We are hard at work on the convention’s schedule, together with our partners in Israel and around the world, which makes this the perfect time to suggest important professional lectures for one of our panels.
We’re pretty sure we will be holding an enterprise panel, an ISV development manager panel, a security and regulation panel as well as a SmartPilot panel for start-ups and venture capital investors. All these panels, of course, will deal with the cloud in some way, shape or form.

If you would like to stay up to date in the latest news from the cloud computing world, as well as receive the latest updates on CloudCon2011, you should sign up for a week subscription to “Achshav Meunan”, the cloud computing newsletter, which recently hit issue #11.

By way of celebration, here is the video documenting CloudCon2010 to provide both a nice reminiscence as well as a motivation to make CloudCon2011 bigger and better than before.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

DataBase2011

The first lecture will be given by Bartal Vindzberg, CTO for Kaminario, and will deal with “accelerating databases using SSD storage systems”. Kaminario received a venture capital investment from the Sequoia and Pitango funds, and was first exposed to the global computing community and venture capital investments was at the SmartPilot1 event. Held one year ago, the company then asked not to film and reveal the video of its presentation, but I’m happy to announce that in DataBase2011, to be held on January 13th, it will present to the relevant audiences its partners in Israel and the correct way to implement its solution into the data center.

The second start-up lecture at DataBase will be by David Maman, CTO for GreenSQL. David gave a fascinating lecture at Open2010, on open sourced security solutions released by GreenSQL for MySQL, and now he will expand about GreenSQL’s commerical solution which is geared towards MS SQL Server as well. His lecture is called “Securing and Accelerating Databases in Minutes”, and if you’re interested in security and accelerating of databases, I wouldn’t miss it. David is sure to give a fascinating and interesting lecture.

Database2011’s third start-up lecture will deal with columnar databases, and will be given by Elad Israeli, founder and CEO of SiSense. Sisense enjoys a recent venture capital investment by the Opus and Genesis venture capital funds, and this will be their first appearance in such a convention. I can tell you that, after spending a few hours with Elad and listening to him talk about Columnar Databases and what they can do, I nearly purchased one of these databases myself. Not because I need to calculate immense amounts of data at lightning quick speeds, because I don’t, but only because it sounds so interesting. Elad calls his lecture “The Impact of Columnar/NoSQL Databases on BI Solutions”, and I assume it will prove interesting to anyone who needs to quickly form BI reports out of an unthinkable amount of data.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

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Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

My first serious job in the high-tech business was in Informics Israel (a mythical database which was later purchased by IBM), and since then I’ve run into databases on every web project I’ve been involved with.

It seems that no matter which product I’m using, I’ll always think in SQL, and it will always boil down to CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete). Even if ROR no longer requires connecting to the database using ODBC, and you no longer have to write SELECT to recieve an answer from the table.

In the upcoming convention, we will dedicate plenty of lectures to relational databases, and try and host a few practical workshops that will expand on the new features of the key players. We will also try to touch on the new players in the database play ground: from columnary databases, through NoSQL and all the way to the building blocks of the semantic web.

If you’re interested in registering to the convention, which is geared towards DBA and developers, you can do so at this link. I’d also love to hear any and all ideas for lectures you will be interested in hearing or presenting at the conference.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

Tel Aviv based start-up

myThings’ personalized retargeting advertising technology allows e-commerce websites to present to web-surfers who’ve visited the website and left without making a purchase an advertisement generated automatically based on actions comitted on the retail website. According to company spokespeople, they are increasing by 100% the rate of return vistis, most of which end with a transaction. This technology is an advanced form of Retargeting, in which web users who visit an e-commerce website and did not purchase anything are exposed to advertisement by that website while surfing other websites.

According to the leading reaserch and tracking firm Comscore, this technology achieves much better results than other form of targeted advertising, contextual advertising or behavioral targeting advertisement. Additionally, myThings does not make use of users private detials for its focused advertising, but is based on statiscal analysis of annoynoums information which represents user activity at the e-commerce website.

myThings already counts among its clients such firms as: Orange, Price Minister, Karen Millen, Etam, PIXMania and more.

The prevailing presence of Deutsche Telecom in the digital media market hides a great potential for future co-operation with myThings. Websites owned by Deutsche Telecom see over 27 million unique visits a month, and the group is ranked at number one in exposure to web surfers in Germany, as stated by web-ranking firm AGOF. Among the companies owned by Deutsche Telecom is Interactive-Media, the leading German firm for marketing quality digital media.

Frank Bechar, a senior executive at Deutsche Telecom, said: “What impressed us with myThings is the company’s technology, which leads to a significat rise in the number of transactions made by users of e-commerce websites who previously visited without making a transaction. The company works in the focused advertising market, which is quickly growing in Europe. We were also very much impressed with the company’s crew.”

Benny Arbel, CEO of myThings, said: “We see T-Ventures joining our investor group as a vote of confidence and trust in our technology and business model. Purchase oriented focused advertising is driving the growth of the electronic commerce market. myThings’ technology allows marketers online to address web users in a way which focuses on their purchase intents, and thus improves the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. The money raised in our latest round will be used for support in research activity and development in order to increase sales in the European sales and marketing market.”

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

This our track geared towards development manager and product managers for Israeli software exporters: from young, innovative start-upers to world leaders such as Checkpoint or Amdocs.

If you missed the last post, about CloudCon’s Enterprise track, you can find it here. If you’ve read that post, then you already know that CloudCon has already seen more than 1000 sign-ups, and over 40 professional speakers that will give talks throughout the general assembly, the four parallel tracks and the professional workshops.

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CloudCon’s ISV track will begin at 11:30 am, parallel to the Enterprise, Security and SmartPilot tracks.

Development managers who are currently working on Cloud Applications for their clients will probably be interested in a lecture by Guy Nirpaz of SaasPulse, which offers an analytics component for SaaS applications. Nirpaz will elaborate on the various user activity tracking procedures in SaaS systems, and just think of the thousands of potential clients which will receive a free registration code – several months later, your sales people will be sent to continue negotiations with those users who are actually serious. You will need an analytics solution that will assess their activity in the system in order to find those users.

The next lecture will see two people take the stage: Noam King, the man leading Microsoft Israe’s Azure technologies, and Maor David-Pur, Microsoft’s development advisor for ISV companies. The two will explain when exactly should a software development team use Microsfot’s cloud platform, and I’m sure this lecture will prove interesting to plenty of development managers who work with Microsoft’s platform as well as those who do not.

The next speaker will be Astrials’ Vitaly Kushner. Astrails is a start-up development lab, which works mainly with Ruby and open-source products. Many of the attendants of OPEN2010 had the privelage of participating in Kushner’s Ruby workshop, and now he will share his knowledge of public clouds start-up companies work with, and any and everything you need to do with your code once its ready to be sent into the cloud. I assume he will focus on Amazon’s cloud, but you can never know.

Genesis Partners’ Eden Shochat has chosen a lecture in a direction I’ve never heard from any of the convention speakers I’ve talked to. He identifies a type of business-technological activity which is slightly different from the common conception of the global cloud, and focuses on different modules which are already offered for cloud use and allow ISV companies to offer fast products and services, which work and are not too expensive. These services are the building blocks, and follow a basic structure of payment only for those resources which your clients acutally use, and they allow companies to create applications which will prove to be constantly profitable.

Next up will be Alon Girmonsky, from CloudIntelligence, and he will be offering a cloud platform for testing your applications. He will showcase the directions in which software testing cloud-based applications are going – such as testing performance for thousands of beta users or checking performance from users all across the world.

After software testing is over, it’s time to turn a profit from it. Shlomo Weiss is SafeNet’s business development managers and he will expand on the correct models to use in order to turn a profit from an international market. He will base his lecture on an overview of success stories of international ISV companies who already work with SafeNet.

Finally, a lecture which is sure to be interesting to all those development managers who need to transition their software to a SaaS model. Moshe Kaplan, R&D manager for ESI will expand on the right design for a cloud application, and how to reach it.

All this will follow, as mentioned, the general assembly and parallel to three other tracks (the enterprise track, a security management track and a Start-Up/Venture Capital track). It will be possible to move from one track to another, so look over the agenda and mark the most interesting lectures. Following the tracks we will adjourn for a festive lunch, followed by three parallel workshops on working with the cloud services offered by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Anyone who’s considering working with any of these services should attend, as you can expect to gain much insight and maybe even a few months of free trials.

So take a day off before the convention, rest well and arrive refreshed. Keep your schedules clear for the day – as we will attack the cloud from all sides, from 8:00-17:00.

It seems that every IT player or consumer has formed a different attitude and strategy regarding cloud computing, and everyone wants to see, consult, share and stay up to date. I wish to thank all those whov’e been with me, following and heping in the past six months in preparing this convention.

Today, I’d like to present CloudCon’s Enterprise track, set to begin at 11:00 until 13:30, immediatly following the general assembly and right before lunch. Next week, I’ll present the other three tracks, as well as the speakers in the general assembly who are expected to reveal some interesting things. I will also be dedicating a special post to the three proffesional workshops on large-scale cloud computing we will be hosting following lunch.

CloudCon’s Enterprise track, which is aimed at Israel’s senior computing managers, is set to be visited by three interesting lectures from abroad. The first is Dr. Matt Wood, Amazon’s cloud evangelist, a world leader in the integration of complex computing systems with Amazon’s own computing infrastructure. A visit by an Amazon global expert in Israel can only point at one thing – the Israeli market is starting to matter to Amazon and they mean to compete for every organization they can get as a client. Israel’s activity manager, Dan Feld, will join the general assembly panel (hosted by Yehuda Confortes and yours truly earlier in the day, and will probably reveal more about Amazon’s AWS program.

Our second guest will be hailing from the Symantec offices in Europe. Valeria Caracuta will present to us Symantec’s security attitude towards cloud compting, a direction much reinforced by their purchase of MessageLabs, and seems radically different from the traditional direction presented by Symantec up until now to Israel’s large organization’s security managers. The cloud is having an effect on all sects of the industry, and security is not left out, with everyone needing to reorient themselves.

Our third and final guest, who will be going on stage straight from the airport, is Stephane Viallet of SalesForce, a company which has turned SaaS to someone that really works, and can teach the whole world how to transfer imporant organizational applications outside the organization. According to people at Blat-Lapidot, who are responsible for bringing Viallet to CloudCon, 300 organizations in Israel have already made this shift, and each organization going through this transition is downloading a potential install of a local CRM system onto the organization’s servers.

CloudCon’s Enterprise track will be opened by Amir Shevat, Windows Azure platform manager for Enterprise organizations at Microsoft Israel. Shevat will talk about the considerations a computing manager faces before a transition to a cloud-based platform, and will most probably touch on the enormous profit Microsoft is making on the enterprise market in Israel. Even for them, the cloud is something that will change everything.

Following him, Vadim Solovey will take the stage. Solovey is a well-known virtualization expert who was chosen to speak about Google Enterprise’s technology and Google’s public cloud offerings. It’s interesting to see which new annoucemnets will come from this unique new direction. If you’re interested in Google-related products, you’l be pleased to hear that Barak Regev, Google Enterprise’s regional manager, will appear at CloudCon’s general assembly, at 09:30 am.

Next on the Enterprise track will be Gabi Zodik, from IBM’s labs in Haifa. He will present the blue giant’s cloud strategy, and how he sees it through IBM’s gloabl software labs. It is there that one can find the software engineers who are toiling over building the future infrastructure which IBM will offer enterprise organizations in the future.

Next, Guy Lupo, regional technical manager for Checkpoint, will come on stage. Lupo promises to demonstrate how Checkpoint plans on turning cloud security into a simpler task. Is Checkpoint’s firewall set to transition into the cloud as well? Are Checkpoint analysts going to change the recomendation for stock prices? We will have to wait and see what Lupo has to say to receive yet another overview on the security market and its adaptation into cloud-based computing.

Lastly, we’ve slotted Amit Dover to speak. He is VP of software solutions for Yael Software, on of Israel’s oldest and biggest software houses. The direction decided on by Yael’s management will probably be emulated by many other software houses, who will strive to replicate the move to building enterprise applications for the cloud. Dover will present the cloud-based partners of Yael Software, and the eco-system it’s building in preparation for developing cloud-based enterprise applications. It will be very interesting to understand how the power will shift in the Israeli market and which cloud services each integrator will choose to offer its respective clients.

Quite a handful, and this only one of our tracks.

All this will follow, as mentioned, the general assembly and parallel to three other tracks (an ISV development track, a security management track and a Start-Up/Venture Capital track). It will be possible to move from one track to another, so look over the agenda and mark the most interesting lectures. Following the tracks we will adjourn for a festive lunch, followed by three parallel workshops on working with the cloud services offered by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Anyone who’s considering working with any of these services should attend, as you can expect to gain much insight and maybe even a few months of free trials.

So take a day off before the convention, rest well and arrive refreshed. Keep your schedules clear for the day – as we will attack the cloud from all sides, from 8:00-17:00.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

I am pleased to present to you our progress on the

CloudCon is geared towards senior IT executives, development managers and product managers in ISV companies which export software solutions abroad, as well as start-up personnel and venture capital representatives. We will present a long gallery of cloud computing experts, both from Israel and from Abroad, who will attack the hottest topic in the IT world from every possible angle.

As you can see from the agenda below, following the opening assembly we’ll have three parallel tracks for each one of the three target audiences. The Enterprise Track is meant for computing managers in large scale organizations who are interested in public and private cloud solutions, cost models and license prices as well as other issues dealing with regulation and technical support. The ISV Track is geared towards development managers and product managers who are about to offer a solution in the SaaS format, or transition a server-client solution into a SaaS format. Lastly, the SmartPilot Track will focus on Israeli start-up companies who are developing future cloud computing infrastructures which can be incorporated into or compete with the IT giants’ cloud computing infrastructures.

Following the tradition established at the OPEN convention, at 15:00, right after lunch, we will host 3 parallel practical workshops, each 90 minutes long. If you’d like some practical experience with Microsoft’s, Amazon’s or Google’s public cloud computing solutions – I highly suggest visiting one of these workshops.

Finaly, the even will also see a showcase of IT companies and start-ups who provide cloud computing solutions.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

Israeli start-up

The company provides a platfrom for turning numerical data, statistical information or still pictures – the type of data we are used to consume on the internet – into light video clips, the kind which intigrate the raw material into fixed template in order to create a richer presentation.

The current fund-raising round was spearheaded by the venture capital fund Norwest Venture Partners, Carmel Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, which have previously invested in the company, also joined in the current round. Following the investment, Dror Nahumi, a partner in Norwest Venture Partners, will join SundaySky’s board of directors.

SundaySky’s product may be of interest to e-commerce websites – who wish to expose in an interesting manner as much of the products out of the near infinite stock which they can sell; dating sites and social networks – which contain thousands upon thousands of photos and information about their respective users, which can then be integrated into an interactive film that will be used to get to know the user better; and even news sites – which could now present a sort of filmed edition, updated in real-time, of all the latest news stories, or the ones most read, and even add to the film relevant visual details which appear in related stories. Naturally, these automated videos based on existing content allow websites to integrate video adevertisements into these films and create an additional advertising income.

According to company spokesmen, the dynamic integration into the clients’ website involves merely updating a few lines of code, as all data analysis and movie making work, according to the chosen template and business logic, is done via a SaaS on SundaySky’s servers. SundaySky’s movie-producing product only needs to receive the relevant data feed from the website’s database, content managing system, or even a static web page, and is then able to produce a video based on this data, which is updated in real time and appears on the web page.

Click here to view a film produced by SundaySky for History.Com

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum

Remember

Well, StartUpMania recently found that Actimize’s founders, David Govrin and David Sosna, are planning on throwing the financial service world into another revolution with their new start-up: Personetics.

If you believe in the couple, have a background in Java, BI and natural language analysis and want to work in Tel Aviv (or even New York) – the two are looking for employees.

And which venture capital will take the chance on the burgeoning company? It seems that the two’s relationship with Carmel Ventures has heated since the giant exit they’ve organized for the Hertzlia-based investment firm, and who’s going to pass up and second round with two entrepreneurs who’ve proven themselves? It seems Avi Zeevi will not pass up this next adventure.

Translated by Itai Rosenbaum