New Technology Trends

CTIA Mobility Digest

I attended the bi - Annual CTIA Mobility conference in San Francisco on Thursday Sept 12th 2008. The conference seemed smaller than in the past.  However I did see one or two interesting companies at the event:

Voice On The Go - This is a Canadian company that offers consumers access to their email by voice from Mobile phones. Subscribers use their voice to gain hands free and eye free access to their emails.  Emails get read to the consumer and consumers can use voice commands to do standard email tasks like reply, forward etc. As states like California and several other states are enacting strict laws that prevent drivers from using their cell phones while driving, there may be a growing market for all those impatient professionals on the road that want to access and reply to emails while driving or in traffic. The company is privately funded and charges consumers $5.99/month for the service. See a video of how this works at http://www.voiceonthego.com/video/

MobiClip - a Southern California startup that offers consumers the, capability of selecting and managing all kinds of video content - pod casts, live TV channels, video on demand on their mobile phones. Consumers can subscribe to live TV and seem to have a good selection of movies consumers can view on demand on their cellphones.  See more about them at http://www.movieclip.com

Experticity Sales Closing Platform Begins to Surge

Experticity, the Seattle based sales closing platform currently part of the MS Accelerator Program is, well, accelerating, in market traction and customer adoption. Experticity enables service businesses (retail, banking, other) to deliver live, on-screen sales-closing and support agents, to customers in-store, on-line and on-the-go (mobile).  Imagine you are lost in a store, looking for help in say, plumbing. You touch a screen and it routes you to a live on-screen plumbing expert. You see and speak with the expert through live two-way video and audio. The expert pushes content to the screen, answer questions, closes the sale, and then moves on to the next customer wherever they are located. When you get home and have further questions, you can go back on-line and get the same live on-screen customer service in home through the retailer’s website.

Experticity’ sales closing platform, delivers live, multi-language front-line staff and content. Remote-based staff in one market or call center help overworked staff in another, load-balancing staff from anywhere to anywhere, across time zones. Boston or Birmingham home-based employees can serve in Atlanta one minute and in Anchorage the next, based on customer demand, delivering consistent, higher quality customer service and sales.  As service businesses look for ways to improve deteriorating customer experience, increase sales and contain costs at the same time, Experticity offers a platform which delivers all three.

In the June’08 Chain Store Age Magazine, James Pelrine, Staple’s six-sigma  black-belt and man­ager of process improvement reported dramatic results from their deployment. Video-Agent™, Staples’ trademarked term for Experticity, has reduced delivery of customer print jobs from seven days to less than 48 hours, with substantially reduced errors. Besides contributing to stronger store sales, the units are also lessening the impact of a severe labor shortage in the area. Pelrine states “Every retailer understands the difficulty of hiring, training, and replacing product specialists. With [Experticity], we can sell more specialized products and services and share those product specialists in real-time with other stores,” with a 6 month expected ROI.

With gas prices rising above $4/gallon, it now takes an average starting front line employee more than three hours of work simply to pay the full cost of driving to work.  This will make staffing these front line jobs even more difficult. With Experticity, Enterprises can tap home-based and offshore workers to work the front lines reducing both labor cost and carbon emissions.  Manufacturers, who are finding they can’t get the product support on retail front-lines that they need, are also embracing Experticity as a “virtual in-store demonstrator, with better coverage, customer experience and costs.  For these reasons, enterprises are now embarking on Experticity pilots in almost every retail vertical. And interest and momentum is growing beyond retail, as airlines, banks and even industrial parts suppliers seek ways to deliver service, better, cheaper, faster.

With Experticity’s recent release of their “@Home” platform, it can now enable web-sites (think etailers, travel sites, health care, financial services sites) to more effectively close sales and offer support. According to D.L. Baron, President and CEO of Experticity “ The web is great tool  for enabling transactions, but selling doesn’t begin till someone says no – everything else is simply taking the order. With cart-abandonment numbers of 50-90%, a lot of people are saying no. And while click-to call and click-to chat solutions are better than nothing, it’s like a blind person talking to a blind person. There is no nuance or context, which is critical to effective selling. Experticity is to chat as telegrams are to high-def TV. Once you have experienced Experticity, chat seems hopelessly archaic”.  Experticity has delivered major sales increases, improvements in customer satisfaction and cost reductions.  Expect to see Experticity coming to a store, web-site and/or factory floor near you.

Company Facts:
Management Team - DL Baron CEO, Matt Scoble - VP of Business Development
Location - Seattle, Washington

See more information at http://www.experticity.com

Canopy Financial - A Microsoft Based Solution to Connect HealthCare and Financial Services

I just started to engage with a cool vertical company - Canopy Financial based out of San Francisco. This company provides a 100% .NET SaaS solution to connect the healthcare and financial services industries. Their core product is a complete set of healthcare banking services for both consumers and businesses.  Their product HealthDIrect is a platform for account management and administration for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs) etc. Their product handles business processes such as eligibility, account management, claims submissions, reporting, analysis  etc.

The company was founded in 2004 by executives from Fair Isaacs, United Health Group and American Express.  They already have an impressive set of customers in a very short period of time including Wachovia , Fifth Third Bank, Soverign Bank among others. They are currently serving over 45 Financial institutions.I will be working with the management team over the next few months to get more visibility within our Financial Services vertical. See more about this company at http://www.canopyfi.com

BiancaMed - Innovative Health and Wellness Monitoring for Consumers in the Home

A couple of months ago, I hosted a roundtable in the Silicon Valley between Venture Capitalists and senior executives of our Health Solutions Group.  At this roundtable, the Health Solutions group unveiled to investors for the first time their partnership strategy around HealthVault - Microsoft's consumer Health store platform.

As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, Microsoft is expecting ISVs to build innovative applications on top of this data platform to empower consumers to be more proactive about their own healthcare.
One such company I have recently came across is BiancaMed, a new startup out of Dublin, Ireland with a focus on health and wellness monitoring in the home. BiancaMed's particular focus in the analysis and measurement of sleep and breathing. The company has developed a unique patented non contact  bio-motion sensor technology (LifeSense).

This sensor is coupled with cell-phone and web technology to provide a complete technology platform (LifeMinder) for automated remote monitoring of sleep, breathing and related markers of health such as activity, exercise, blood pressure, blood glucose and weight. They have already launched an FDA-approved home sleep apnea screening product (LifeScreen Apnea) in partnership with Spacelabs Healthcare. In addition, the initial products and services offered by the company are

• A consumer-level baby monitor which reassure parents that their baby is breathing
• A turnkey solution for pharmaceutical companies to provide automated sleep monitoring in clinical trials

The product pipeline includes products to address home sleep apnea diagnostic testing, chronic disease management of heart failure and COPD, and consumer-oriented connected wellness. All of their connected health platforms are enabled by using a cell-phone based platform (Java midlets) which collects and receives data from a number of personal health devices (SleepMinder, blood pressure, glucose, weight, oximetry, etc.)

This company is exactly the kind of company Microsoft will like to build on top of HealthVault. I will be working with CEO Conor Heneghan over the coming months to accelerate the adoption of Microsoft based technologies and HealthVault.

The company is a privately held limited company. It raised a Series A investment round in October 2006 of €2.5 million, funded by DFJ ePLanetVentures and ResMed.

Xterprise - A Cross Industry Supply Chain Management Company Poised for Explosive Growth

Over the last fiscal year, I have had the pleasure of working the management team of Xterprise - a very innovative company based in Dallas, that extends Microsoft's core products to bring RFID technologies to enterprises. Xterprise provides a solution across vertical industries for enterprises looking for more efficient ways to manage their business.

More specifically, Xterprise extends Microsoft's  BizTalk product to transform companies into what CEO Dean Frew calls a "High Definition Enterprises". In other words, enabling enterprises to have precise, current, real time and insightful information about all aspects of their business.

Dean Frew and his team anticipated this future need in enterprises early enough and built a suite of compelling extensions to Microsofts core products, compelling enough for the product group to select Xterprise as one of the first few companies in the world to participate in the Microsoft Biztalk 2006 Technology Adoption Program (TAP). The Microsoft TAP programs allows a select group of ISVs to use products before they are commercially released. This allowed Xterprise to have an early entry into the marketplace with their iGPS  (Intelligent Global Pooling Systems) solution which has now resulted in the second largest UHF RFID deployment in North America.

The traction the company has had with Microsoft global field sales over the last year has been very impressive.  The company continues to grow rapidly and have  had big wins at across different vertical industries including Oil and Gas, Automotive and Retail. Well known enterprises like  Continental AG, Exonn Mobile and Pepsico are some of the companies that have embraced their solution. I expect more explosive growth from this company over the next few years with the assistance of Microsoft Global sales organizations who have all expressed lots of excitement about their offerings and the impact its having on some of Microsoft's largest customers.

Xterprise  are currently in the Microsoft Accelerator program and will have a dedicated Microsoft business development and sales team working with them in FY09. Check out more information about them at http://www.xterprise.com

Taking the Risk Out of Driving with DriveCam

During the course of this fiscal year,  I have worked with a number of very innovative companies building applications targeted a vertical markets. These companies showcase how Microsoft technologies can be used to create game changing solutions that can transform an industry.  One such company is DriveCam, a cool company that has created a set of web based software and tools that capture, transmit, analyze and report key details of driving. A palm-size video and recording device is mounted behind the rear view mirror in a vehicle and captures what is happening inside and outside the vehicle. Saved event files are transmitted to DriveCam's analysis center via Wi-Fi or a cellular connection and stored in a server (Windows Server 2003).

The entire product is built using the latest Microsoft technologies  - .NET, Windows Server and SQL Server 2005.  I recently enrolled DriveCam into the Accelerator program and currently assisting CIO Tom Fisher leverage some of the latest features of the upcoming SQL Server 2008 release. Car insurance companies are  currently trying to attract young drivers to sign up for their insurance policies using DriveCam's solution as an incentive. Their solution is currently installed in 85,000+ vehicles in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. The Wall Street journal recently had an article on DriveCam which you can read here

Company Facts:
Location - San Diego California

Investors - Menlo Ventures, JMI, ICP and Insight Ventures

Fring - Mobile Social Networking Made Easy...

Unleashing the power of the mobile internet, fring™ is a community and service that enables users to talk, chat and interact with other fring users and their favourite online communities & services, all from their mobile devices.

Originating from a vision of freedom, fring was born out of a desire to fundamentally change the way people communicate. fring users, or fringsters™ enjoy true mobility without the boundaries that have traditionally existed between the mobile and fixed internet worlds. Launched in Feb 2007, fring already growing more than 100,000 new registrations per month and has users in 160 countries around the world, with no one country accounting for more than few percentages of traffic.

fring facilitates free and low cost calls over the mobile internet connection and live instant message chat - instead of SMS - to each other and their communities. Integrating all buddies into one, searchable list, fring also displays real-time presence indicators (online, away, offline, in-a-call, on their mobiles or in front of their PCs) and enables users to quickly swap music tracks, pictures, video clips and other files between each other, from mobile-to-mobile and mobile-to-PC.

Developed specifically for the mobile environment, fring's unique hybrid peer-to-peer/client-server architecture reduces battery consumption and bandwidth usage, permitting optimal functionality even on low-end devices. Maximizing the handset’s internet capabilities, Fring connects via GPRS/3G (using the data within an existing data subscription plan rather than traditional cellular airtime minutes) or through WiFi at home, in the office or any hotspot, making the mobile calls themselves completely free. Fring can be set to automatically switch between the best available connection type.

Fringsters can even make low cost local and international calls to landline and regular cellular numbers using their existing SkypeOut/SkypeIn accounts or almost any internet voice service (SIP), even from non SIP-enabled handsets.

Available via a simple download of a thin client and installation process, fring is a consumer-centric application that does not require a PC or any dedicated hardware or airtime. All that’s needed to use fring is one of over 400 compatible handsets with internet connectivity and an internet data package or a WiFi account.

Company Facts

Location – Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel with marketing representation in the UK, Germany, Benelux, Finland, France, Russia & South Africa via onsite agencies

Stage – Beta

Funding – fring is backed by US-based venture capitalists North Bridge Venture Partners and by Venfin limited, Israeli venture capital funds Veritas and Pitango, and Yossi Vardi, as a founding private investor.

Team – Avi Shechter, CEO; Alex Nerst, Founder and Chief Technological Officer; Boaz Zilberman, Founder and Chief Product Architect; the fring team count for 50 proud employees

For recent press about fring, please visit:

http://www.fring.com/newsroom/in_the_news/english/

Another Frontier For Consumer Oriented Software from Microsoft - Automotive

Microsoft Auto is a new product group at Microsoft I have been engaged with over the last several months. The goal of this team is to provide a connected experience in cars for consumers. Two way data connectivity will allow consumers to get access to the internet and services while in their cars. The team introduced the first product SYNC with Ford last year and has been a very big hit for Ford which was struggling and has helped them connect with younger buyers.  With that success, other Automotive Manufacturers are jumping in on the action:
Today, Microsoft just announced an agreement with Hyundai Motor company in South Korea to build a music and information system in their cars to debut in 2010. The product will be a voice controlled system linking mobile devices to car stereo systems eventually including multimedia and navigation systems. Essentially, the same applications and services that are being targeted on mobile devices today  are applicable to an operating system in the car while driving. Imagine being able to tell your navigation system to take you to the nearest Starbucks, give you access to the latest traffic information, find you the nearest available parking etc. Better still, seamless integration between the mobile device and the in car system is essential.

See the latest announcement on the new Microsoft-Hyundai partnership here

Health Solutions VC Roundtable in the Silicon Valley

Yesterday the Emerging Business team had the pleasure of hosting VCs at our Silicon Valley campus at our first roundtable on Microsoft's investments in the Health Care space. Distinguished members of the new Health Solutions Group ( a product team formed about 2 years ago) gave a hearty pitch to VCs about our new suite of platform products and opportunities for VCs to invest in the Microsoft Healthcare ecosystem.

The center of the pitch was around HealthVault, which is a free web based platform that enables patients to store and share information with hospitals and physicians using enhanced security and privacy measures.  The team was careful to point out that HealthVault is NOT a PHR ( Personal Health Record ) System - which is what Google is building. Rather its a way for individuals to store and share the health information.  Its a shared data platform  that allows multiple applications to work with a persons Health Data, attempting to integrate the silos of consumer data that typically exists in duplicate forms across many different entities in the Health care ecosystem (Hospitals, Health plans, employer databases, pharmacies etc).

The event had three sections: an introduction to the charter of the Health Solutions Group by Nate McLemore, Director of Business Development; an Overview of HealthVault by Grad Conn, Sr Director of Product Marketing and finally the Health Vault Partner Strategy by Bill Ried, Director of Platform Strategy.   Grad Conn's description clarified a lot of questions in my mind about what HealthVault is - not a PHR - but used an analogy  to  PayPal. Its an enabler system - which can be customized by application providers into many cool healthcare apps - and will only be visible by the HealthVault logo - similar to how Paypal enables payments in lots of different apps and is only visible through the logo. Finally Bill Reid talked about the opportunities for partnership with Microsoft and showed demos of many different application ideas for VCs to think about.

They also talked about the Be Well Fund - which is a $3million dollar fund available  in total for non profit institutions to build cool Healthcare apps on top of HealthVault.  The team is currently looking at proposals - so if interested - please submit your proposals to the HealthVault team before the end of the month - and winners will be announced at the Health Vault partner conference in May. 

We had a lunch networking session where VCs could interact, get up close and personal with many members of the Health Solutions team, ask questions and exchange information. Most VCs I talked to found the event very useful. Our team hosts roundtables like this on different market spaces every few months in several locations around the world. If you are a VC,  look out for invitations to these events as you will find the insight very useful. For more information please  go to the HealthVault website at http://www.healthvault.com or contact me and I will be happy to give you pointers.

Next Generation Mobile Phone Content Delivery - Introducing Bamboo Multicasting ...

Watch While You Wait, Don't Wait While You Watch

Bamboo MediaCasting is a cool Israeli emerging company that provides the first “DVR” like application for mobile phones . Their solution set provides innovative solutions and support services for mobile content delivery.  I met the CEO Guy Morag, a great guy recently at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. I think his company has one of the coolest apps I saw at the show. With Bamboo MediaCasting, carriers and service providers automatically push delivery of rich-media content that users experience with maximum convenience and crystal-clear quality:
     Push – Bamboo MediaCasting delivers regular and episodic rich-media content to 
     subscribers in the background or during off-peak hours

    Store – The pushed content is automatically stored in the phone’s memory giving you
      a crystal-clear video and audio experience.

            -No streaming or downloading; no WAP.
            -Independent of the service connection; available anywhere – underground or on a
            plane.Easy replay and social elements - show to a friend, share the experience, etc.

      Play – When the consumer is ready for their regular dose of subscription programming,
      they just click play and the show starts immediately.

Bamboo MediaCasting is like DVR for your phone:

• Tell it what you want
• The content gets delivered and stored
• Watch or listen when you’re ready, as many times as you want

Their application consists of a cool graphic user interface which engages mobile customers with rich-media such as video clips of sports highlights or previews of their favorite TV shows regularly and with great quality. With Bamboo MediaCasting, consumers watch while they’re waiting. They don’t wait while they’re watching. Users simply select the content they wish to receive either daily or weekly and the Bamboo software delivers the content to them in full-track form on a regular basis, eliminating the need for the user to always browse the Internet on the their phone in order to view content.

What makes their solution unique is their delivery approach.  The service is easy to use and automatically pushes a self-selected mix of video and audio entertainment to the user's mobile phone, where it is stored for play at a convenient time and place.  The company has paid a lot of attention to the user experience and  features intuitive and adjustable controls for the service.

Alternatives to the Bamboo MediaCasting model for video and audio content include streaming, downloading and PC sync. Each of these methods has their deficiencies – mostly related to bandwidth issues, annoying browsing on a mobile device - and most importantly they require significant effort on the part of the user. On a home computer in a comfortable chair, while in a thermostat-controlled house or office, asking a user to navigate several web pages and wait for a download makes sense; much less so for a mobile user on a mobile device (small screen, no keyboard, inherent device limitations that will hardly change). Bamboo Media Casting provides a “white-label” solution to mobile carriers and operators. Key customers to date are France Telecom owners of many Orange companies such as Orange UK and Orange France. Their product Silverstripe is a client – server solution with clients running on various handsets and platforms. SilverStripe uses .NET (C#) and native code for Windows Mobile devices, J2ME for Java only handsets and Symbian code for Symbian handsets.

Their solution offers several models for advertising including full sponsorship of service, per-channel or per-program. Ad campaigns are very targeted based on the subscribers mix of channels and this data can be used to make the ads more effective to the advertiser and interesting to the subscriber.

Potential Strategic Microsoft Partnership Possibilities:

Bamboo MediaCasting can enable Microsoft to provide a 'lean back' experience on mobile phones for its consumers who regularly engage with Microsoft's web content assets as a natural extension to the web experience. Bamboo MediaCasting provides their solution on multiple platforms, including Windows Mobile and others. The solution functions as a native cross platform Microsoft Internet content bridge, allowing its consumers to easily and intuitively mobilize on-line content and consume Microsoft media on a regular basis.

Microsoft could also possibly extend its mobile advertising offering by utilizing Bamboo technology as a rule-based caching ad engine. Video ads will be served with perfect quality on any Microsoft mobile application, with full segmentation and reporting.  Get more information at http://www.bamboomc.com

Company Facts

Location – Kfar Saba, Israel

Stage – Seasoned Startup with paying customers

Funding – $16M invested in Round A and B

Team – Guy Morag, CEO; Avi Marinstrauss, VP Sales; Meir Fuchs, VP R&D