Insightssuccess the 10 most innovative saas solution providers september 2017

www.insightssuccess.com SEPTEMBER 2017

The way of business solutions THE

10

MOST INNOVATIVE

SAAS

SOLUTION PROVIDERS

2017

Editor’s Pick Key Trends that are Driving Transformation in SaaS

CXO Standpoint Technology and Network Convergence: Forging a Path to Smart Grid, Smart Cities and Internet of Things

Russell Horowitz Founder & Executive Director

Strengthening the Connection between Companies and Customers

Editorial

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ith the ever-increasing usage of broadband internet service and the usage of mobile, Internet has gone mainstream for various organizations and businesses; subsequently Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution providers have captured the market. During its initial days, few vendors offered ported versions of their offerings. Later on, other organizations entered the space with native applications in the cloud. Since then, SaaS has travelled a long way and during this time span, SaaS has enabled companies to access their data on the cloud and supplanted the retail software model.

SaaS is not the Future, it's already here

However — like most other solutions — SaaS also has its upsides and downsides. With regards to an application rationalizing program, the plainly depicted usefulness of SaaS and the accessibility of mature data migration tooling are the main focal points of SaaS solutions. On the other hand, the clarity of the usefulness of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is somewhat lower than SaaS. Thanks to SaaS, organizations now no longer have to worry about manually running or updating their software and infrastructure, the software provider takes care of all of that for them, while managing the security, compliance, and risk. By removing the burden of maintaining its computing environment, the organization can focus on business, rather than the supporting technology.

In order to embrace this new age digital transformation and achieve the promised benefits, businesses need to adopt enterprise software.

Nowadays, if an organization is looking to reduce costs then standalone best of breed systems and point solutions are no longer an option. Only through a capable enterprise solution, organizations can remove the complexity of managing multiple systems and implement a cloud first, mobile first strategy. That’s the main reason SaaS and mobile is so closely knitted with enterprise software.

Combining all these three eventually cuts costs and helps organizations to run their businesses easily. The future is a closely knitted world built around SaaS and smart mobile devices. The closely knitted model makes it a simple, flexible and cost-effective model of computing, and every modern organizations need to embrace it now to keep pace with a digital business environment.

Kaustav Roy

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Ariana Lawrence Managing Editor Kaustav Roy Co-Editors Ashwini Deshmukh Jacob Thomas Visualiser David King Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Co-designer Alex Noel Picture Editor Shweta Ambilwade Art Editor Rahul Kavanekar Business Development Manager Mark Harris Marketing Manager Alex Noel Business Development Executive Joe, Joseph, John, Mary Research Analyst Jennifer Circulation Manager Robert Database Management Steve Technology Consultant Swapnil Patil sales@insightssuccess.com

September, 2017 Corporate Ofď€ ces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.com

Insights Success Media and Technology Pvt. Ltd. Ofď€ ce No. 513, 5th Floor, Rainbow Plaza, Shivar Chowk, Pimple Saudagar, Pune, Maharashtra 411017 Phone - India: 020-69400110, 111, 112 Email: meera@insightssuccess.in For Subscription: Visit www.insightssuccess.in ,

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COVER STORY

Ed

ito

Disrupt the Distruptest Technologies

The way of IoT’S, smart grid, smart citie’s future goes through technology and network convergence

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Information Technology Revolution

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r’s So f Pe A tw C a rs r o Wa n e pe a t So y to em s a ct ftw R po Se iv u are n rar rvi e y ce:

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CO N ActivTrak: Helping Organizations to Monitor Employees EfďŹ ciently

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BizMerlinHR: Transforming Organizations Since Inception

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Druva: The Undisputed Leader in Cloud Data Protection and Information Management

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GoodHire: Revolutionizing the Employment Process

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IdeaScale Helping Organizations Find and Develop the Next Big Thing

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Yext: Putting Businesses on Map Since Inception

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SaaS: Changing the Way People Work and Collaborate “Cloud first, mobile first” is emerging faster than ever mostly because it streamlines various processes and transactions which eventually helps organizations and their customers get a compelling service. So, with the combination of cloud and mobile, organizations can access their enterprise software from any device.

Software as a Service (SaaS), allows its users to sign on for a service which they can use anywhere, any time and on any device. It also brings the concept of mass production to the table of software industry, and eventually provides businesses with economies of scale and a level of simplicity that has never before been possible.

In the same enthusiasm, we have shortlisted “The 10 Most Innovative SaaS Solution Providers 2017”, where we are highlighting the companies that are bringing revolution in a positive way.

Our cover story, Marchex provides technology solutions that help companies drive more calls, understand what happens on those calls, and convert more of those callers into customers. Additionally, the best brands in the business use Marchex to drive leads and calls—and improve ROI. It is always fascinating to know the story of every company that we have listed: ActivTrak: It captures and records activity logs and screenshots from monitored workstations, and controls devices to implement and maintain any compliance needs. Stay compliant with or without screenshots, BizMerlinHR: The company is the next generation, AI powered human capital management solution that allows organizations to function at its best, Druva: It brings together data protection and information governance capabilities under a single pane of glass. This unified approach removes data management silos – reducing the risk, cost, and complexity of managing information, GoodHire: The organization is a mission-led company dedicated to rehumanizing the process of employment and community screening, ensuring companies and candidates alike are treated fairly and with respect, IdeaScale: It is the largest cloud-based innovation software platform in the world with more than 25,000 customers and 4.5 million users. The software allows organizations to involve the opinions of public and private communities by collecting their ideas and giving users a platform to vote, Yext: The company puts business on the map. Yext is defining a new category called digital knowledge management, which helps businesses manage all of the public facts that they want consumers to know across the digital ecosystem.

Also, while flipping pages don’t forget to go through, Disrupt the Distruptest Technologies by Alexey Grakov, Forging a Path to Smart Grid, Smart Cities and Internet of Things by Jeff Carkhuff, and Information Technology Revolution by K. Cyrus Hadavi, from the CXO Standpoint section. Also, don’t forget to read articles from our inhouse writers; Key Trends that are Driving Transformation in SaaS — Editor’s Pick, and Software as a Service: A Contemporary Way to Run Software — Editor’s Perspective.

COVER STORY

Russell Horowitz Founder & Executive Director

Strengthening the Connection between Companies and Customers

best brands in the business use Marchex to ‘‘The drive leads and calls-and improve ROI ‘‘

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rom its inception, Marchex was built on the desire to innovate, and in the early years, it was Russell Horowitz that lead the charge. He’s always looked to the horizon—a visionary with a track record of leading companies and their customers into the future. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Horowitz recently reengaged and returned to Marchex, a company he helped found 13 years ago. His new role as Executive Director will allow him to help and guide Marchex strategy and customers into the future-- enabling innovation in a customer base focused on leveraging technology to outperform the competition.

In today’s digital world, staying competitive means integrating the right software and technology solutions.

Software-as-a-Service plays a critical role and empowers a new and different way of accessing software, as opposed to traditional methods of access. Whereas in past, companies generally purchased software and used to load it onto a device—slowing the pace of their business and their ability to connect with customers. SaaS, however, has changed the industry completely, and it refers to a subscription based model – where software is hosted in the cloud and accessed via the internet. Born with the idea of providing technology

“We are experts in driving customer acquisition in the most cost-effective manner, and we do it at scale. In the past three years, we have driven more than one million new customers for our advertiser base”

solutions that help companies drive more calls, Marchex is uniquely positioned to understand what happens on those calls, and help brands convert more of those callers into customers. The actionable intelligence from Marchex's solutions helps its clients to bridge the gap between companies and its clients, and between the physical and digital worlds, which eventually help brands to maximize their marketing investments and operating efficiencies.

About the Founders It was in 2003 when John Keister, Ethan Caldwell, Peter Christothoulou, and Russell Horowitz co-founded Marchex. Later on, Horowitz shouldered the responsibility as the principal executive of Marchex. However, investing in a startup was not a new idea for him; it was his fourth company. During the early years of Marchex, Horowitz was the driving force behind it and served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Under his leadership, the company grew through a build and acquire strategy and went public in 2004. By the end of their first day on Wall Street, the stock rose more than thirty percent and proving to be one of the most successful IPO in 2004.

Later on, in order to pursue other ventures, Horowitz stepped down as the CEO; however, he remained the largest shareholder in the company. The board of directors asked him to return to the company in October 2016 to collaborate with other leadership, including Mike Arends (CFO) and Caldwell, in a newly formed Office of the CEO. The Office of the CEO has been busy in 2017, guiding the company through several new product launches, establishing key partnerships with top-tier integration partners, and returning the company back to profitability.

After serving as a consultant and a member of the office of the CEO for a brief period, Horowitz recently formalized his return to the company by accepting the role of Executive Director last month.

“I see great opportunities for this company, my co-workers here, and our customers around the world,” said Horowitz while talking about Marchex and its opportunity.

Driving Innovation in a Growing Industry Marchex believes that shifting to a digital economy is one of the biggest challenges for every organization these days.

It's no secret that the rise of eCommerce and smartphones has changed the industry scenario for both brands and consumers, who now have access to information and purchasing options at just a click away. However, from the

business standpoint, it is becoming more and more challenging to capture the customer journey and measure the path of purchase. That's where Marchex comes in, bridging the gap between online and offline channels.

One of the biggest misconceptions businesses face in this digital economy is the assumption that traditional and offline channels are obsolete. In fact, recent research suggests the opposite - that the phone is the most viable channel; customers who initiate inbound phone calls during the path to purchase have been shown to convert faster, spend more, and churn less than those in other in-bound channels. Online channels are great tools for researching a product or service, but at the end of the day, a human connection still plays a critical role in consumer's relationship with a brand.

There are more than five-thousand companies in the growing map of MarTech organizations, and Marchex believes they are well positioned for innovation and meaningful growth in the Call Analytics category.

With solutions such as Marchex Speech Analytics and Marchex Omnichannel Analytics Cloud, the company helps organizations bridge the gap between their online and offline interactions. In simpler terms, Marchex help organizations find and acquire their best customers – those who call, wherever they might be.

Purpose-Built Technology Improves Brand Relationships with Customers and Prospects Marchex believes that the path to the right solution varies depending upon the problem that it is trying to solve for a brand. However, in simple words, the organization helps other companies to connect, acquire, and understand their valuable customers. A few of the benefits include the ability to. Ÿ Connect media and customer calls: Marchex helps brands to connect the traffic that drive calls and eventually new sales and appointments. More specifically, the organization has built connections to all paid media sources, including search, display, social, and web site.

Eventually, this helps it recognize which traffic is attracting more calls and sales, and organizations can use this data to optimize their paid media strategies in order to optimize acquisition costs. Additionally, when companies use Marchex to track their calls from paid searches, it helps them lower their cost per acquisition even further. Ÿ

Ÿ Understanding each call: The company helps its clients

understand what's happening on each inbound sales call to improve the outcome. For example, companies who use Marchex Speech Analytics can easily understand what their call center agents are saying over the phone. In fact, a very well-known automotive client of Marchex currently uses the speech analytics system to track and analyze approximately 25 million calls yearly across its 2,200 stores. In this case, Marchex is helping the company to better understand which calls should have resulted in appointments and which agents are failing to convert leads into sales. With this solution, clients are now providing better customer experiences, the performance of the sales agents have also increased dramatically, and most importantly, financial returns have improved for their businesses.

“What we do isnʼt about ones and zeroes, CPM, or call volume. It's about leading the team that connects customers to companies theyʼre interested in̶and helping companies reach out to those customers, and others like them, to close more sales and build deeper relationships”

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We work with the industry’s highest quality partners and our customer base is well represented by the Fortune 1,000. We are laser focused on driving customer acquisition in the most cost-effective manner and scale

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Ÿ Acquire more customers like your best customer: Products from Marchex help its customers acquire more new

customers by building customized audiences of callers for retargeting, or by helping companies target prospects farther down the funnel who are ready to convert sooner.

Prioritizing Customer Experience At Marchex, customer service and customer experience are top priorities while building and implementing solutions for its customers. The organization builds programs on a trial basis with existing clients before going to market, ensuring software and insights are actionable. Marchex also puts heavy focus on its partnership and integration program to provide clients an opportunity to integrate with platforms or systems they are already using in their daily operations. The best part is; clients don't need to learn new software or workflows, they can send the data to bid/build management platforms they are already using on an integrated basis.

Future Roadmap and Tackling Turbulent Weather 2017 has been a year of meaningful innovation and momentum at Marchex, launching three new products, including Marchex Speech Analytics, Audience Targeting, and Search Essentials, and announcing various key partnerships with few well-known brands such as Adobe and Facebook. Additionally, Marchex’s new website now helps its customers and prospects find the information they need and inform themselves more deeply regarding the organization's products and services. As a company, Marchex is intentional and strategic with continuing its momentum, and it is always passionate about its developing leadership in the ever-growing space of call analytics.

Innovation and creativity have always been the driving force behind their products, and that mission and drive will remain the same over the coming years making them one of our top SaaS companies.

“We have great strategic clarity, strong organizational alignment, and the company is profitable. I’m excited to continue our momentum and build great products, provide great service and in turn make meaningful differences on behalf of our customers,”- Russell Horowitz.

“Really, we sell expertise,” said Horowitz. “I’ve always believed that expertise is the sum of technology and talent—our team. And at the end of the day, I strongly believe we have the best in the industry.”

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SOLUTION PROVIDERS 2017

Company Name

Management

Brief

ActivTrack www.activtrak.com

Herbert Axilrod, Co-founder & President, Anton Seidler, Co-founder & CMO

ActivTrak captures and records activity logs and screenshots from monitored workstations, and controls devices to implement and maintain any compliance needs.

Stay compliant with or without screenshots.

Alex Hart, CEO

Avangate powers modern Digital Commerce, finally solving the complexity of online commerce, subscription billing, and global payments for Software, SaaS and Online Services companies. Backed by a proven cloud platform, unmatched expertise and a depth of digital commerce services, Avangate helps digital business leaders drive the fastest path to revenue, maximize the value of every customer, and expand global reach.

Beth Ronnenburg, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, President

Berkshire Associates is a human resources consulting and technology firm that specializes in helping companies build their ideal, balanced workforce. As an industry leader, we specialize in applicant management, compensation management, affirmative action, workforce planning, diversity, and professional training.

www.berkshireassociates.com

Dr. Amrinder Arora, Co-founder & CEO

BizMerlin is the next generation, AI powered human capital management solution that allows organizations to function at its best.

Druva www.druva.com

Jaspreet Singh, CEO and Founder

Druva brings together data protection and information governance capabilities under a single pane of glass. This unified approach removes data management silos – reducing the risk, cost, and complexity of managing information.

Brian Monahan, Co-founder & Chief Idea Guy Matthew Monahan, Co-founder & CEO

GoodHire is a mission-led company dedicated to rehumanizing the process of employment and community screening, ensuring companies and candidates alike are treated fairly and with respect.

IdeaScale www.ideascale.com

Rob Hoehn, CEO and co-founder

IdeaScale is the largest cloud-based innovation software platform in the world with more than 25,000 customers and 4.5 million users.

The software allows organizations to involve the opinions of public and private communities by collecting their ideas and giving users a platform to vote.

Marchex www.marchex.com

Russell Horowitz, Founder and Executive Director

Marchex provides technology solutions that help companies drive more calls, understand what happens on those calls, and convert more of those callers into customers.

www.technologyonecorp.com

Edward Chung, CEO

TechnologyOne (ASX:TNE) is Australia's largest enterprise software company, with offices across six countries. We create solutions that transform business and make life simple for our customers. We do this by providing powerful, deeply integrated enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use.

Yext www.yext.com

Howard Lerman, co-founder, and CEO

Yext puts business on the map. Yext is defining a new category called digital knowledge management, which helps businesses manage all of the public facts that they want consumers to know across the digital ecosystem.

Avangate www.avangate.com

Berkshire Associates www.berkshireassociates.com

BizMerlinHR

GoodHire www.goodhire.com

Technology One Limited

CXO Standpaoint

oday we are surrounded with many buzzwords: AI, VR, AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Machine learning, etc. That may be very stressful, especially if you lead a company and choose which way to turn the wheel.

T

board.

Technical talent is a big issue everywhere. As Collin says in his “Good to Great”, “a company can grow as fast as its ability to hire the right people”.

CEOs and top managers are under big pressure and afraid to make mistakes. No one knows which is the best direction or whether you should make a raise on a flop or 3-bet on a turn hoping to catch a full-house.

What do we hear about looking for technical talent? Ÿ Hire a good HR agency Ÿ Ask among friends Ÿ Do LinkedIN research Ÿ Try outsourcing to India, get burned and try to outsource Eastern Europe

In “From Good to Great” Jim Collins states that technologies can’t the only key to build a Great company, sametime technologies accelerate growth or failure.

Here, at VironIT we believe, that companies should focus on 3 key points: Ÿ Your passion. What you really take care of. Ÿ What you believe you can be the best at. Ÿ The appropriate business model you live on.

Many companies, who failed had many CEOs with “outstanding innovations programs” which were inconsistent with the previous steps the company had made.

So, consistency and perseverance often wins (as Chinese turture). By the way, my college-mate was trying to make a pass at the most beautiful girl at our class and got many denials, but in the end, after 5 years of attempts they got married.

Let’s come closer to the point: If you already have a viable product which brings profit, you should think which new technology can enrich your software or business to make “learning curve” higher for your competition.

For instance, if you have software which teaches how to drive tractors or excavators, you should definitely apply VR to your existent software.

If you are in the middle and want to make a pivot: I advise you to make an experiment and allocate the amount of budget you can for a side research. One of the key success of Israel startups is that the country invests heavily in R&D (4.25% of GDP ).

I will share our VironIT’s secret (we never published it online) on hiring savvy technical talent. “It is plain and evident, repeatable anywhere in the world.” We hire developers, who took part in programming contests: topcoder, international competitions, Olympiads, etc.

Why does it work?

As you don’t know the plot of your tomorrow’s day, you don’t know which tasks you have to cope with.

Programming contests have non-trivial tasks to be solved within a short period of time. Programmers who are the best at such competitions can easily crack 95% of other “realworld” programming. They are usually smarter than average developer, used to work under stressful conditions, fast-learners and self-confident.

For such developers, even if they are still undergraduates, within 1-2 weeks of diving into technology they outperform those who had been several years in the industry. Ofc, if you want to build a next MSQRD (the app created at hackathon and sold to Facebook within 3 months after its creation) that approach won’t work. MSQRD’s success story was based on 10 years of experience of one team members in facial recognition.

So, hiring some undergraduates with appropriate minds is: Ÿ faster Ÿ cheaper Ÿ doable We used that approach several times and never missed the target.

- I get your point, I don’t have the right people on

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CXO Standpaoint

TECHNOLOGIES If you just have a raw unique idea: Where should you go? AI, VR, AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Machine learning, or maybe IOT? As Jobs said, “Do what you love”. As Collins says: “Do what you are passionate with”. I think all that buzz will bring your ship to some shore. You have to make the right answer to yourself: “Can you be the best at XXX”? where XXX is not only technology, it is more about market industry or vertical market.

This year I attended Nassim Taleb’s speech, where he shared his thoughts on antifragile world. I liked the thought “making a bet on unknown”. You never know 100% percent the shore your reach with that flow. Making a bet on unknown can bring you either to positive “Black Swan” or you get nothing. A good try is better than regretting passing by on a deathbed.

But here is a trick.

The step you take should be consistent with the “core” of your business (unless you choose to open a new branch). It is quite easy to lose focus. “Great” companies also had “non-todo” lists and “immediately-stopdoing” lists. That is very important to say “no” to many good ideas to choose one “great” idea.

So, AI, VR, AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Machine learning what’s next big thing?

I think the next Big Thing is the right combination of well-known things in the right order, implemented by right people at the right time backed by right investors at the right market.

Author: Alexey Grakov Co-owner & Chief Marketing Ofcer VironIT | September 2017 |

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THE

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SOLUTION PROVIDERS 2017

Herbert Axilrod Co-founder & President

ActivTrak: Helping Organizations to Monitor Employees Efficiently

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See what's

going on from anywhere in the world.

Capture screenshots from your remote workstations

Two Pillars of ActivTrak

no matter where they are in the

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world

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mployee productivity is one of the most important requirements for any organization. A productive workforce can help companies to achieve many milestones. However, a workforce that is not productive enough can lead to severe consequences. Thus, originated ActivTrak, which is one of the most comprehensive software tools available for monitoring employee's online activities to ensure optimum productivity and safety. The best part is ActivTrak is a free, cloud-based monitoring software, that tracks employee's application and web usage and reports back to the supervisor's or manager's account. ActivTrack can be installed in a single workstation, or in all workstations, this eventually helps employers to protect employees, make sure everyone is on the same page, and provides greater control in workplace.

ActivTrak was Co-Founded by two of the most experienced tech experts, Herbert Axilrod and Anton Seidler. Herbert is the President of the company, whereas Anton is the Chief Marketing Officer of Activtrak.

Herbert holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from The Princeton University and a Master of Science, in Geophysics and Seismology from the University of Texas at Dallas. Before building the first version of ActivTrack singlehandedly in his living room, Herbert was the lead engineer at Saber Software Corporation.

On the other hand, Anton graduated from Belgorod State Technical University with a degree in software and economics. Before founding

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| September 2017 |

ActivTrack, he was the Chief Marketing Officer of Softrust, and CEO of Motiw, a leading online Russian Task Manager.

When Blocking Websites becomes too Mainstream With ActivTrack, firewalls are now things of past. Unlike firewalls, ActivTrak specifically provides its users the screenshot of the websites that are being viewed and what applications are being used as well as the amount of time users are spending on those sites and applications. Users can now monitor what’s happening on desktop of each workstation. For example, if one of the employees is spending his time watching movies or surfing social networking sites, the user can track them easily and can take the needed corrective measure. Every ActivTrak Agent is unique in that it contains a specialized code assigned to one particular account. This means that the user doesn’t have to enter login/password information or make any additional settings. The user can download an agent from his personal ActivTrak dashboard. It will keep information about where it should report and will only allow data back to his account.

With the screenshot tab, users can easily see screen images from each of his monitored workstations stored directly in the cloud for simple reference. Users can also set rules for taking snapshots by defining alarms.

Set the alarms to get notifications regarding application use on remote workstations and alarm notifications are also sent to the user automatically through a pop-up message, email, or termination of the user application or any combination of these. ActivTrak actually uses alerts to monitor unusual behavior so that violators will be

| September 2017 |

notified to return back to normal working activity. Although, certain non-work related activity can be expected, ActivTrak helps its users to prohibit any activity that could cause legal issues for the organization.

Making the Industry a Better Place for Everyone According to ActivTrack, the most popular feature of its 150,000 active users is its fully customizable screenshots. The screenshots capture exactly what users are looking at on their screen, and they are displayed by the most recent user or chronologically.

Administrators can create their own rules and timing, when ActivTrack Agent takes screenshots. ActivTrack is also scalable; from individual use to enterprise the program it works the same. One just needs to install the Agent, which is easy to use that it doesn’t even require a learning curve in order to navigate through the intuitive dashboard.

ActivTrak also believes that almost half of the companies monitor their employees in some way or the other and the number is growing every day.

So, companies like ActivTrack must provide a new and fresh perspective in order to stay relevant. The company just doesn’t let administrators block or shut down social networking websites, it provides a full range of features that helps managers to analyze how and when the employees are most productive, then adjust deadlines, hours, and projects accordingly.

Anton Seidler Co-founder & CMO

helps to increase productivity and revenue but also to cultivate a collaborative corporate culture where every team member contributes meaningfully to the overall success of the company.

ActivTrack also added that when it was launched, there weren’t many cloud based monitoring systems available out there. The founders noticed the need for a program that was nearly effortless on the user’s part, where it was easy to add or remove the program. The best part is ActivTrak gets regular updates and fixes automatically, so the users dosnt have to worry about missing or taking a time out to download the latest version. The organization will continue to grow based on its customer centric approach to updating the ActivTrack software. Presently, ActivTrack is working on building a Content Analysis tool for screenshots that can search screenshots by keywords.

Cultivating a Collaborative Corporate Culture According to the company, it is trying to help other businesses utilize ActivTrak like it has, which not only

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A Contemporary Way to Run Software oday, we are living in a digital age. Almost all organization use computer system to operate their businesses.

Be it a government organization like railways or private MNCs like Google. To operate a business with computer, the most important thing you need is the “Software”. In order to use particular software, you need to buy a complete license, upgrade your existing hardware infrastructure and maintain it whenever new patches or upgrades get available.

But, there is one technology solution, with which you can use “Software”

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even without buying its complete license and also there is no need for hardware up gradation and maintenance at the client side. All these are possible due to SaaS (Software as a service) model. SaaS is rapidly gaining popularity among enterprises due to powerful features it offers to its clients. In this article, I will throw some light on SaaS model.

based on monthly or yearly subscription basis. It is also known as “on-demand software”. When you need a software, subscribe it when don't unsubscribe it. Thus, makes it affordable solution for software usage. Users only need a “Web Browser” and some “Subscription Fees” in order to use varied enterprise software.

What is SaaS? SaaS stands for “Software as a Service”, which is completely based on cloud computing. It is a software model where you can use software

Various business applications are under the umbrella of SaaS. Be it office software, messaging software, payroll processing software, DBMS software, management software,

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Editor’s Perspective

CAD software, development software, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), Management Information Systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), talent acquisition, content management (CM), and service desk management.

Architecture of SaaS SaaS is completely based on a multitenant architecture. In this model a single version of application with a similar configuration (hardware, network, operating system, and storage) is used for all the customers (Tenants). Thus, provides negligible latency while using an application. Due to this, every end user achieves same efficiency and productivity while using application unlike traditional software usage.

In traditional software usage, multiple physical copies of the same software with a potentially different configuration and version installed on individual machines. This causes “Latency” some time and thus affects the efficiency of work.

Why SaaS is gaining popularity?

Available from anywhere: Since SaaS is a cloud based service, it provides the flexibility to use desired business application from any part of the world.

No software Installation: As SaaS is a cloud based service, and all applications get installed on server side only. So, there is no need to install application on the client side.

You just need a web browser and internet connectivity in order to use desired business application.

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No Hardware Installation: Each big application required some sort of hardware requirements but since SaaS is cloud based service. You don't need hardware at client side. All hardware requirements get done at central level.

Scalable and Cost effective: If today, you want 10 copies of software you can buy 10 instances of that particular application. If next month you need only 5, then you can unsubscribe 5 application instances.

Application subscription is based on monthly or annual basis. Thus it makes SaaS application scalable and much cost affective as compared to traditional software. You need to pay only as per number of users for that particular application. Consequently, the initial setup cost for SaaS is typically lower than the equivalent enterprise software.

Quicker Application Updates: Since only a single copy of application is getting used from a central system. Applications can get updated frequently and easily.

Development of new updates also consume less time since only a single version of a particular application is used by all end users. SaaS applications get updated more frequently as compare to traditional software, in many cases on a weekly or monthly basis.

Hassle-Free Maintenance: End users don't need to worry about application up gradation. All the maintenance activity gets done at the central server level and thus makes maintenance a hassle-free task.

runs on different servers simultaneously. Even if one instance fails due to any disaster, it won't make application unavailable. Thus, it gives business continuity 24/7.

Customization: Each application user can customize SaaS application to the degree it was designed for, based on a set of predefined configuration options. Even a same application can get customized for an individual company to a certain extent.

Area of Concern Since SaaS is a cloud-based service and all application data resides on the server, many companies feel the threat of “Data Theft”. Data for any enterprise is one of the most critical resources and no one wants to compromise on that. Although SaaS provides efficient data security and it is practically impossible to theft data, but still, since application data resides outside the reach of an enterprise, it is natural to feel that threat.

SaaS is now becoming a modern way to use software due to cool features it offers to its clients. SaaS provides business application to its end users at a very affordable rate and with a great flexibility and features as compare to traditional software approach. This is the reason many companies are moving towards SaaS and making it a big success.

According to a research firm, Gartner Inc., the global SaaS market is estimated to reach $75.7 billion by 2020 and Indian market to touch $10 billion by 2025.

Better Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Since many instances of the same application

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SOLUTION PROVIDERS 2017

Dr. Amrinder Arora Co-founder & CEO

BizMerlinHR: Transforming Organizations Since Inception

‘‘ BizMerlin is not just a ʻData In Data Outʼ tool - it is an AI-powered turbo charged machine that transforms the entire organization

‘‘

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owadays every organization needs Human Capital Management or HCM, so that they can measure the current value of its employees whose future value can be increased through various investments.

Enters BizMerlin, the next generation of AI powered human capital management solution that allows organizations to function at its best. The company offers various key modular solutions including Centralized Employee Records, Optimal Allocation and Financial Planning, Electronic Document Signing, Applicant Tracking System, Performance Reviews, and Smart Goal Management to make sure that HR has all the needed tools it needs to be a true leader, bringing out the very best in the workforce. Thanks to the rich native apps for iOS and Android, BizMerlin can be accessed from anywhere as well.

The Passionate Founder of BizMerlin Dr. Amrinder Arora, Co-founder, and CEO of BizMerlin has spent over a decade researching and applying data analytics and artificial intelligence for various commercial and government entities. Amrinder decided to focus on this industry only after observing several inefficiencies in the human capital management and resource management processes. He has earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from George Washington University and completed his Bachelors in Computer Science from IIT Delhi. Now, he is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Washington University, he is also one of the leading experts in data analytics in the world and even the author of a book named “Analysis and Design of Algorithms.”

Till date, Amrinder has received numerous excellency awards from Food and Drug Administration, Association for Computing Machinery, George Washington University, and Bowie State University. Back in 2016, Amrinder was recognized as one of 30 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs.

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Tackling the Challenges BizMerlin believes that the tools of yesterday are clearly misfit for today, and traditional HR tools are nothing but glorified and beautified spreadsheets data in, data out artifacts.

These tools make it easy for people to collect and organize data, however, at the end, the user gets exactly what he/she had stored and nothing more.

Smart tools need to accomplish more than all that. According to the organization, an HCM solution cannot be called “modern” if it fails to give the needed insights that the user never knew were possible.

Adding to these challenges, is the formidable concern about data security.

Companies now trust their critical data to outside entities that need to have appropriate controls in place.

BizMerlin is a leading participant in SOC and SSAE compliance programs in North America and Europe, and also regional initiatives in global markets, which include Latin America and Africa – where it is a leading provider.

When AI is the Key Component Since the inception of BizMerlin, Artificial Intelligence has been a key component and it manifests in various ways – whether it is using the flagship ATS that gives smart recommendations about candidates, or the amazingly simple Company Wall of Fame, the strategic Resource Forecasting and Optimization solution, or the irreplaceable Expertise Evolution Pathways; BizMerlin is fundamentally different from other HR organizations and companies. “We observed that despite immense technological development, most HR software were simply pretty address books, and companies were still running their strategic planning in Excel or Google sheets.” says Dr. Arora. After observing various inefficiencies, the BizMerlin team came together in order

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to develop solutions that can take the human capital management a notch higher. According to the organization, BizMerlin is not just a ‘Data In Data Out’ tool - it is an AI-powered turbo charged machine that transforms the entire organization.

Working Endlessly to Make the Industry a Better Place According to BizMerlin, HCM solutions industry nowadays face four main roadblocks – price, misrepresentation of a spreadsheet as an HCM solution, trust issues leading to the data being in the cloud, and integration challenges with other solutions used by the organization.

However, BizMerlin has successfully overcome all these obstacles. All thanks to its innovative pricing; the company ensures that each organization has a shot at being the best by having the premier HCM solution within its means. Adding to that, BizMerlin is a complete HCM solution and not just a glorified spreadsheet, and it invests heavily in obtaining every form of compliance, the organization raises the compliance and trust bar that each HR solution should strive to achieve. Lastly, BizMerlin uses its seamless integration to other industry leading solutions like Atlassian Jira, Salesforce, ADP, Square, Stripe, Freshbooks, Freshdesk, Wonscore, Slack, and Atlassian Confluence. BizMerlin ensures that if its customers are using leading solutions for other things, they should be able to use the leading HCM solutions as well all in their integrated ecosystem.

Transforming Organizations Since its Inception BizMerlin is a complete Artificial Intelligence powered machinery that essentially transforms organizations.

The machinery covers the entire gamut

of human capital management needs, starting from the hiring process, work allocation, employee’s growth, performance management, all the way till retirement and offboarding process.

BizMerlinHR helps organizations in resource planning and forecasting by incorporating smart algorithm in a friendly user-intuitive manner, leaving a direct impact on organization’s financial performance. BizMerlin is an absolute necessity for companies where people work across multiple projects.

Future Roadmap According to BizMerlin, human capital management is changing rapidly, thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

Nowadays, it’s not about hiring a great employee, or making sure they are onboarded correctly, or making sure they have the right objectives, rather it is about the ability to do all those things, and in a landscape where work assignments are short lived and dynamic, and the strategic definition of talent and success is itself evolving.

Modern HCM, such as BizMerlin, are all about using the true power of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics both in tactical and in strategic senses while the “traditional” HR has pretty much gone the way of the telegram.

Today’s organizations have everyone from Millennials to Baby Boomers working for them - either as full-time employees or contractors and consultants. These different groups have different motivations, different compensation expectations, and even different job security and reason to be engaged – the days when one spends 10, 15 or 20 years at the same company are virtually unrecognizable now.

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n North America, utilities have installed nearly 70 million smart meters over the last decade. This technology investment has delivered tangible value to both utilities and consumers. But utilities have yet to realize the full potential of this platform and the value of the data these systems generate. This is primarily due to common challenges that utilities as well as technology providers have struggled with: • Smart meters are viewed mainly as a cash registers and instruments of customer billing rather than as sophisticated sensors that provide a rich source of data and insight to improve grid operations.

• For the most part, smart metering systems have been deployed in technology “silos,” meaning they run on purpose-built, largely proprietary networks that were designed for meter reading rather than on a standards-based, multi-application IP-platform.”

• These systems have created a relative tsunami of new data-more frequent and detailed usage data, event data from power outages and voltage anomalies and meter tamper alerts-

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Jeff Carkhuff VP, Itron

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CXO Standpaoint

data that utilities are struggling to manage and create new business value from.

• More than smart meters, the term “smart grid” implies grid devices, assets and data interacting in real time and with less human intervention to respond to changing grid conditions. This degree of interoperability and automation has been elusive or cost-prohibitive thus far for the low-voltage level of the network.

Most of these challenges are technology-centered, while some are cultural and organizational, but the upside is that these challenges are being solved. Information technology and operational technology are converging rapidly in the utility and energy space to create a new strategic and operational reality. This comes none too soon in light of significant business challenges utilities worldwide are facing as well as the economic and environmental challenges we all face.

Led by companies such as Cisco and Itron, a growing ecosystem of smart grid technology providers have collaborated to evolve network architecture so that utility field area networks look and behave much more like enterprise IT networks. Solution providers are also introducing more distributed intelligence to grid operations that enable grid assets and devices that are currently “siloed” to work in concert with one another. In addition, the available value stream of this network infrastructure investment is broadening by connecting to emerging markets and applications such as smart cities and the Internet of Things (IoT).

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The heavy lifting really began four years ago when Itron and Cisco announced an agreement to work together to rearchitect Itron’s widely-deployed OpenWay smart grid network to IPv6 architecture from Cisco. This joint development effort, undertaken by the industry leaders in utility automation and networking, was a watershed effort in the industry. The smart metering network became a multi-application smart grid and smart city network, broadening significantly its usefulness and value. A growing ecosystem of leading smart grid technology providers can now build to a common reference architecture through the Connected Grid Cisco Developer Network to accelerate adoption and spark innovation.

But standards-based, multi-application network architecture by itself was not enough to address all those challenges.

Itron believes that for the smart grid to deliver on its promised value, data analysis and action must take place where it makes most sense-increasingly at the edge of the network rather than in the utility back office. That’s the whole idea behind ITRON RIVA™, a new distributed intelligence and advanced communication platform the company launched this fall.

Distributing intelligence across the network allows us to economically solve utility problems that couldn’t be feasibly solved before, greatly increasing the value and timeliness of smart grid analytic applications as well as the utilization of network capacity. Specifically, these development efforts yield a new and common set of technology attributes for meters, grid sensors and other types of intelligent devices, whether they come from Itron

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• Locational awareness: For the first time, smart meters and grid devices know where they are in relation to other grid assets (feeders, phases, substations, transformers, distributed generation, other meters, etc.). This “selfawareness” opens up an entirely new approach to smart grid use cases and applications.

• “Multilingual” devices: A unified software platform supports multiple communication/application protocols, allowing a single meter or grid device to simultaneously speak the language of distribution automation, load control and smart metering. This enables highly localized communication and action among diverse devices, assets and grid control systems to respond to changing conditions at the edge of the network.

• Edge processing power: Thanks to Moore’s Law, Itron is embedding the computing equivalent of a recent generation smart phone in high-volume meters and grid devices to enable advanced communications, data processing and analysis in the edge device.

Perhaps most interestingly, the Itron Riva distributed intelligence platform has enabled Itron to revolutionize grid communications. Known as adaptive communications technology, this capability incorporates multiple communications media-RF Mesh, Wi-Fi and Power Line Carrier-on the same chipset, working in concert to solve key network performance and connectivity challenges.

Running on the OpenWay smart grid network, adaptive communications technology always utilizes the fastest and most reliable communication path for every message and every link based on location, network operating conditions

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“Led by companies such as Cisco and Itron, a growing ecosystem of smart grid technology providers have collaborated to evolve network architecture so that utility eld area networks Jeff Carkhuff look and behave much more like enterprise IT networks”

,,

The ability for edge devices to know exactly where they are, process and analyze data independently and communicate with other types of devices creates many new possibilities for improving the accuracy, resolution and timeliness of analytic applications. A clear opportunity exists to deliver new business value in areas such as localized demand response/load control, asset monitoring and management, outage detection and response, renewable integration and diversion detection. This approach allows utilities to put intelligence where it makes the most sense, whether that’s in the edge device, the field area network itself or at the enterprise level, meaning analytics no longer must always take place in the back office where “tomorrow” or “next week” is no longer good enough.

,,

or third-party partners who embed the technology or build to the standard.

and the nature of the application or data. This is true whether communicating with an office application or another device on the grid.

This makes deployment of network infrastructure easier, faster and less costly, while offering a single communications solution for both dense and difficult urban environments as well as lower-density areas. Adaptive communications technology flattens the cost curve during the latter stages of network deployment when the “hard-toreach” devices and areas must be addressed. In other words, it provides a network that continuously self-optimizes based on geography, topology, operating conditions and business requirements.

Together, these developments mean that many utilities throughout the world are in a good position to leverage these recent and significant advancements in network architecture, edge intelligence and analytics as they implement their grid modernization strategies and connect to broader opportunities such as smart cities and IoT. There is absolutely no doubt that the convergence of information technology and operational technology in the global utility industry will continue and accelerate, and that technology advancement will continue to outpace the asset lifecycle paradigm utilities have so long operated within.

Nevertheless, thresholds are reached that warrant a shift in thinking about how to approach and solve problems. For tomorrow’s grid, that time is now.

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aaS or Software as a Service is a current phenomenon in the world of technology nowadays. It is an on demand, cloud-based delivery model for software applications. Over the years, SaaS has grown quite steadily.

However, these solutions are becoming more and more popular nowadays, thanks to the advantages of cloud computing and rage of benefits it offers. When it comes to SaaS, a service provider hosts the application at a remote location, and the user can access that by using a webbrowser. With the years to come, usage of SaaS is only expected to grow even further. So, here we are listing out few trends that can eventually shape the industry later on.

Considering the effectiveness of SaaS, it has grown ahead itself to something new termed as XaaS model (Everything as a service). Nowadays the majority of manufacturers and channel partners are using pay-as-you-go models to compute their organizations as they welcome the latest technology through cloud based services. It is believed that XaaS will bring more innovations to cloud-based businesses.

that they are planning to increase spending on mobile systems in 2017, among all the respondent’s 10 percent are currently beta-testing apps and 21 percent are looking to add team members with mobile application and device management skills. With the growing usage of mobility, organizations are saving costs, and now they can work remotely and can increase customer response time.

Artificial Intelligence will play a big part soon. Last year, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Siri's Macbook debut brought AI personal experience within reach of people. The same trend can be anticipated this year when home enhancement and simplification is the key trend. For example, there will be developments in everyday activities such as switching on lights, opening, and closing of garage doors, switching sir conditioning on and off, etc. All these will be possible with the help of a smartphone.

According to a recent study, till date, more than 75 percent enterprise don’t possess a complete organization cohesive cloud strategy. Without the clarity into what software employees are using for their day to day processes, CIOs are failing to regulate processes, create plans, and preserve a critical business data. So, to discover various shadow IT departments, soon SaaS discovery tools will function to alert organizations and to find solutions.

According to the latest industry trends, few organizations are trying to migrate their data to cloud software and platform services. However, few of the companies are seeking for service resolutions in order to merge within the current infrastructure to make it better. With the presence of Within a very short period, an increasing number of legacy systems and concerns related to data security, the responsibility completely lies on SaaS MSP, when it comes financially powerful cloud application MSP’s are advancing above the mark of $50 million mark. Which is eventually to full integration without leaking any critical data. helping them to produce a surplus of venture capital firms who are on the lookout of making new investments. The With the constantly evolving technology market, soon result is an explosion in the sector of SaaS, however, soon DaaS (Data as a Service) will have a significant presence. the funding will become increasingly controversial.

The main idea of DaaS is to help organizations with the wide variety of cloud based data at very minimal cost so SaaS applications are easy fit for small businesses and that organizations can become smarter when it comes to startups, where deploying and managing on-premise decisions related to strategy planning. infrastructure is not a great idea. According to recent Security will play a very important role in the upcoming research, more than 6,000 European organizations, which range from pre-startups to established small businesses days. With the rise of smartphone users, now cyber found many growth options. Whereas more than 64 percent offenders have multiple entry points for security breaches, of the survey respondents were already using the cloudexposing personal and enterprise networks. As mentioned, based software. By 2017, the percentage is expected to remote working exposes employees to public open spaces grow up to 78 percent. As per the research, financial with unencrypted networks making them more vulnerable to various threats. Nowadays malware can be injected in all management, project management, customer management, and marketing are the key areas where the organizations are kind of devices, which can eventually intercept the transferred data leaving more to be protected. So, with more seeking support from SaaS vendors. and more innovations one can easily expect increased So, here are some of the key trends of SaaS, that can security solutions in the upcoming years. eventually change the market. However, we still expect Soon smartphone-friendly apps are going to be norm in more and more SaaS companies to expand their limits and move into different segments while evolving from single the industry. Thanks to the growing usage of smartphones product services to platforms. and tablets amongst the employees and customers.

According to recent survey, 35 percent of respondents said

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Jaspreet Singh CEO & Co-founder

Druva: The Undisputed Leader in Cloud Data Protection and Management

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We want businesses to think about centrally managing all the data that needs to be protected, using Data Management as a Service as the right solution to deliver the scalability, security, simplicity, and required savings

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hese days, roughly 40 percent of corporate data is being stored beyond the core data center at endpoints, in various remote offices and in-cloud, eventually leading to significant loss of control overand visibility into data. Creating a simple cloud platform that can help customers navigate through modern day data risks, emerges Druva. The company has developed an industry first data management-as-a-service solution that aggregates data from endpoints, servers, and cloud applications and leverages the public cloud to offer a single pane of glass to enable data protection, governance, and intelligence, which eventually increases the availability and visibility of business-critical information dramatically and reduces the risk, cost, and complexity of managing and protecting it.

The Pillar of Druva Jaspreet Singh, CEO and Co-founder of Druva grew up in India in an entrepreneurial household. This mindset is a direct result of his father’s service in the IAF (Indian Air Force). Thanks to the spirit of IAF, it spurred his interest in business with fresh perspectives on current challenges. Those perspectives first started in Germany, where Jaspreet and his roommate started their first local business and from there the desire to innovate has never slowed. For him, it was a formative experience; engineering a passion

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for delivering solutions that could meet a specific demand and solve challenges.

Later on, Jaspreet bootstrapped Druva while defining the product, sales and marketing strategies that have resulted in Druva’s early and impressive success. This success has propelled him to one of the SaaS Report’s Top 5o SaaS CEOs, and has witnessed organizations – including Nasa, Pfizer, and Lockheed Martin – join Druva’s ever-growing client list. Before founding the SaaS-based company, Jaspreet was a member of the storage foundation group at Veritas, and also held a number of engineering specific roles at Ensim Corporation.

Tackling the Need of Innovative Data Protection According to Druva, enterprises are facing a problematic combination – the lack of innovative solutions for data protection coupled with exponential growth in data. Moreover, the rising occurrence of ransom-ware attacks are making data protection a higher priority for most organizations. So, there are two core issues that needs to be tackled: Data growth rates and the rise of security threats on data, the lack of innovative solution in both areas opens the door for Druva.

“First is scale, with more distributed and grown up data volumes, protecting and managing those has become more and more challenging and costly.

Today, most data is handled outside of datacenters, in remote office locations, laptops, mobile devices, and not to forget in cloud applications. So, as expected backing up and protecting data from all these sources can be tricky, and there can be significant redundancy in backing up these data as they are coming from various sources. Adding to all these, buying

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hardware onsite to backup data makes the process quite tedious and cumbersome. Additionally, retrieving data makes the process quite a costly job, and one needs to pay upwards of 60 percent more than the actual needed cost,” asserts Jaspreet.

The second thing is security. With the rise in ransom-ware attacks in recent years, cybercriminals have figured out that data is the new oil and holding it for ransom can help them get some quick cash. So according to Jaspreet, the only available option is to have access to data only when one needs it.

Making the Industry a Lot Better When it comes to cloud data protection and management, Druva is a global leader, delivering the industry’s first data management-as-a-service solution that aggregates data from end points, servers, and cloud applications. The solutions provided by the company leverages a public cloud, like AWS, and Azure to offer a single pane of glass to enable data protection, governance, and intelligence – dramatically improving the availability and visibility of business-critical information; while reducing risks, costs and complexity of managing and protecting it. The organization’s awardwinning solutions intelligently collects all the data, and unifies backup, disaster recovery, archival, and governance capabilities onto a single, optimized data set.

Druva believes that data protection and management solutions for enterprises have evolved very little in recent years as legacy data backup and compliance tools were built around the notion of moving siloed storage to disk drive, leaving the enterprise of today without viable options for exponential data growth or secure access to data. Druva cloud platform provides a unified

control plane for data management services across endpoint, server, and cloud application data. By centralizing the visibility and control over enterprise-wide data, the Druva cloud platform can reduce risks of data breach dramatically and costs of data protection more than 60 percent.

A Unique Company The Druva Cloud Platform is powered by unique cloud technologies that deliver accessibility and scale, including important features such as time-indexed metadata, global scaleout de-duplication, auto tiering, RESTful APIs for access and ecosystem integration, and highly elastic search and analytics capabilities. Adding to all these, the new cloud platform includes, Single Management Control Plane, Predictive Storage Engine, and Unified Data Model. The Druva Cloud Platform stores data in a security first design that offers an unprecedented level of global regulation adherence, for standards like HIPAA, SOC-2, and FedRAMP. Future Roadmap For now, Druva is completely focusing on and experimenting with machine learning and deep learning. This could be foundational for its technology in the near future. As far as the company itself, it wants to see a change in the way people think about data protection and management. Druva wants businesses to think about centrally managing all the data that need to be protected, using Data Management as a Service as the right solution to deliver the scalability, security, simplicity, and required savings.

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Brian Monahan Co-founder & Chief Idea Guy

Matthew Monahan Co-founder & CEO

GoodHire: Revolutionizing the Employment Process

‘‘Big or small, established or new, we help HR leaders, compliance teams, and entrepreneurs in businesses from all industries build great teams

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ust few years back, only a handful of companies offered a simple interface to help employers quickly search the already haphazard and tangled web of federal, state, and local records. Even fewer of them gave employers results in a way that made it easy to understand the meaning behind the legalese. Compliance advice stopped at the federal level, ignoring the network of state and local ordinances that employers must follow.

Amongst this broken system was born GoodHire with a unique vision of a candidate-focused background checks, and an experience backed by an advanced public records search platform to champion a positive, fair experience for both employers and candidates.

When it comes to background checks, instead of simply delivering them, GoodHire humanizes them. Most employers run background screenings during a hiring process, and a conviction on a background check can follow a candidate around for many years. Unfortunately, the racial discrimination of the U.S. justice system is often mirrored in the criminal records checked by employers. Here, GoodHire has set out to address these issues with its revolutionary ‘True Me’ Candidate experience. True Me upends the systemic inequalities of traditional background checks, resulting in a better experience for job seekers and better-informed hiring decisions for employers. The company gives job seekers who have criminal records an opportunity to tell their story in their background check results, and it gives employers the power to see the real person behind the record.

‘‘

Reimagining Background Checks GoodHire reimagined background checks as a way to strengthen relationships with new hires instead of treating them as potential threats. The company welcomes its candidates into the background check process from

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the very beginning, and gives them a view into their background check results. It makes it easy for candidates to add their own comments to the results in the company’s awardwinning True Me candidate platform.

Further, GoodHire’s adverse action workflow extends the communication between candidates and employers that started with True Me into a fair chance hiring process.

Additionally, GoodHire believes it’s just as important to be the best of the world as it is to be the best in the world. Imagine a world in which background checks make HR’s job easier, candidate relationships stronger, and communities better. GoodHire is now making it a reality.

When Two Entrepreneurial Brothers Founded an Organization Entrepreneurial brothers, Brian Monahan and Matthew Monahan, Co-founded GoodHire in 2013 in order to help companies build great teams and adapt to the changing nature of work in an on-demand world.

Currently, Brian is the Chief Idea Guy of the company. He finished two years at Harvard before continuing the Monahan's college dropout legacy.

Nowadays, his role revolves around strategy and analytics. Brian’s interest includes meditation and busting out the occasional rap. “No judge ever says ‘I sentence you to two years’ incarceration and seven years of unemployment,’ yet that’s often the outcome,” explains Brian Monahan, who set out to solve problems that were often created by big data when they launched GoodHire almost five years ago.

On the other hand, Matthew is the CEO of the company. He studied entrepreneurship at the University of Southern California. He dropped out of college after his sophomore year and

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joined his brother Brian to start GoodHire.

Making the Industry a Better Place While an employer thinks about fair chance hiring, background check companies are not the first kind of organizations that come to mind. In fact, traditional background checks often form a barrier to employment with every one in three American adults having criminal records.

However, GoodHire is an employment screening company that helps employers and job seekers build relationship completely based on mutual trust, safety, and respect. Amid rising awareness of bias in the criminal justice system, GoodHire has exposed the role of employment background checks in perpetuating inequality.

impossible. Matthew and Brian have already been quite successful in the big data business for a few years now, and have received requests by employers across the country to solve the problems related to employment screening in the same way they had for public records search, by putting customers first. The founders already knew that the industry was heavily regulated and competitive. However, when they saw firsthand the inherent bias in the data and how background checks perpetuated that discrimination, they knew they wanted to do something big.

Future Path In less than five years, GoodHire has managed to turn the background check industry on its head. With more than 55,000 employers, industry-wide Activists at the local level already recognition, and a mission to redefine understand the challenges that most of the standard for employment U.S citizens face while hiring. The screening, GoodHire will continue to ban-the-box movement has led to more build off its candidate centric model, than 150 local laws and 29 state laws compliance expertise, and Silicon across the U.S. that ban questions Valley technology to address even about criminal history from job more of the shortcomings of traditional applications. Still, most of the background checks. However, employers run background checks, GoodHire has some good news for which means a conviction can follow employers. They just released more people long after they have served their reliable, integrated identity verification term. GoodHire’s candidate focused in order to stop malicious intent before True Me platform and the new ban-the- the completion of the hiring process, box and fair-chance-hiring complaint an industry first. This will help workflow represents the first proactive employers to move away from steps in the industry to help employers traditional reliance on eVerify and I9, hire employees fairly and legally, no which in the wake of data breaches like matter the jurisdiction.

Equifax, make SSN and other personal identifiers unreliable.

Catalysts that Inspired GoodHire to Enter the Industry Even a few years ago, imagining a world where background checks strengthen relationships between employers and new recruits, where questions are answered by knowledgeable and friendly people, where results help employers to see who the job candidate really is, was

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Rob Hoehn CEO & Co-founder

IdeaScale: Helping Organizations Find and Develop the Next Big Thing

‘‘Transform your product, process, market and more!

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dea management platforms help organizations gather valuable ideas from their network, then they evaluate them, and bring them to the market – faster than ever before. Or at least that’s how it works with IdeaScale, a leading idea management platform serving more than 35,000 communities and 4.5 million users. The company empowers different organizations to crowdsource ideas from their employees or customers, who then collaborate, evaluate, and further develop those ideas into products, processes, and other new initiatives. IdeaScale’s client roster includes industry leaders, such as Georgetown University, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, NASA, Princess Cruises and many others. IdeaScale believes that the future of work is hyper-connected, collaborative, creative and fun.

During its initial days, IdeaScale was adopted by 23 federal agencies. It served many organizations, including the Executive Office of the President of the United States and continued to grow government idea management into its largest customer segment. To date, IdeaScale has maintained its bootstrapped status and profitability and holds offices in Washington D.C., Japan, and Germany, with its headquarters in Berkeley, CA.

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The Passionate Leaders Rob Hoehn is the CEO and cofounder who started IdeaScale along with Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO of QuestionPro. Rob hails from Northern New York and enjoyed computers from a very young age. He was so enthusiastic about programming that as a high school freshman he wanted to take a programming class which had some upper-classmen prerequisites; he was so persistent about the course the teacher eventually permitted him to take it without having to wait to complete the other courses.

After receiving his degree in Computer Science & Business from University of Vermont, he started working for Washington Mutual during the day and working on his own company at night.

That company later grew into the idea management platform: IdeaScale.

communication and intrapreneurship capabilities, process management skills, and an understanding of innovation KPIs and scalable systems.

Idea management software security is also a key concern for those utilizing software for ideation and innovation management because these systems rely heavily on data integrity, have intellectual property concerns and interconnected with a variety of other enterprise systems.

Becoming the Engine of Smart Change IdeaScale offers a few unique services to its clients, which are:

Ÿ Outcome-Based Support When a client subscribes to IdeaScale, the innovation architect team starts by asking the client what their unique goals are and this becomes the benchmark throughout the course of the relationship.

IdeaScale always makes sure to check back on its client’s goals, and it doesn’t consider the program successful until it has helped its customers to achieve their desired outcome. The company also provides ongoing resources that help practitioners level-up their innovation skill set continuously.

As Chief Executive Officer of QuestionPro, co-founder Vivek Bhaskaran plays a key role in defining IdeaScale’s strategy and using technology and innovation continuously to maintain its leadership in the industry. He completed his primary education in India before moving to Russia and then US. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young Ÿ System Security University, Utah.

IdeaScale meets government-level security recommendations so that A Developing Industry public and private community information is only surfaced to According to IdeaScale, the concept of permissioned members. crowdsourcing is still emerging and under-adopted. Not everyone has the Ÿ Accessibility skills necessary to activate the crowd IdeaScale offers the most and engage them in the innovation comprehensive engagement process. In order to truly be successful, opportunities for crowdsourcing. The practitioners need to develop new product includes mobile responsive levels of sophistication: design, integrations with multiple

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internal and external platforms, Section 508 compliance, real-time, multi-lingual translation and the app can perform brilliantly even in historically low-bandwidth areas.

A Unique Organization In the coming year, IdeaScale will continue to nurture the diversity of business and organizational workflows that can be accommodated in their system. With more and more sophisticated innovation management programs, it is clear to the company that the ability to (a) smoothly integrate with an organization’s other business processes and (b) provide effective support at multiple levels of the business is imperative.

When it comes to their future roadmap, IdeaScale is continuously working to build its partner network and in-house capabilities in order to provide the full set of innovation services. The company has established a partnership with Topcoder to support prototyping, has acquired IM.se to provide unlimited access to the customers of one of the world’s most comprehensive innovation knowledge bases and continues to work with some of the top innovation consultants. Over the next two years, IdeaScale will continue to expand capabilities in all these areas to ensure IdeaScale can provide truly end-to-end innovation support well beyond innovation management software alone.

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THE

10 MOST INNOVATIVE

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SOLUTION PROVIDERS 2017

Howard Lerman Co-founder & CEO

Yext: Pioneering Digital Knowledge Managment

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See first-hand how the Yext Knowledge Engine can help you better manage your digital knowledge and attract more

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A Leader in the Digital Knowledge Management Space Yext’s integrations and technology distinguish Yext in the marketplace.

Yext’s integrations mean businesses can make updates in near real-time and at scale, and provide the most relevant experience for searching consumers.

As an example, Yext recently expanded its partnership with Google, to enable restaurants to add their menus into search results, directly from their Yext dashboard.

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customers

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brand's digital presence starts with its website. However, businesses nowadays also appear on services like Google, Siri, Cortana, Facebook, and others. Enter Yext, which is defining a new category called digital knowledge management that helps businesses manage all of the public facts that they want their consumers to know across the digital ecosystem. Yext helps various global organizations by providing high-quality digital knowledge -- from addresses, to hours of operation, to products offered -- consistently across the intelligent services that consumers use to search. Yext’s vision is to be the central source of truth for businesses’ digital knowledge, thereby helping them to boost brand awareness, drive foot traffic, and increase sales.

| September 2017 |

Recent product enhancements also make Yext a leader in the digital knowledge management space.

Recently, the company also introduced the Intelligent Search Tracker, a feature that allows brands to understand how their locations are performing for both branded and unbranded searches. A brand can track up to 7 keywords across 4 query templates for each of its locations and can view on a location by location basis, or easily aggregate results across locations or keywords.

A True Innovator and Serial Entrepreneur Back in 2006, Howard Lerman, Founder and CEO of Yext, founded the company with a single goal: to build an impactful company with super talented people. Along the way, Yext and its predecessors have made a significant mark on three industries -pay per call advertising, business listing synchronization, and digital knowledge management.

strong and lasting impact on the New York tech scene.

Helping Businesses Manage their Digital Knowledge One of the most difficult challenges that Yext faces is educating consumers.

The digital universe is evolving rapidly, and Yext has a solution that can help businesses manage their digital knowledge. As a pioneer in a new and growing field, Yext has the opportunity to help businesses understand the digital landscape and how to thrive in it as new technologies place new demands on businesses.

Yext provides businesses with solutions to effectively manage the wealth of digital information about their business across the expanding digital universe. The company is also helping to change the culture of businesses internally by enabling them to become efficient and customercentric.

Working out to be Unique

Howard, a true innovator and serial entrepreneur, founded his first company while studying at Duke University and eventually sold the company before he graduated. He then went on to start an online gym directory, and a pay-per-call service that he pivoted into an online listing solution provider, which ultimately transformed into Yext. Howard is also Co-founder of the private messaging platform Confide.

At Yext, Howard has consistently driven the company to push the boundaries of what technology can do and is always thinking ahead of the innovation curve. Thanks to his thought leadership and drive, Yext went public in April 2017. Howard may be young, but he has made a

| September 2017 |

Yext provides businesses with solutions to effectively manage the wealth of digital information about their business, across the expanding digital universe. In fact, while developing the digital knowledge management industry has enabled the emergence of a new job: Digital Knowledge Manager, someone whose sole job it is to manage a brand’s digital knowledge internally and externally.

to better serve their customers. The App Directory integrates digital knowledge seamlessly throughout an organization, creating opportunities for growth and time-saving efficiencies with apps for over 20 leading companies, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Smartling, Domo, and Zendesk.

Additionally, Yext’s partnerships with companies like Google, Apple, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and Facebook make it unique. Thanks to its partnership with Google, Yext has created advanced integrations, enabling the company to power digital knowledge directly to the publisher sites in near real-time.

Product enhancements ensure that Yext remains an industry leader.

Future Game plan The Yext Knowledge Engine helps businesses to be future proof. Digital knowledge that businesses store in Yext can power the next generation of AI-based technology from virtual assistants to self-driving cars, which rely on accurate information about people, products, and locations in order to function. Innovations like the ones described here are laying the groundwork for businesses to compete in the intelligent future.

The firm is also changing the culture of businesses internally by enabling them to become efficient and customercentric. For example, the Yext App Directory brings efficiency to organizations by allowing them to harness the systems they use every day

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CXO Standpaoint

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| September 2017 |

CXO Standpaoint

| September 2017 |

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