Solution Combines Dejero LIVE+ Transmitters and Cloud Services With Aeryon’s Rugged, Quickly Deployable SkyRanger sUAS
Dejero, an innovator in the remote acquisition, cloud management, and multiscreen distribution of professional live video over IP, today announced a strategic technology partnership with small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS) manufacturer Aeryon Labs. The partnership will enable secure, real-time distribution of HD video captured by Aeryon sUAS through the Dejero LIVE+ platform. This will enable broadcasters to integrate live video captured with drone technology into their newsgathering, sports coverage, and video productions. Dejero and Aeryon will demonstrate their joint solution in the Aeryon Labs booth, 2255 at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems 2015 in Atlanta May 5-7.
“There is significant and growing interest from broadcasters—especially newsgathering organizations—in drone technology because it brings a unique perspective and closer, more intimate live content, while providing greater context to news stories,” said Brian Cram, CEO of Dejero. “For drone-based video to work in a live broadcast situation, broadcasters need low-latency, broadcast- quality video from a highly-reliable drone system that’s easy to use, quick to deploy, and proven in the field. That is what the Aeryon drone system gives them. Thanks to this partnership, incorporating live, drone-based video into newscasts is a practical reality for broadcasters.”
The Dejero Aeryon solution combines Dejero LIVE+ transmitters and cloud services with the imagery captured by the Aeryon SkyRanger sUAS. Dejero’s line of compact, modular, and rugged LIVE+ mobile transmitters intelligently manage and bond cellular, Wi-Fi, and portable satellite connections to deliver exceptional picture quality, even in challenging network conditions. Live video feeds are previewed and managed from Dejero’s LIVE+ Control web portal.
“Our partnership with Dejero delivers on our commitment to offer end-to-end solutions to customers in key industries such as public safety and law enforcement, infrastructure inspection, and newsgathering.” said Dave Kroetsch, President and CEO of Aeryon Labs. “It also underscores our strategic focus on software and services as a critical component of our product offering.”
The Aeryon SkyRanger is a small unmanned aerial system that is rugged and dependable in demanding weather conditions when other systems cannot fly. It offers long flight times of over 50 minutes, and its folding design makes it highly portable and fast to deploy. Its intuitive touch-screen interface simplifies navigation and camera operation.
With the Dejero and Aeryon products working together, broadcast-quality HD video captured by the drone can be transmitted from the field, previewed with Dejero’s LIVE+ Control cloud-based management system, and routed to broadcast facilities around the globe for live on-air playout. It can also be routed to cloud servers that enable delivery to Web and mobile devices or to Dejero’s LIVE+ Multipoint video-sharing network for simultaneous distribution to multiple locations.
As innovators in their respective fields, Aeryon Labs and Dejero are ideally suited to address the needs of not only broadcasters, but other industry segments as well. Because the solution will enable faster and more accurate decision-making based on the availability of real-time aerial imagery, it will be useful in areas such as public safety and policing, and in infrastructure inspection for industries such as oil and gas and power transmission.
Geminare Partners Prominent in Gartner’s Inaugural DRaaS Magic Quadrant
Geminare, the #1 ranked leader in Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) enablement, today announced a significant accomplishment for its partners, NTT Communications (NTT Com) and Cable & Wireless Communication’s Columbus Business Solutions (Columbus), with both partners securing prominent positions within the Disaster Recovery as a Service Gartner Magic Quadrant.
Gartner Magic Quadrants, recognized globally and published annually, represent the gold standard for technology evaluation and service provider rankings. In its inaugural Magic Quadrant for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), Gartner evaluated top DRaaS providers, assessing their capabilities in communication services, DR/BC recovery services, hosting and infrastructure as a service, and direct cloud recovery.
NTT Com, the information and communications technology (ICT) solutions business within NTT Group (NYSE: NTT), secured an extremely strong position within the DRaaS Leadership quadrant, reflecting its emergence as a global powerhouse in the rapidly accelerating market.
Columbus Business Solutions, a leading ICT provider to Latin American markets, was named as a prominent Challenger, clearly reflecting its dominant position within the DRaaS market.
Both NTT Com and Columbus Business Solutions utilize Geminare’s Cloud Management Platform (CMP) to deliver DRaaS. The patented CMP is the cornerstone technology underlying Gartner’s recognition of Geminare as a “Gartner Cool Vendor in Business Continuity and IT Disaster Recovery Management.” The designation acknowledges the robust management infrastructure as one of the most mature, proven offerings in the market today.
Joshua Geist, Geminare’s President and CEO, commented on their success, stating, “I’m delighted that the Gartner Magic Quadrant has identified both NTT Com and Columbus as top-tier DRaaS providers. Being positioned within the Leadership quadrant is confirmation that NTT Com is not only succeeding but leading in one of the fastest growing service areas within the Cloud. Equally impressive is Columbus’ designation as a strong Challenger within the Magic Quadrant given its positioning as a regional player servicing Latin and Central America.” Geist added, “The entire Geminare organization could not be more proud of the work that our partners are doing, the success they are achieving, and the recognition that is following.”
About Geminare
Geminare is the leading Recovery as a Service (RaaS) technology provider, enabling global Service Providers to successfully launch multi-region RaaS offerings. In market with the #1 ranked RaaS product offering, Geminare’s Cloud Recovery has received the Highest Product Rating Score in Gartner’s 2013 Critical Capabilities for Recovery as a Service Report and represents the industry’s most mature, patented, multi-tiered, and award-winning Cloud-based offering. Geminare’s RaaS Suite has powered the offerings at many of the world’s leading Service Providers including Google Cloud Platform, NTT Communications, Cosentry, HP, Columbus Business Solutions, Part of Cable & Wireless Communications, Dimension Data, Iron Mountain, HOSTING and many others. Geminare is headquartered in Silicon Valley, with additional operations in Toronto, Canada. www.geminare.com
About Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
All names referred to are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Source: http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/1192394.htm
How to transform a labour-sponsored VC fund from a dog into a diamond
Not all labour-sponsored venture capital funds – with their high management fees and generous tax credits – end up as investment disasters.
But to become investor favourites, the VC funds – which are in the process of being wound down in most of the country – are required to transform themselves, and in one case take a path that has not been trodden before.
Consider the path taken by the Business, Engineering Science & Engineering Discoveries (BEST) Fund, which started life in the late 1990s. It is now a publicly listed limited partnership, that pays its owners $0.50 per share per year. Shareholders of the company with $38.6 million in assets received one quarter of that payment last week.
“Under chief executive John Richardson, the fund has been transformed from a dog into a diamond,” said John Horwood, a director of wealth management at Richardson GMP, whose clients are now investors in the BEST Funds. “John is the deepest researcher of small companies I have seen.”
The transformation for the BEST fund started about eight years back when the manager, who also manages other investment funds, decided that fixed-income investments made better sense than equity investments.
One key reason for that new focus on providing senior debt to “rapidly-growing private Canadian companies with recurring revenues,” was that such investments provided more ways for the manager to get their investment back at the end of the loan. Richardson identified four possibilities: from growth in the underlying business; through the investee company receiving tax credits; from so-called maintenance cash flow and via the sale of the business.
And the manager mitigated the risk through a ”conservative” lending philosophy: once valued was established, the manager would lend 10 per cent. “It has paid off,” said Richardson who estimated loan losses have been around one per cent. From the investee company’s perspective, such debt investments, which feature rates in the 10 per cen to 15 per cent range, aren’t dilutive.
Another key reason behind the change was that labour-sponsored funds had the worst of all worlds, a high cost structure, a reflection of being a public company and a mutual fund company. “We had to reduce costs,” said Richardson.
So at the time when the labour-sponsored fund world was nearing its sunset years, the BEST board launched a strategic review with the idea being “to create different options that would deliver value.”
The solution: re-organize the BEST fund into a publicly listed LP that was similar to the private debt LPs it was already providing to friends and family and accredited investors. Those private active LPs were attractive because they generated active business income, were Canadian controlled, were tax efficient – and suited investor needs.
And the manager had done lots of them: typically it would raise $5 million at a time, place a 30-month term on each LP and make at least 10 investments. Those separate LPs have now been combined into an open-ended fund: the BEST Active 365.
Richardson GMP’s Horwood is positive on both the debt and equity fund. “The BEST 365 is short-term debt with 12 per cent to 15 per cent coupons and warrants. The public LP is attractive because it trades at a big discount to NAV, pays a yield of around 8 per cent with no value placed on the 40 per cent of the fund that is in equity investments.”
ERMS wins Canadian Red Cross RFP for Mass Notification
As part of a renewed strategic plan, The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) issued a Request for Proposal in November 2014 to assist with the selection of a mass notification system provider to improve business operations and enhance disaster management response capabilities. ERMS Corporation’s (ERMS) bid proved to be the best fit for their needs.
“We’re pleased to have been selected to provide services to an organization widely recognized as a humanitarian leader,” said Sylvain Rollin, President and CEO. “Providing them with the necessary tools to enhance their ability to quickly respond to emergencies and disasters gives us great pride,” he added.
Source: http://www.ermscorp.com/erms-news-and-events/erms-signs-crc
NuData Security’s behavioral biometrics solution wins Info Security award
Info Security Products Guide named NuData Security’s online fraud detection engine NuDetect as the Gold Winner of the 2015 Global Excellence Awards in the “security products and solutions for online and e-commerce” category.
The online fraud detection engine was also recognized as a Bronze Winner in the “fraud prevention” category.
NuDetect was selected based on its ability to use continuous behavioral analysis to prevent fraud online to curb businesses from brand damage and financial loss caused by fraudulent or malicious acts.
The 2015 Global Excellence Awards, whose winners were announced at a dinner and presentation on April 20, was judged by a panel of more than 50 industry experts from around the world.
“Info Security Products Guide’s recognition of NuDetect further validates NuData Security’s commitment to providing the ultimate in fraud detection services for our customers,” said Michel Giasson, CEO of NuData Security. “Our multipronged approach of behavioral biometric analysis and machine learning enables us to detect fraud up to 15 days before an attempt is made. We are honored to receive this endorsement of our solution among the best-of-the-best in security products. We recognize that we must continue to innovate, to stay ahead of the rapidly-evolving criminal behavior.”
Geminare Awarded Patent for its DRaaS Platform
Worried About Insider Data Theft? This Startup Has You Covered
Who just downloaded all of your company’s marketing collateral? Why did that software developer double the capacity of her cloud storage drive? Should that sales manager really have access to the entire recruiting database?
Canadian analytics company Interset uses machine learning and pattern recognition to flag this sort of anomalous behavior, often the precursor to intellectual property or data theft. Originally focused on secure file sharing and audit trail reporting, the company (formerly FileTrek) just disclosed another $10 million in funding to expand its advanced threat detection capabilities. The lead investors are Toba Capital and software company Informatica.
“If you can understand the normal patterns, you get a fingerprint of how people work,” said Interset CEO Dale Quayle. “We look for the anomalous behavior that could signal a change.”
One customer, a semiconductor manufacturer that owns thousands of patented processes and technologies, used Interset’s software to uncover a coordinated theft involving more than a half-dozen contractors who were copying upwards of 500,000 files daily. (The investigation is ongoing, so the company prefers to remain anonymous.)
Interset’s behavioral analytics technology is installed alongside a company’s existing data sources, where it correlates information and seeks patterns. It is priced as a subscription: about $50 per year per monitored data source, Quayle said.
Alerts about potential threats are sent to security teams in natural language so they are easy to comprehend. That’s a big plus for under-resourced organizations, said Paul Calatayud, chief information security officer for healthcare software company Surescripts. His company has used Interset’s software for about six months.
“We can define what good behavior looks like and then block everything else. … When someone steps out of the norm, then that is what my team investigates,” Calatayud said.
Interset previously disclosed a $10 million Series B round in 2012, led by Anthem Venture Partners, Telesystem, and Ontario Emerging Technologies Funds. Quayle previously led data center management company Integrien, sold to VMware in 2010.
Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244072
Cosentry Expands DRaaS Portfolio With Geminare and Google Cloud Platform Services
Cosentry, the leading provider of IT solutions in the Midwest, today announced a further strategic partnership with Geminare, the #1 ranked leader in Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) enablement. Through this enhanced partnership, Cosentry expands its product portfolio with the addition of Geminare DRaaS. Termed Cosentry DRaaS integrated with Google Cloud Platform, this suite of services is delivered through a collaboration with Google Cloud Platform (NASDAQ: GOOG) and enables Cloud Recovery and Cloud Archive services to be delivered to Cosentry’s customers. Leveraging Geminare DRaaS integrated with Google Cloud Platform solutions, Cosentry brings its white-glove, managed services approach to disaster recovery deployments while meeting the full range of Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). In addition, the strategic partnership enables the following: — Competitive pricing for the underlying storage and compute costs required in providing a full disaster recovery (DR) infrastructure. — Flexibility in the recovery site so that customers may grow their DR solutions easily over time. — Efficient and effortless management of a full-service delivery of DRaaS offerings. Craig Hurley, VP Product Management at Cosentry, commented, “Google Cloud Platform’s flexibility and ease-of-use are essential in helping us deploy our DRaaS solutions. By combining our world-class managed services with Geminare’s DRaaS Platform and suite of offerings, we are also able to offer reliable, secure, and cost-effective DR solutions delivered from the public cloud.” Allen Klumpp, Partner & VP of Security and Infrastructure at Cilio Technologies, recently implemented the Cosentry Cloud Recovery integrated with Google Cloud Platform service to protect their on-line SaaS offering and ensure business continuity for end customers. Klumpp elaborated, “As a pioneer in using cloud-based services in the manufacturing industry, we pride ourselves on our innovation and customer service. A natural extension of this philosophy was to incorpor ate a state-of-the-art DRaaS offering that provides our customers with one of the industry’s best Service Level Agreements (SLAs). DRaaS integrated with Google Cloud Platform gives us confidence that these SLAs will be met in support of our customers’ services.” Reflecting on the Google collaboration and Cosentry’s initiative amongst the Service Provider community, Geminare’s CEO, Joshua Geist, stated, “While this announcement benefits our Service Provider community globally, Cosentry in particular is at the forefront having already successfully implemented customer instances with Geminare DRaaS and Google Cloud Platform. We expect to see significant uptake within Cosentry’s customer base in the near future.”
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2015-03-11/aaD3sPfRruPI.html
Geminare collaborates with Google to deliver DRaaS
- Cloud Recovery: Geminare’s award-winning application and data protection solution that allows customers to leverage Google Cloud Platform for their DR environment.
- Cloud Archive: A newly announced archive solution tightly integrated with Google Cloud Storage Nearline and Geminare Cloud Recovery. A highly scalable data archiving solution that provides virtually unlimited retention of customer data from either on-premises or hosted servers.
- DRaaS Cloud Management Platform: A patented portal with tiered DRaaS management services for both Service Providers and customers that complements and optimizes Geminare DRaaS and Google Cloud Platform.
Oregon to debut mileage-based gas tax, helped by Waterloo company
A Waterloo-based company is helping the state of Oregon implement a new voluntary program that will tax drivers based on distance driven, instead of a flat gas tax.
Waterloo’s Intelligent Mechatronic Systems plays an integral part in the new program. The company created DriveSync, a platform that essentially can connect a car to the internet or other devices such as smartphones.
DriveSync makes it possible for insurance companies to assess customers based on usage, for example.
“It’s a very interesting approach to change one form of taxation on the gas pump to a fair usage fee on the road,” said Ben Miners, the vice president for innovation at IMS, in an interview with Craig Norris on The Morning Edition Monday.
“Having a usage fee on the road provides people with transparency in terms of how much it’s actually costing to be on the road,” he said. “So hopefully, people will make informed decisions before they take their car out to drive to the corner store.”
Drivers won’t need to do anything special to their vehicles to take part in the program, but they do have to register and get a DriveSync device, which can be plugged into their vehicles.
“It’s a standard port in every vehicle built after 1996. The port’s just below the steering wheel, you reach down and plug it in and you can drive and not need to worry about it ever again,” said Miners.
The program will start for Oregon drivers on July 1.
Drivers can choose how much to share
For the privacy-minded, participants can choose how much information they want to reveal to the state of Oregon. Drivers can choose to only share the distance the vehicle travels, and avoid location information. However, if they do share location information, they won’t be taxed when they drive on private roads or head out of state, for example.
The billing itself is handled by another company, Sanef ITS, which has partnered with IMS and the state of Oregon. Every quarter drivers will get an invoice showing how much fuel they’ve consumed and how far they’ve travelled. Participants will get a gas tax refund, and then pay their usage tax at a rate of 1.5 cents per mile driven.
“Now people can see that when they’re driving, when their cars are actually causing impact to the road, the funds or the fees that they’re paying are directly being applied to help maintain those roads, maintain the infrastructure and repair those potholes,” said Miners.
According to Miners, as people switch to vehicles that consume less gas, governments need to find new ways to raise funds.
“The revenue shortfall from traditional gas tax-based approaches is only increasing in its magnitude, with the prevalence of highly fuel efficient vehicles, electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles,” he said.
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/oregon-to-debut-mileage-based-gas-tax-thanks-to-waterloo-company-1.2984544