to respond to them?”

If not, then look no further, because Integration Technologies is here with InterWeave Smart ® Solutions . InterWeave is a Software Product Suite that offers a rapidly deployable and infinitely scalable Software as a Service (SaaS) Integration Platform and Integration Server for integration of business-to-business, business-to-consumer connectivity, business processes optimization and application integration. Providing the best and only intuitive, intelligent, configurable solutions Since its inception 12 years ago, the firm’s mission has not altered, and to this day it remains the same – dedicated to providing the best and only intuitive, intelligent, configurable CRM integration solutions for our customer’s, so they can leverage comprehensive quotes, orders,

Bruce Magown Chairman & CEO Integration Technologies

payments and inventory processes within their CRM, while sourcing real-time data from Financial Applications, ACH/CC Payment Gateways, eCommerce, ERP, Databases and more; all in a hub/spoke model. “Coming from the Financial Services and Technology sector when the Internet was coming online provoked the thought that these “Silos of Information” now had the capability to interact with each other, in real-time. Disparate Asset information could now provide customers information from entities that were “loosely coupled or related”, in a consistent, consolidated view,” says Bruce Magown, the Chairman and CEO of InterWeave on the foundation of the company.

Continuous innovation is the key! The greatest scientist of the Twentieth Century, Albert Einstein in his famous quote said, “we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Rapid changes in society and methods previously used are no longer effective. A new approach regarding process, design and delivery provides better solutions, services and experiences for both non-technology and technology savvy people. Pairing this with continuous innovation in response to customers challenges was the obstacle InterWeave faced. To address this challenge, InterWeave designed solutions to help enterprise, mid-market and non-profits quickly and affordably build, deploy and maintain integration solutions.

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Today, InterWeave designs solutions that jump-start or expand a company’s integration eﬀort, generating immediate business value and rapid ROI. InterWeave has undertaken over 8,000 CRM integrations since 2006, applying continuous innovation in response to customers’ requirements. InterWeave has been successful in supporting clients in this vital space and provide them with the expertise and knowledge regarding integrations they need. Clients are the driving force behind the success of the company Being unique is better than being perfect. And likely so, InterWeave allows users to work within their own solutions in their environments and provide them with real-time information from other integrated applications. InterWeave integrates

CRMs such as Salesforce, bpmOnline, OROCRM, OROCommerce, Oracle Sales Cloud, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM and others. Internally, the firm operates a client focused approach to ensure they are treated to the highest possible standards of client service and support. The team is encouraged to treat clients as they would like to be treated themselves, as InterWeave understands that our clients are the driving force behind the success of the company. The vision that inspires everyone InterWeave is looking forward to the future with renewed vigor and plans to further expand their service offerings. InterWeave Proxy Server (IPS) has been created to provide a seamless interface supporting Salesforce’s recent security upgrade from TLS 1.1 to TLS 1.2, and the InterWeave Sales Tax Solution was just announced October, 2018. “In addition, we are extending our iOffice Solution with the new InterWeave Customer Portal where customers can review their outstanding invoices, select which ones they would like to pay, and then pay with credit card or ACH (24 hours a day). These exciting developments will allow the firm even greater opportunities to grow and build upon its current success. Our vision is to focus on the customer’s needs and consistently provide innovative solutions to them.

Meet the creator As Chief Executive Officer, President, Board Member and Investor in Integration Technologies, Inc., and the creator of InterWeave Smart Solutions, Bruce brings customer focused Solutions in response to customers’ needs in to the digital age. Bruce has also served as the Chief Executive Officer, President, Board Member and Investor in SecurDigital, Inc., the company that developed SecurVoice©; the voice, data and video encryption solution designed to pass FIPS 140-2 certification. In 2000, Bruce served as the Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, head of the Audit Committee, Investor and Board member of the Uncommon Media Group, LLC. He also served as President and Chief Operations Officer of Knoa Corp., a privately held company focusing on interactive and media rich solutions. Bruce particularly enjoyed his tenure at Netscape, where he served as the Vice President of Netscape representing Canada, United States East Coast, and Latin America. Prior to this, Bruce was an AVP of Lehman Brothers and also served as the Chief Executive Officer of Information Engineering, Inc., an e-business solution provider.

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Delivering Solutions & Not Just Data Centers

istorically, the data center industry has coalesced around a single business model where cost efficiencies are the result of the economies of scale produced by building large facilities and filling them out over time by leasing to a variety of end users. Since its foundation in 2011, Compass Datacenters has been addressing the customer-focused inefficiencies of this approach including the lack of geographic flexibility, having to share a facility and an overall lack of end-user control. Today, Compass Datacenters delivers data center solutions at all points along the core to edge continuum that provide the benefits of just-in-time incremental capacity, single-tenancy control and a price point that is competitive with wholesale co-location and edge solutions while delivering an enhanced level of reliability, flexibility and operational simplicity. Reliability, flexibility and operational simplicity “We base our solutions on what we like to call our “kit of parts,” that enables us to combine the use of standard components, processes and procedures to build data centers in the size and power configurations our customers require,” said Chris Crosby while talking with Beyond! This approach also enables Compass Datacenters to offer them the ability to customize significant elements of the facility; something that most alternative solutions aren’t able to do. Through this

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Chris Crosby Founder & CEO Compass Datacenters

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standardization function, Compass Datacenters controls its costs without the need to build facilities larger than a single end user requires. This standardization allows the company to build the data center wherever the customer desires and operate them using their personnel and procedures. Tackling challenges easily while growing rapidly Every company deals with a variety of issues as it grows and Compass Datacenters is no exception. One is the size of its competitors, and second is an entrenched belief system within the marketplace. Building data centers is a capitalintensive business, and the leading providers in the market have been successful in cultivating both customers and vast reservoirs of available funds for new projects. “As a new company entering the industry we were bootstrapping much of our early initiatives, so we had to very quickly find customers to validate our concept and enable us to develop a portfolio of success to make us attractive to potential investors. Fortunately, we were successful in these efforts. Red Bird Capital and the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Fund, the largest teacher’s pension fund in the world have come on board as vital financial partners. Working with these partners provides us with the financial capability to compete with firms that are many times our size,” Chris added.

Like any company proposing a solution that is a radical departure from the status quo, Compass Datacenters had to overcome the “It’s always been done this way” mentality. Chris and the team grappled a great deal in their early days trying to determine the best way to effectively and concisely communicate to the market how they were offering a new alternative that provided a unique set of benefits. “I’d like to say that we immediately got it right, but there was a lot a trial and error before we were able to strike the right chords in our messaging and positioning. Fortunately, one of our core convictions is humility in, pride out meaning that we weren’t afraid to admit that we’d made a mistake and use that experience to direct our efforts,” Chris further said. Open book relationships with the customers Chris believes that what separates Compass Datacenters from its competition is the flexibility of its solutions set and the company’s “open book” relationships with the customers. “We started the company to offer customers the ability to get the type of data center that best suited their unique needs as opposed to having to accept the constraints of locating their compute and storage functionality in a pre-built facility. Certainly, things like the development of our Kit of Parts provides a strong foundation for delivering on this

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vision, but those capabilities wouldn’t be sufficient if we didn’t work collaboratively with our customers throughout the entire design, build, train and handover process,” Chris remarked. Every company will tell you that they work closely with their customers but in Chris’s experience, these relationships tend to be relatively superficial. According to him, sending someone an updated Gannt chart every so often doesn’t fall within his definition of close. “When we say “open book” we mean just that, our customers have access to all the tools that we use on a project, and even if it means having to tell them that something has gone wrong and how we intend to correct the issue we don’t hesitate to communicate that information,” he further added. Meet the visionary Chris Crosby is a recognized visionary and leader in the data center space and has served as founder and CEO of Compass Datacenters since 2011. Chris has over 25 years of technology experience and over 15 years of real estate and investment experience. Previously, Chris served as a senior executive and founding member of Digital Realty Trust. Mr. Crosby received a B.S. degree in Computer Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. He is responsible for charting the course that enables the company to

continue to grow. However, for him, growth is also a function of putting the right people in the right positions within the organization and giving them the freedom that they need to be successful. “There’s a certain leap of faith there but you have to have the self-confidence to admit that you don’t know everything and that success is a function of you being able to orchestrate the efforts of your team so that the organization is greater than the sum of its parts,” Chris said. Continuing to adapt is the key! The data center industry is changing at an unprecedented pace, and the functional requirements of data centers themselves are becoming increasingly stratified. Compass Datacenters has constructed a set of solutions that can address any customer

requirement from large sites for Cloud/SaaS providers, enterprise end users and retail colo providers to locating data centers at multiple remote (edge) locations. Chris sees these distinctions and requirements along this continuum continuing to change, and that will require his company to continually reﬁne every element of its business, not just its solutions set to continue to be successful. “We consider constant change to be natural in any environment, and another of our foundational principles is a commitment to continual improvement. In essence, we’ve structured the company to be able to compete in a rapidly changing marketplace, and I think this will be a competitive strength for us moving forward,” Chris concluded.

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Addressing became Simple

o specify any given location to an accuracy of 3 meters using GPS coordinates, you need 16 digits, 2 characters, 2 decimal points, and a space or comma or a new line. That’s more than enough for the computers and mobile devices to locate coordinates when humans aren’t involved. However, when humans get involved for collecting coordinates and communicating them to each other, it’s a whole other thing. The coordinates are not so easy to remember and therefore human errors are expected. Then, what is the solution? There is and it’s a lot easy than having to remember difficult coordinates. What if you are given 3 words to remember a specific address? That would be awesome, wouldn’t it? what3words is the company that has developed this disruptive idea – a fixed global grid of 57 trillion 3 word addresses each referring to a 3m x 3m square. You don’t have to worry about new or changing street addresses. It is fixed already and will stay that way. And because the 3 word address system is fixed, and it’s impossible to change it, there is 100% certainty that all instances of the system running everywhere in the world will provide the same 3 word address for the same location. 3 word addresses are unique, unlike street names which are often duplicated, and they are easier to remember, use and share with others. Most alternatives also require each address to be created or generated, whilst 3 word addresses already exist for everywhere on earth, meaning they can be used immediately, without needing to be set up. Also, what3words system is based on an algorithm, rather than a database, so it works offline in regions where there is no connectivity. Compared to current street addressing systems, 3 word addresses are far more accurate, as they refer to a specific 3m x 3m square on the ground. They provide universal coverage, so can be used to communicate any location, not just a building. The beginning of something incredible Chris Sheldrick, Co-founder and CEO of what3words worked in the music industry – organizing live music events around the world. When bands and equipment constantly got lost trying to find venues and festival locations, it became clear that addressing just wasn’t good

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Chris Sheldrick Co-founder & CEO what3words

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enough, and the problem was universal. He tried giving out GPS coordinates, but they were hard for people to input into their car or device, and near enough impossible to communicate correctly over the phone. Mistakes were easy to make and hard to pick up on until it was too late. So, he sat down with a friend to see if they could find a solution that was as accurate as coordinates, but concise and memorable too. Together, they devised a way to turn accurate GPS coordinates into user-friendly word combinations, and was born, the first 3 word address algorithm on the back of an envelope. Since then, what3words hasn’t looked back with over 1000 businesses, government agencies and NGOs across 170 countries now using 3 word addresses in sectors including automotive, e-commerce, logistics, mobility, travel, post and emergency services. From large corporations to individuals, everyone is served The long list of what3words’s varied customers include Mercedes-Benz, who recently launched the world’s first car with built-in what3words voice navigation. With this application, drivers are able to navigate anywhere in the world by saying three words to their car. The another global logistics giant, Aramex has integrated what3words to optimize its last mile operations in the Middle East, increasing efficiency by over 40%. Meanwhile, Domino’s Pizza are delivering food hotter and faster to

3 word addresses around the world. And numerous humanitarian partners are using the technology to help people in need. The United Nations has adopted the technology for disaster response and relief, in addition to the Red Cross. Futurefacing companies have been quick to adopt what3words, such as IBM’s AccessibleOlli. The autonomous vehicle built for people with disabilities uses what3words to navigate passengers to precise destinations, increasing their ability to travel independently. Similarly, drone delivery companies, Hylio and DXC Technology are using 3 word addresses to help customers specify precise drop-oﬀ locations. Furthermore, not only companies, but individuals are also using the what3words app to navigate the world more easily and to meet friends in places without addresses such as parks, beaches or at crowded festivals. 3 word addresses are being used by running clubs to set meeting points, by oﬀ-roading fans in the deserts of the Middle East, and by hotels to guide guests to their entrance without complicated written directions. The open and egalitarian culture at the core of transformation What started in March 2013 with just three people has now turned into over 85 employees across the world and they are growing fast. The what3words team is a very special bunch of people. what3words hires people who stand out as creative, forward-thinking

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and driven individuals. With its open and egalitarian culture where anyone can add their ideas to a conversation, test a new product or suggest a marketing idea, no matter which team they are part of, what3words supports their knack for creativity and makes the most of their talents. “We also get together as a team to share activities and interests from outside work in our ‘Wednesday Lunch Series’. Talk subjects have ranged from ‘The semantics of lying and misleading’ from a member of our language team, to ‘Living on a narrow boat in London’ from one of our copywriters. It is good fun, helps us get to know each other, and sparks oﬀ interesting conversations,” explains Chris. But to get here from where they started, it needed an energy into seeking out the right investors to bring the business credibility, contacts, experience, and knowledge as well as funding. And that’s what what3words did. They also invested heavily in language development from the outset, as this needed to be a globally accessible solution. Currently, what3words is available in over 25 languages, and this will soon increase to 28 including Chinese and Hindi. “When our 28th language launches, 3.8 billion people will be able to use 3 word addresses in their home language, which is 51% of the world,” Chris adds.

Celebrating the milestones and preparing for the next wave Going ahead, what3words’s long-term goal is to be a global addressing standard, so everyone in the world has a simple, accurate and reliable address they can use whenever they need it. The what3words team want businesses, governments and services worldwide to use 3 word addresses to become more eﬃcient, and improve their customer experience. At the same time, they look forward to showing how better addressing can reduce businesses’ environmental impact, ease pressure on crowded cities, fuel economic growth in developing nations and save lives.

“This year Mercedes-Benz have launched the world’s ﬁrst car with built-in what3words voice navigation. It’s a huge achievement for us and we expect the next couple of years to see our technology integrated by lots more global brands of a similar caliber. On the product side, we have exciting new features for our core what3words app and also the newly launched 3WordPhoto app, as well as new products working with speech recognition and OCR technologies. We also expect to open more local oﬃces to add to those we already operate in - Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia and Johannesburg, South Africa and the USA,” concludes Chris.

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Bringing Interaction and Engagement Closer Together

ounded in 2004 by a team of developers, Virtual Heroes applies simulation and game-based learning to increase proﬁciency for commercial, government, and medical customers. Initially, the developers were from the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, along with other game industry veterans.

The company was originally approached by the US Army’s America’s Army game development leadership to create a “government applications” group to support AA game development and repurpose that existing game content for a wide range of Army training customers who needed immersive single-player and team-based training. Virtual Heroes remained a small business until it was acquired by Applied Research Associates, Inc. back in 2009. The initial spark Randy Brown, the VP & the Divisional Manager of Virtual Heroes, had an educational background in computer science, more speciﬁcally in computer graphics. From a very early stage, Randy was interested in working to create real-time, interactive immersive experiences, as opposed to fully-rendered passive entertainment.

Back in high school, Randy used to create graphics applications on Radio Shack TRS-80 computers, and I was impressed by the possibilities of the graphics created for the first Tron movie in 1982. Once he began studying the various potential approaches to applying these technologies to solve training and simulation problems in real-time, Randy became hooked and has never looked back ever since. Randy was the CTO of Virtual Heroes when it was still a small business. Today, the Virtual Heroes Division of ARA consists of a fairly standard game studio configuration, with producers, programmers, technical artists, artists, animators, game designers, and quality assurance personnel. Additionally, the company has an entire team of top flight synthetic environment development experts in Orlando led by Jeff Lyons and Dr. Wes Milks. “We work with a wide range of disparate world and terrain data sources to create relevant virtual training environments for many branches of the US military,” mentions Randy. The first big realization “The key moment when we realized our approach to applying fully immersive game technology towards solving the hardest educational and training problems was the best had to be in 2008, when we were supporting the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program.” The company worked with Warner Brothers Studios to create an educational game for AIDS awareness in Kenya. The game entitled Pamoja Mtaani (meaning “together in the hood,” a name actually provided by the kids during our focus group testing in Nairobi, Kenya), provided positive gameplay on the topic of AIDS.

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Randy Brown VP & Divisional Manager Virtual Heroes

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“We realized, “We really have created a game about AIDS that kids at youth centers, faith-based organizations, and military installations are playing together and are actually having fun while learning positive habits!” While I was there with our lead game designer Brad Willson during one of our focus tests, one of the kids playing the game actually texted to others ingame at one point (jokingly), “Look out Grand Theft Auto!” mentions an upbeat Randy Brown. The game went on to be introduced at the World AIDS Day festival in Nairobi in December 2008 Making a mark in the Gamification industry The key differentiator of Virtual Heroes is its application of AAAquality game engine technology and environments to the training and educational markets. Combining the intelligence of a fully instrumented back-end for its gaming platforms creates the ability to provide in-game hinting, procedural feedback, and intelligent tutoring capabilities to customize and tailor the immersive learning experiences for each user. Speaking about the Gamification industry Randy asserts, “The key disruptions are coming from a greatly expanded range of hardware platforms to apply to education and training, as our use of the Unreal Engine provides us direct access to all mobile, phonebased VR (Oculus Go, etc.), untethered VR (Lenovo Mirage Solo, etc.), and tethered VR (HTC Vive Pro) systems along with augmented reality systems like the Magic Leap.” Having the ability to rapidly and affordably re-purpose its massive “back lot” of virtual world environments, avatars, and equipment to solve specific customer needs at an

incomparable price point is one of the key benefits offered by Virtual Heroes, along with its significant longevity in this ever-changing market, coming up on 15 years at this point. A leader with unmatched experience After becoming the Division Manager of the Virtual Heroes Division of ARA, Randy Brown has spearheaded the company towards success and established its footing in the Gamification landscape. Randy has developed interactive 3D graphics software at Amoco, Digital Equipment, Ex Machina, Data General, SAS Institute, Southpeak Interactive, and the Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina. He has directed the development for oil exploration, graphics libraries, visualization, training, education, simulation, and

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gaming for a wide range of commercial, government, and private organizations over the past 30 years. During his graduate school program at UNC in the late 80s, Randy worked on interactive virtual building walkthrough development, using very early-stage head-mounted displays, walking on a treadmill, using a bicycle handlebar mount to “steer” through the virtual environment to gain a sense of the virtual spaces. He worked abroad on graphics research at Digital Equipment’s Paris Research Lab and worked for Thompson Digital Image (TDI) in their Paris Ex Machina production company, creating a Distributed Rendering Server System (DRSS) to improve their throughput of graphics frame rendering for all the simultaneous production programs.

Walking down the path of expansion “As lower-end (we often call it “trailing-edge”) technology platforms continue to evolve and improve, we are ﬁnding more and more organizations are able to deploy immersive, interactive, real-time training content to their end-users and trainees in a much broader way than in the past, on much more aﬀordable delivery platforms than were even required 5 years ago,” Randy points out about the changing industry scenario.

In the early 90s at Data General, he worked on graphics chip, graphics card, and graphics library (PEX) hardware and software layers to support the DG minicomputer program. At the SAS Institute, he worked on graphics resource management systems and SAS/Spectraview multivariate visualization software. Randy then moved to the Southpeak Interactive game studio of SAS in the late 90s working with Phil Abbott to repurpose their “Video Reality” game technology and apply it to virtual driver training software development for highway patrol and school bus drivers.

Virtual Heroes will continue to expand its deliveries of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality solutions, and its technology innovations on top of AAA game engines like Unreal will distinguish its deliverables and capabilities from others in the ﬁeld.

In the early 2000s, he moved to the Research Triangle Institute and began creating immersive, interactive training content for the US military in earnest, working with the US Army Signal Corps to support training a wide range of military vehicles and equipment. This led to plans with the US Army to start Virtual Heroes in 2004, when Randy and team begin applying Epic Games Unreal Engine technologies to virtual worlds, simulation, and training problems.

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Delivering more than Security

ost CISO’s at enterprise companies deplore their current security solutions, and are too jaded to deal with third party integrators -- especially for scanning web applications. Thankfully, Tinfoil Security has come in to restore your confidence, and make you and your team passionate about tackling cybersecurity again! Tinfoil Security understands that for large enterprise companies, development teams are hundreds to thousands strong, while security teams are often vastly smaller. Development teams continually test for functional bugs (using unit tests, integration tests, etc.), but due to the complexity and time it can take, there is little to no testing done for cybersecurity related issues. Tinfoil brings much-needed tools directly into your development process, allowing developers to take on aspects of your cybersecurity without learning new tools or adding burden. Tinfoil’s effortless SaaS cybersecurity solutions protect the hard work of DevOps teams across the companies that use it. Ainsley Braun, the Co-founder and CEO of Tinfoil Security, states “We have focused on creating the most comprehensive, transparent and usable security products on the market. By focusing on developers, our products have streamlined the security process to provide the first line of security tools that easily integrate into any DevOps or SDLC process.” The evolving company strategy During its initial years, Tinfoil was focused exclusively on SMBs, as it was an underserved market that sorely needed help with its application security tooling and processes. As

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Ainsley Braun Co-founder & CEO Tinfoil Security

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the company grew and gained SMB market share, it discovered that enterprise organizations actually had very similar problems and lacked solutions to bridge the gap between the vastly increased speed of development and the relatively smaller security teams. “We quickly realized that in order to steer Tinfoil Security in the direction of becoming a globally competitive player in this space, we had to switch our focus into the enterprise,” recalls Ainsley.

●

This strategy led the company into profitability, while still maintaining, supporting, and selling to tens of thousands of customers in the SMB market. The profitability turnover was in large part due to its ability to adapt and implement an innovative strategy, while leading with an agile sales and operations process within the firm. The company made sure to keep track of and provide superior support to each and every customer, even as they reached tens of thousands customers. Through this constant involvement, Tinfoil designed its product for better UI and UX functionality, making it seamless, integrated, and usable for DevOps and development teams. Security engineers and developers now have a security product they would not want to be without, ensuring the sustainability and growth of Tinfoil Security. ● Services that echoes quality

Web Scanner: Tinfoil checks for over 60 classifications of vulnerabilities, with hundreds to thousands of specific checks for each type, including all of the OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks. Additionally, they are always adding more as new zeroday vulnerabilities are discovered. The company scans each time a new version of its clients’ site is deployed, and can also log into any website, including SAML / Single Sign-On authenticated sites. Its patent-pending Login Recorder (available as a simple Google Chrome extension) allows companies to teach the Tinfoil Security scanner how to authenticate into their applications by recording their login sequence. Tinfoil constantly updates in realtime, so customers can be confident that their applications are being protected against the latest threats. The platform regularly incorporates new tests, and consistently scores higher than any other scanner on opensource benchmarks. API SCANNER: The Tinfoil Security API

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Scanner is able to detect vulnerabilities in any API, including web-connected devices such as mobile backend servers, IoT devices, as well as any RESTful APIs. The few tools that are currently available lack coverage depth in API security, or are focused on acting as a firewall or unintelligent fuzzer. Vulnerabilities focused on authorization and access control concerns, or even web-like vulnerabilities, like XSS, manifest in different ways and with different exploitation vectors than they do for web applications. The security concerns for an API are fundamentally different from those for web applications. Tinfoil’s API scanner has been built, from the ground up, to focus on APIs specifically, rather than jury-rigging a web application scanner to be able to handle APIs half-well. A transparent process Unlike Tinfoil’s competitors, the company is completely transparent in its process. The Tinfoil dashboard shows you real-time scan activity and updates, while outlining expert recommendations to the clients’ DevOps team for implementation using their current

CI systems or issue trackers (i.e. JIRA, Jenkins). To make the vulnerability fixing process even simpler, Tinfoil also produces single-click replay attacks and single-click rescans, allowing developers to not only see the exploit live but know when they’ve fixed it within a minute, rather than waiting hours or days for a full new scan. This ensures the right developer can get the vulnerabilities fixed before they hit the public. Tinfoil’s security tools empower developers to build with security in mind and fix issues in real time, leaving the security team to focus on the bigger picture of their organization’s needs. The dynamic heuristic testing of Tinfoil allows it to find more web application vulnerabilities than anyone else, with fewer false positives.

unexpectedly, how many of the same security risks extended to large enterprise companies. This led her to team up with fellow MIT alumnus Michael Borohovski to build Tinfoil Security. Ainsley is also a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), which represents more than 400 of Silicon Valley’s most respected employers on issues, programs, and campaigns that aﬀect the economic health and quality of life in Silicon Valley. She is a Board Member on the council for Women in Cybersecurity at California Technology Council (CTC) working on initiatives to help educate and attract more women into the industry. Additionally, she mentors StartX teams as a Neighborhood Lead, sits on the Female Founders Board as a Member, and is part of their Selection Committee.

Experience coupled with vision Since the launch of Tinfoil Security in 2011 the company has provided security to tens of thousands of customers, ranging in size from SMBs to the top Fortune 100. As CEO of the company, Ainsley makes sure to instill a company culture that prides itself on its community and giving back.

A continuous zeal to improve and succeed Tinfoil Security builds cybersecurity solutions that empower DevOps teams. With the most comprehensive and usable security products on the market, Tinfoil streamlines your security needs with tools that easily integrate into any DevOps process or SDLC. The DevOps teams become the critical ﬁrst line of defense, increasing bandwidth for security teams to prioritize and enhance more strategic security initiatives.

Ainsley realized that she wanted to be a leader and an innovator in the cybersecurity industry during her time consulting with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she worked upon graduating from MIT. As a member of their Strategic Technology and Innovation division, she worked largely with the United States Department of Defense (DoD) clients. It was here where she realized the vast number and variety of vulnerabilities facing the majority of the SMB market and,

Tinfoil Security works to continuously improve the state for the industry’s tools in combating attackers around the world. Tinfoil Security’s vision is to empower Developers and DevOps teams with full and continuous cybersecurity integration, on any workﬂow system.

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Unleashing the Potential of Digital Payment

n recent years we have seen some tremendous changes in the payments world. Today consumers have a lot more choices using technologies such as P2P account, e-Wallet, prepaid, NFC, Bitcoin to pay for their products online or offline. Moreover, mobile payment has become a major channel owing to its benefits and internet penetration across the globe. As the countries around the world (besides China) move towards to a cashless society, the role of banks as well as nonbank players in the financial-technology world needs to innovate more to enhance consumer experience and convenience and reduce the risk of frauds. Meet AsiaPay, a premier electronic payment solutions provider that brings advanced, secured, integrated, and cost-effective electronic payment solutions to ecommerce businesses around the world. Their service offering ranges from processing international credit and debit cards, e-wallet, various local payment methods, tokenization, instalment and recurring payment, just to name a few. The company is headquartered in Hong Kong with over 14 offices in different parts of Asia. AsiaPay has over almost 100 payments methods and supports 12 transaction languages across its 144 processing currencies. Delivering Secure, Reliable, and Cost-effective Solutions AsiaPay is an accredited payment processor and payment gateway solution vendor for banks. It is a certified IPSP for merchants and also a certified international 3-D Secure vendor for Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and JCB. AsiaPay offers a variety of award-winning, multi-currency, multi-lingual, multi-card, and multi-channeled payment solutions. Alongside its advanced fraud detection and management solutions, AsiaPay is considered to be the most preferred payment provider for Asia. This award-winning company has a suite of products that deliver secure solutions to banks, PSPs, and businesses of all sizes. AsiaPay helps them mitigate fraud and risks, reduce operation and ownership costs, and enhances their business operational efficiency. AsiaPay is honored to be recognized as a Business and Technical Associate EMVCo to accelerate payment technology innovation and development.

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Joseph Chan Founder & CEO AsiaPay

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The Widest Payment Processing and Settlement Network Across the Asia Pacific region, AsiaPay has one of the widest payment processing and settlement network of credit card acquirers and alternative payment methods across 13 different countries. The company can provide the best combination of payment methods per country based on the local infrastructure and consumer preferences to merchants, banks and even other payment providers. AsiaPay is also one of the few providers in Asia to be Level 1 PCI DSS certified dated back 2006, and its bank-grade security is recognized by acquiring banks and card associations worldwide. AsiaPay is focused on assisting financial institutions and banks to adapt technology-enabled operating models and processes. The company delivers services such as Payment Processing, Anti-fraud and security, Big data, Smart-POS, Tokenisations, Value-Added Solutions, QR Payment, White-label Payment Gateway and ACS Solutions and Managed Services. AsiaPay also offers a unique solution called Redeem-n-Pay, a proprietary loyalty and rewards interface, which allow banks to drive ‘on-us’ processing by enabling cardholders to purchase items online using reward points that they accumulated from their card usage. Spearheading the Innovation for a Better Future Joseph Chan, Chief Executive Officer of AsiaPay, started the company in August 2000. He drove the product development together with his management team and worked hard to become one of the most successful electronic payment services and technology companies in Asia. Prior to AsiaPay, Joseph held various management roles with Citibank N.A.,

Bank of America and Dah Sing Bank. Joseph received his Bachelor of Science degree and Master of Economics degree from the Monash University in Australia. He is widely recognized as an influencer in the fintech sector and has strong relationships with payment schemes, industry associations and customers. Besides, He is also an active keynote speaker in many of the FinTech & ePayment conferences across Asia. He was also awarded ‘Cards & Electronic Payments International (CEPI) Asia Disruptor 2016’, ‘2017 (Industry) Influential Leader’, and 2018 ‘The 50 Most Influential Payment Professionals Award ’awards. Setting the Vision and Leading the Management to Fulfill Objectives The distinguishing factors throughout Joseph’s career has been his entrepreneurial spirit and his passion for the industry. His love for innovation has always helped him set the vision of the company and lead this team to fulfill the objectives and create an environment of continual reinvention. Joseph believes that a responsible company should show respect for its people, primarily employees, clients, and business partners. Joseph is a role model who shows exemplary leadership in adverse situations. He established the company’s reputation by developing and maintaining strong customer loyalty. He also encourages his staff to be involved in the community work. AsiaPay’s management team and staff had been participating in the ‘Library Project China’ for 2 consecutive years, and have had donated books, stationaries, and sporting goods to the children at schools in rural areas. The library project China was established with the help of the local community,

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and ‘China population welfare foundation’ and AsiaPay. It is dedicated to the children and teachers of China to bring forward an educational change. Future Outlook The next few years will be exciting for AsiaPay as the company will continue to expand its footprint in the region through its expansion plan, as well as

“Trusted & Reliable One Stop e-Payment Service Solution and Technology Partner for Asia.”

developing new payment solution R&D. AsiaPay looks forward to empowering businesses and financial institutions to keep pace with the progress of industry technologies and market disruption by offering comprehensive suite of payment solutions across different channels, markets, devices and methods. AsiaPay’s Vision is to be the best leading electronic payment services and technology champion in Asia and beyond.

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Leading Identity Management in the Digital Transformation World

he concept of identity management has been around for many years. It used to be that you carried your drivers license to show that “you” are “actually you”. Today, people have several identities; some of them they want to protect more than others, some of them they don’t really care. Digital identities allow our access to computers and the services they provide to be automated and make it possible for computers to mediate relationships. But how do you protect your identity within your company? Changing staff members, shifting roles, and disjointed systems make giving the right people secure access to the right systems is a continual moving target. Avatier CEO Nelson Cicchitto created Avatier over two decades ago to not only accelerate the adoption of identity management but revolutionize it. This is accomplished by providing organizations; their employees, partners, & customers with secure, easy access to applications, assets, and company electronic forms. Avatier’s impressive client base of over 500 globally customers include some of the biggest brands in the world across a wide-variety of industries. A Short History of Identity Management In the 90s and early 2000s people may have had one or two devices, maybe a cell phone and a computer. Secure logins and password management could be done on the device itself or on the network but left itself open to complex IT management and vulnerability to hacks. Even today, ID management and network security solutions are not all they are cracked up to be. In fact, many are really not that secure and most are a drain on both resources and cost. The security market is broken and Avatier is fixing it Why is ID management such a burden? Outdated architecture. It is the root of the problems that plague identity management platforms today. CEO Nelson Cicchitto offered his take. “It was time for an evolution. Companies can’t continue to handle ID management in the same way. We decided to take a different path. One that leads the way for the rest of the industry and changes how ID management and security, in general, is handled. “We needed a platform that helps IT departments become a profit center rather than a financial drain.”

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Nelson Cicchitto CEO & Founder Avatier

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What if you had a subscription to Netflix, but had to wait 6 months to get it. What if Netflix could only be deployed to a limited number of households and those who got it had buffering problems and could only run it on a single type of TV. Without a rapidly deployable solution that can provide scaling, flexibility, analytics and run on any device, even your home movie experience would be limiting, more expensive and cumbersome. Netflix turned to container deployments as their solution. With a proven model, Avatier focused on developing the next generation of cloud identity management and built it on the same container technology as Netflix. Using containers allows ID management to run on any cloud or even on-premise. By leveraging the latest container technology our solutions are cloud agnostic and unlike cloud-only solution providers, each customer receives their own independently secured identity platform. Customers can have their own dedicated CPU, memory, and disk space but still manage it like a multi-tenant environment. Customers get all the benefits of a cloud solution, scalability, flexibility and easy deployment, with the security of an on-premise solution but without limits. It can run on any operating system on any device. That is a game changer in the industry.

Using Docker containers also adds the ability to deploy a more secure solution. By default, Dockers are more secure for a number of reasons, including very few executables present, which can reduce the attack surface. Security is also inherent in the platform for all applications and not a separate solution needing to be deployed, configured and integrated. Policies can be controlled centrally. Lastly, an Avatier deployed solution is more secure in terms of preventing malicious code from affecting other machines, compared to virtual machines or bare metal. When you tie in dashboard style reporting, integrated ROI tools, Single Sign-On (SSO), self-service password management, and IT policy management you get is safer platform that can changes how desktop and network security is deployed. Customer Engagement and Satisfaction are Key to Avatier’s Success “Avatier strives for both constructive and positive feedback from each of its customers,” adds Nelson, “We achieve this by deploying solutions that have best practice guidelines built into them, embedded links to configuration elements within the software and hyperlinks to a vast collection of how-to-videos. We also offer a white glove service and training that teach our customers how to find value in the platform. This also

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separates us from our competitions.” Avatier provides a complete package; identity management software, services, and audit controls which transform how an enterprise functions or operates. Its efficiency through its services and solutions ensure some of the best brands and the most secure environments to place their trust on Avatier. One of the most critical aspects of a successful identity management solution is the time that is required to deploy, and the cost spent on maintenance. The company offers the fastest time to value at the lowest possible operational costs in the entire industry. “We pay a lot of attention to getting people on-boarded, getting them educated and then constantly following-up with our professional service team and even with CEOs. That’s what really edges Avatier past from its competitors,” adds Nelson. A Leader with the Midas Touch Nelson Cicchitto, the CEO and Founder of Avatier, has a role that mainly involves fostering new and disruptive innovation. He also looks at hiring the right people, leaders in their own areas who who are smart and capable enough to drive the business forward and own the different aspects of the busines. Nelson consistently brainstorms with his team for the latest

business processes across diﬀerent operations. Many industry analysts along with the world’s largest organizations have agreed they are more secure and productive with Avatier on board.

innovations and supervises a team of top staﬀ. He has been an instrumental ﬁgure behind the company’s success. As the CEO of the company, he ensures that the company remains ahead of the competition by continuously seeking and identifying new ways to take the complex and turn it into something simple. When asked about disruption and innovation, Nelson points out “Disruption and innovation to me means we have everybody, from contractors to every single department working together to radically change the way people buy and use identity and access management throughout their entire enterprise.” Unsurprisingly, he is dedicated towards achieving the same with Avatier.

“When you look at Avatier, you can see us moving more and more into next generation cloud technologies, new ways to interface with your devices and manage the digital environment in entirely diﬀerent ways, adds Nelson. “As we move into 2019 and beyond, we expect our roadmap and the technology to give our customers leading edge solutions they value. Our customers have a lot get excited about in 2019.”

A Bright Future Ahead Avatier has achieved a reputation as the only company with the capability to provide solutions that adapt to the needs and requirements of the business user, allowing them to deliver a uniﬁed framework for

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